Erick Garcia, a graduating economics and applied mathematics major from Stroudsburg, Pa., is East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania\u2019s student speaker for the winter commencement ceremony on Saturday, December 13, at 9 a.m. in Koehler Fieldhouse. Garcia was selected from a pool of student speaker candidates.<\/p>\n
Student speaker candidates must have a minimum 3.0 grade point average entering the spring semester; a demonstrated record of service to the university community and a record of leadership and cooperation; demonstrated evidence of meaningful extra\/co-curricular involvement; and must be in good academic standing.<\/p>\n
Garcia has been enrolled at ESU for his entire undergraduate career. In his time here, he enjoyed taking a variety of different classes and engrossing himself in academia. He plans to one day obtain a Ph.D. because he \u201cloves to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have grown a lot more mature in my time at ESU,\u201d he said. \u201cI have a better knowledge of the world, and I will take that everywhere I go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Garcia\u2019s love of learning expanded outside of the classroom in his collegiate life.<\/p>\n
In addition to having been a member of the economics club and the math club at ESU, he is a member of the United States Chess Federation, where he was recently given the title of chess master. The Federation only awards titles to the top one percent of tournament players. Garcia has played chess for eight years.<\/p>\n
\u201cErick had the courage to dream big, the determination to work hard, and the curiosity to challenge his intellect not only to earn the title of U.S. National Chess Master, but also graduate summa cum laude<\/em> in economics and mathematics,\u201d said Pattabiraman Neelakantan, Ph.D., professor and chair of economics. \u201cWith his goal of pursuing a Ph.D. in economics and becoming a faculty member to inspire underprivileged students, Erick is a great role model to other high achieving ESU students.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Economics and Applied Mathematics and Finance Major Erick Garcia to Speak at ESU\u2019s Winter Commencement Ceremony\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16,22,42,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics","category-facebook","category-news-release","category-slider"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11205"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11207,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11205\/revisions\/11207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}