7/19/01
AU TO HONOR FIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN GRAD AT SUMMER GRADUATION
AUBURN -- Auburn University will award an estimated 1,034 degrees and honor its first African-American graduate at its summer semester commencement ceremony at 2 p.m. Monday, Aug. 6, in Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum.
AU will award an honorary Doctor of Science degree to Samuel L. Pettijohn, AU's first African-American graduate, who received a bachelor's degree in physics in 1967.
However historical, Pettijohn's route to an AU degree was circuitous. After high school, he enrolled at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), one of the most famous and prestigious African-American colleges in the country. He enrolled in engineering, but when Tuskegee decided to begin a physics curriculum, he quickly changed his major.
"Physics was something that appealed to me on some level," he said. "So I quickly changed. Unfortunately, the program didn't last long."
For reasons that remain unclear to Pettijohn, Tuskegee's fledgling physics program began to founder. With the program near death, a Tuskegee professor contacted Auburn physics professor Raymond Askew and made arrangements for the young man to continue his education in his chosen field --- at Auburn.
"Originally, what I was told was that I would continue to be officially enrolled at Tuskegee and just attend the classes at Auburn," Pettijohn said. "And that's the way it was the first term. But, after that first term, I was told I would have to enroll at Auburn."
So, in the middle of his junior year, Pettijohn joined a small contingent of African- Americans as a student at Auburn. His experience, he said, must be viewed in the context of the era.
"In the context of the times, my experience at Auburn was without incident," Pettijohn said. "Nothing other than the occasional remark and that we were segregated from the rest of the student population. After class, we didn't socialize or talk. But, again, in the context of the day, that was just understood. "There were seven (African-Americans). We all stayed together at Magnolia Hall and, because of that, we became great friends. I still cherish those friends and, largely because of them and because of professors like Dr. Askew and Dr. Howard Carr (the head of the physics department at the time), my memories of Auburn are pleasant ones."
After Auburn, Pettijohn served in the Army for four years, receiving a Bronze Star and an Army Commendation Medal for his service in combat support in Vietnam with the Army Corps of Engineers. He worked with several private companies and NASA before taking a position with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where he's been employed since 1977. Pettijohn lives in Owings Mills, Md., where he works as a senior project manager for the NRC. He was instrumental in developing an NRC database of radiation incidents and accidents and is currently working toward the development of a similar database on an international scale.
After more than 30 years away from Auburn, he had the opportunity to return at the request of the Office of Multicultural Affairs a few years ago.
"As far as the university is concerned, it's obviously a different environment,"0 Pettijohn said. "Certainly, there are a lot more African-Americans and I think Auburn has made strides although they are still only a small segment of the total student population. And the town still had that same small-town feel that I remembered. It was sort of like I was in a time warp. It didn't seem to have changed a lot at all.
"I'm looking forward to coming back again."
Of the degrees AU will award, 742 are bachelor's degrees, 243 are master's, 47 are doctorates and two are specialist's degrees.
AU's College of Business will award the most undergraduate degrees with 224, followed by the College of Liberal Arts with 197 and the College of Education with 78.
The Samuel Ginn College of Engineering will award 71 undergraduate degrees; the College of Human Sciences 63; the College of Architecture, Design and Construction 48; the College of Agriculture 28; the College of Sciences and Mathematics 21; the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences 8; and nursing four.
Since its founding as East Alabama Male College in 1856, AU has awarded more than 187,000 academic degrees at its main campus.
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