The graduation season officially kicked off Friday when the University of Georgia-Griffin campus held a graduation reception for its largest graduating class ever.

Twenty-five graduates accepted degrees, certificates and bricks in front of a room filled with family and friends.

UGA Assistant Dean and Assistant Provost Gerald Arkin spoke to the graduates about the bonding of students, faculty and staff.

“You students had a dream and an action plan,” Arkin said. “We’re proud to be a part of your dream and action plan. You’re a fantastic group of students.”

In addition to being UGA-Griffin’s largest graduating class, the class of 2009 also included the first 15 graduates with graduate degrees in math education. Of the university’s five colleges, four were represented in this year’s graduating class. This was also a first.

Among those offering remarks and congratulations to the graduates were state Rep. John Yates, R-Griffin, Assistant Director of Student Affairs Sheri King and Associate Provost for Institutional Effectiveness and Extended Campus Educational Program Bob Boehmer.

“As University of Georgia graduates, I hope you are all giving a lot of thought to what that means,” Boehmer said as he advised the graduates to not just look at their achievements, but also at the responsibility that goes with it.

Although most of the ceremony took place inside the university’s Stuckey Conference Center Auditorium, the final step was the traditional brick-laying ceremony where a brick, bearing each graduate’s name and year of graduation, is placed in the walkway underneath the Naomi Woodroof Agricultural Pavilion.