Your future, our focus
P O W E L L, W y o. - Over 170 students are expected to participate in commencement exercises Saturday, May 10, at Northwest College. The ceremony will be highlighted by two speakers from Cody, one a graduating student and the other a distinguished alum, plus a faculty member. The action gets underway at 10:30 a.m. in Cabre Gym in Powell.
Featured speakers are Shad McNeil and Travis Graham, both of Cody, and Harriet Bloom-Wilson, recipient of the NWC 2007 Distinguished Faculty Award.
McNeil, a Spanish major, served this year as president of the NWC Student Senate. Also active in music groups, theater productions, Spanish Club and soccer at NWC, he will transfer to the Hillsong International Leadership College in Sydney, Australia, after graduating. His parents are Rick and Laurie McNeil of Cody.
Bloom-Wilson is an assistant professor of French as well as an international student recruiter and adviser. A world traveler and major force behind the NWC Multicultural Events Series, she's been at Northwest since 1981. Her recruiting trips to Asia during the past few years have contributed to the college's increased international enrollment and led to a semester-long visit from Fulbright scholar Hoang Le Huy of Vietnam.
Travis Graham will speak to graduates as the 2008 Distinguished Alumni. He trekked across the same stage as his audience when he graduated with honors from NWC in 1994, completing the first step in the 14-year education process required to become a specialized radiologist.
Graham came to Northwest from Basin where he graduated from Riverside High School. The NWC community remembers him as the college's first homecoming king and as the student representative selected to speak to the Wyoming State Legislature's Joint Education Committee, accompanied by former NWC President John Hanna.
In 1996, he completed a bachelor's degree in zoology and physiology from the University of Wyoming and followed that with a doctorate in medicine from Creighton University Medical School in Nebraska.
After a one-year internship in internal medicine at Creighton, Graham spent four years at the University of Colorado as a diagnostic radiology resident, followed by two more years as a fellow and instructor of musculoskeletal imaging.
Throughout that long trek, his dedication and commitment were recognized in the form of scholarships, honor roll listings and acceptance into four honor societies. At UW, he was named a Tobin Award finalist and presented the L. Floyd Clark Award as outstanding health sciences student. At UC, he was given both the outstanding radiology fellow teaching award and the outstanding resident teaching award.
Graham currently works as a staff radiologist at Yellowstone Radiology and as a clinical instructor for the University of Colorado at West Park Hospital. This summer, he'll move to Denver, Colo., to join a large radiology group there as a specialist in musculoskeletal imaging. Going with him will be his wife Joani (formerly Joani Miller of Cody) and their three young children, Kyle, Ian and Noelle.