enlarge John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

Kim Gagnon of Portland waves to family and friends during the University of Southern Maine graduation at the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland on Saturday.

enlarge John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

Donna Hamilton, right, and her daughter, Jennifer, take pictures of James Hamilton during USM’s graduation.

enlarge John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

Roger Wilkins, a noted journalist who covered Watergate in the 1970s, gives a commencement address to USM graduates on Saturday.

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Brianna Allen, an art major from Livermore Falls who graduated Saturday from the University of Southern Maine, is heading to Alaska in June.

She'll stay with a couple of American Indian tribes in Homer, Alaska, and paint portraits of tribal members.

Allen, who is American Indian, started out painting members of her own family during college. She has wanted to visit Alaska since the fourth grade. She inquired about staying with tribes in Homer.

"They said, 'Come on over and paint us,'" she said. "I'm going to stay as long as they'll have me."

Allen was among more than 1,000 graduates at USM's commencement Saturday morning. The University of Maine held its ceremony Saturday in Orono, and the University of New England held its ceremony in Portland.

Roger Wilkins, USM's commencement speaker, urged the students to become citizen activists, advice he was given as a graduate in 1953.

Wilkins, who shared a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for Watergate coverage, encouraged the graduates to listen to the words of Benjamin Franklin from 1787.

At the close of the Constitutional Convention, Franklin described the new government as "a republic if you can keep it."

"It is now your time to keep it," Wilkins said.

At the University of Maine in Orono, entrepreneur Doug Hall spoke to the 1,860 graduates, urging them to do a "better job than the Baby Boomer generation of leading American society to a brighter future."

"We've become distracted -- distracted from turning the hopes of youth, our dreams for a better world, into a reality," Hall said.

At UNE's graduation, former Maine Gov. John McKernan Jr. shared tips with the graduates on getting their first job and succeeding. More than 700 students were awarded degrees.

Dail Mower, a dental hygiene student at UNE, and three of her friends wore red clown noses for the ceremony. It seemed appropriate because they used to sit in the back of the classroom and "goof off," Mower said.

They also had a cap-decorating party, she said.

"To finally be here is great," she said. "It's sort of the culmination of everything we've worked so hard for."

USM graduate students Erica Robinson and Allegra Hirsch also embellished their caps, with "Can I get a woot woot" -- a joke between the two and others in their master's in social work program at the university.

Hirsch and Robinson both graduated in one year through an advanced study program. Graduation so soon, they said, seemed surreal.

"We've been counting the days since we had 100 and something left," Robinson said.

Carmen Merab Wamukoya, who graduated from USM's Lewiston-Auburn campus, was joined at the Saturday morning ceremony by her mother, father and brother, who all flew in from Kenya.

Wamukoya, a social and behavioral sciences major, hopes to one day start her own nonprofit organization in Kenya.

"It's been an interesting experience," Wamukoya said. "Now, I'm able to look at things from a global perspective."

Other colleges with graduations on Saturday were the University of Maine at Augusta, Fort Kent, Machias and Presque Isle; St. Joseph's College in Standish; Thomas College in Waterville; and Unity College in Unity.

Staff Writer Anne Gleason can be contacted at 282-8229 or at:

agleason@pressherald.com