Cowley College to hold 100th Commencement on May 6

A total of 484 students will be candidates for graduation Saturday, May 6, when Cowley College holds its 100th Commencement exercises. 

The Commencement exercises will be held at 10 a.m. inside W.S. Scott Auditorium. Individuals requiring special seating at Commencement should plan to arrive no later than 9:40 a.m. 

Two hundred eighty-seven students are expected to participate in the Commencement ceremonies. 

The featured speakers are Ed and Linda Hargrove. Ed and Linda Hargrove are members of the Tiger Athletic Hall of Fame.

Linda Hargrove is the second all-time winningest women’s basketball coach in Cowley history. She earned National Coach of the Year honors in 1987, was named Region VI Coach of the Year four times, and coached several All-Americans in basketball and volleyball. She is the only Cowley coach to take basketball and volleyball teams to the national tournament. She was also an outstanding athlete at Cowley. She went on to serve as the general manager and head coach of the Portland Fire of the Women’s National Basketball Association and later worked as the general manager for the Washington Mystics and as an advisor for the WNBA’s Tulsa Shock. She was also the winningest coach in the history of the Wichita State University women’s basketball program until her record was broken in 2014.

Ed Hargrove won 1,142 games in 30 years as the head softball coach at Cowley. Under his leadership, Cowley achieved 40 or more victories in 16 of his final 17 seasons and appeared in the national rankings in 16 consecutive seasons. He is the second-winningest coach in Cowley sports history, and his 1,142 victories ranked first in the nation on the National Junior College Athletic Association Division II wins list of active softball coaches at the time of his retirement. He was named the Jayhawk Conference Eastern Division Coach of the Year eight times.

Members of Cowley’s Student Senate will also address the class. Felipe Mentz, a business administration major from Porto, Brazil, served as Student Senate president during the 2022-2023 academic year. While Renissa Cinnamon, a sophomore liberal arts major from Perry, OK, served as secretary of the Student Senate.

Students listed in the official Commencement program on Saturday, May 6, are candidates for the associate of arts degree, the associate degree of applied science, the associate degree of general studies, the associate degree of science, or the college certificate.

CowleySportsNET will be streaming the ceremony live for those unable to attend the ceremonies. Go to cowley.edu/commencement to view.

Rama Peroo | Director of Institutional Communication
Cowley College
125 S. 2nd Street
Arkansas City, KS 67005
rama.peroo@cowley.edu