Congrats Graduates

[DukeDiva]

Thank you for 4 years of wonderful basketball. You will be missed http://http://lockerz.com/s/101602605

[DevilWearsPrada]

Wonderful pictures of Nolan, Kyle and Casey. Several of the National Championship ring, and of Nolan and his dear Mother, Monica.

Staying at Duke for 4 years = a Duke education and degree, and a National Championship for these three young men!! (and many other awards, banners, etc).

That 4 years just flew by. Congratulations to Kyle, Nolan and Casey for 4 wonderful years. I enjoyed the journey, and going to the games, and tournaments. Being in Indy for the 2010 Final Four was awesome!

Always, National Champions, and now Always Duke Alumni!

Congratulations! You are simply the Best!!!

Go Duke! GTHC

[DukeDiva]

These boys are a class act! Below is a tweet from Nolan. These seniors represent what we all love about Duke. GTHC!

NdotSmitty Nolan D. Smith
Athletes. If you really wanna make your mom proud. Get a college degree! A Mercedes or House is cool, but my moms smile today was priceless!

[MCFinARL]

Nolan's sister has posted some nice pictures from the graduation online. http://lockerz.com/s/101874057

[OZZIE4DUKE]

These boys are a class act! Below is a tweet from Nolan. These seniors represent what we all love about Duke. GTHC!

NdotSmitty Nolan D. Smith
Athletes. If you really wanna make your mom proud. Get a college degree! A Mercedes or House is cool, but my moms smile today was priceless!

Nolan has what so many probably never will. Congrats to Nolan, Kyle and Casey! You make us all smile, but you're right, it's your moms (and dads) who count the most!

[Frybay]

Good Job Grads!

[devildeac]

Gives new meaning to the traditional cap and gown:


Graduates wear gear made from plastic
• Greensboro-based manufacturer Unifi turns recycled plastic bottles into a yarn, which is used to make the gowns.

When Duke’s 4,500 graduates enter Wallace Wade Stadium this morning for commencement, they’ll be wearing the traditional black caps and gowns, but the philosophy behind them will be green.
This year, the university’s academic regalia will be made from recycled plastic bottles.
“We’re going to save about 10,000 bottles from the landfill,” Tom Craig, merchandise manager for Duke Stores, said of the change. “It was an easy decision for us to make.”
Thanks to a product developed by Greensboro-based yarn maker Unifi Inc., thousands of graduates across the state and nation will be attired in recycled water and soft drink bottles this month.
Other North Carolina schools adopting the new caps and gowns include GTCC, UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State and Wake Forest.
The product, a recycled yarn called Repreve, will not only help the environment — it takes 23 bottles to make one gown — but analysts call it one of the factors that helped Unifi turn around financially.
Between 2000 and 2010, the company lost nearly $420 million and laid off 2,800 workers. But last year, the company turned a profit of nearly $11 million and expects to make money in fiscal year 2011 as well.
“They have seen the worst,” said Bryan Hunt, managing director of high-yield research at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte. “I am confident this company will be around for a long time.”
And company officials say Repreve will play an increasingly important role in the company’s future.
Since its introduction in 2006, Repreve has grown from a single recycled polyester fiber into a family of sustainable products. One line, introduced in 2009, is made entirely of recycled bottles.
In the last two years, the company says, more than 247 million plastic bottles have been recycled into Repreve.
By 2012, the company expects to recycle more than 400 million bottles at its new $8 million Repreve Recycling Center in Yadkinville.
“We know that the green movement is here to stay,” Roger Berrier, the company’s president and chief operating officer, said at the center’s grand opening on May 4. “ ... It’s our goal to become the world’s leader in providing recycled fibers.”
Unifi purchases the plastic bottles from an unidentified supplier, who cleans them and chops them into flakes.
At the recycling center, the company melts the flakes and transforms them into uniform pellets called chips. These are remelted and extruded into yarn, which can be used to make fabric.
Repreve can be used to make clothing, upholstery, drapes, socks, tote bags, zipper tapes, bedding, product labels, banners and signs.
Customers include Hag-gar, Polartec, BlueAvocado and two of the nation’s largest academic regalia companies — Herff Jones in Champaign, Il., and Oak Hall Cap & Gown in Salem, Va.
“It’s taking off,” Joseph D’Angelo, president of Oak Hall, said of his recycled products. “It’s just the green movement. Every college in the country is trying to do something green.”
Duke, which gets its caps and gowns from Oak Hall, held off on the recycled regalia until this year.
“Before, it was not as nice a product,” Craig said. “Now you can’t tell the difference. Now they have the quality under control.”

I edited the nausea-provoking section about the "designer" gowns made for the unc graduation.

[PADukeMom]

Congrats guys! Proud of you!

SMH @ Nolan...love the orange sneakers.

[-bdbd]

Commencement Speaker John Chambers, CEO of CISCO Systems.

Some very nice thoughts from last week's commencement address:

http://ondemand.duke.edu/video/27987...11-commencemen

17 minute video, which starts to pick up at about the 6-minute mark (forward ahead if you like).

Congratulations graduates!! The journey begins.

[ThePublisher]

This is what it's all about. Guys like this class are the pinnacle of college athletics.

[uh_no]

Commencement Speaker John Chambers, CEO of CISCO Systems.

Some very nice thoughts from last week's commencement address:

http://ondemand.duke.edu/video/27987...11-commencemen

17 minute video, which starts to pick up at about the 6-minute mark (forward ahead if you like).

Congratulations graduates!! The journey begins.

This is probably off topic, but the speech was largely hypocritical seeing as cisco is cutting 1 billion dollars from the budget, and thus several thousand jobs at Mr. Chambers' bidding. That doesn't mean the graduates can't take his message seriously, it was just an interesting lens through which to view his speech.