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Iowa Wesleyan holds final graduation
MT. PLEASANT – Iowa Wesleyan University in Mt. Pleasant held commencement exercises for the final time on Saturday, May 6.
Ruble Arena was packed with onlookers who had come to congratulate this year’s graduating seniors, and to bid goodbye to the university that has called Mt. Pleasant home for 181 years. In March, the university’s board of trustees announced that ongoing financial challenges forced them to make the tough decision to close the university effective May 31. After that date, the campus will become the property of the United States Department of Agriculture, since the university had offered its campus as collateral for a $26 million loan from the USDA.
The graduating class of 2023 had a roller coaster experience at college, which included the pandemic canceling classes, then transitioning to hybrid learning, and finally going back to something resembling normalcy. IW senior Carver Locke was among those who received their degree Saturday. Locke studied business administration, and received his degree early, since he was expecting to receive it in August.
Locke is from Hawaii, and started his collegiate journey at a junior college in California, but he transferred to Iowa Wesleyan to play basketball when he was a sophomore. Locke’s first year on campus was the 2020-2021 school year, when classes were taught in a hybrid fashion meaning that half the class was in-person, and the other half was online over Zoom.
Locke said that even with the unusual set-up, he never considered moving back closer to home.
“The reason I stayed is that this university has a great family aspect,” he said. “I felt like this was my new home.”
Locke said this last basketball season supplied some of his favorite memories from his time in Mt. Pleasant.
“That was the most fun I’ve had in my life,” Locke said. “We broke a few records here at IWU, and it stinks that the school is closing and we won’t get to see anybody try to break those records. It still feels good that we went out with a bang.”
The Tiger men’s basketball team went 27-3 this past winter, and won its conference tournament to qualify for the national tournament. Though Locke’s time in college is now history, he hopes that his basketball career is just beginning. He signed a contract with a professional sports agent to continue playing basketball in Europe.
“Europe has a lot of really good basketball leagues,” he said.
Iowa Wesleyan has been successful at attracting students from out of state and even from other countries. Of its 878 enrollment, 568 of those come from outside Iowa. Students from abroad wore their country’s flag as a sash during Saturday’s commencement exercises, such as friends Rosemary Ochoa from Honduras and Christina Malla from Nepal.
Ochoa said she heard about Iowa Wesleyan while living in her native country, and learned that it had a wonderful international culture with students from across the globe. At IWU, Ochoa studied psychology and later obtained her master of arts in management leadership.
Ochoa said news of the university’s impending closure came as a shock to her and all of her classmates. She said she fears the university’s international students will suffer the most, and that they’ll have to start over from scratch. During her time here, she made friends from countries such as Egypt, Nepal, India, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic.
Ochoa said she plans to work for a year in management leadership and perhaps start her own company in the United States.
Malla said she planned to study in the United States, and she and a group of friends back in Nepal all applied to Iowa Wesleyan, but she was the only one of them who was accepted. She studied business management and finance, and had an easy time making friends with her classmates.
Malla said she was “super sad” the day she found out IWU would close, and worried for all of the professors and staff who would have to find a new job, and the students who had to transfer.
“I feel very lucky because I am able to graduate,” Malla said.
Like Ochoa, Malla plans to stay in the United States to work for a year, and then pursue her master’s degree at a school in Texas, though she hasn’t decided which one yet.
Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com
