News & Updates
Northern College Celebrates the Class of 2025
Northern College is proud to honour the 1,249 graduates, across all four of its campuses, who make up the class of 2025.
Celebrated across a total of seven convocation ceremonies, this moment is the beginning of a new chapter in the lives of each newly minted alumni, marked with the pomp and circumstance befitting their accomplishments.
“This is the most important time of year for us as educators,” stated Mitch Dumas, President & CEO of Northern College. “To witness years of hard work and dedication paying off for each of our students is incredibly gratifying. Knowing that each of them will go on to do bigger and better things – to shape the world around them reinforces our purpose as individuals and as an institution.”
The Class of 2025 is comprised of 180 graduates from the Haileybury Campus, 124 from the Kirkland Lake Campus, four from the Moosonee Campus and 941 from the Timmins Campus. Accompanying each convocation event is a Scholarships, Bursaries and Awards ceremony, celebrating excellence and rewarding dedication.
“Northern College issued almost 230,000 dollars in spring grad scholarships, bursaries and awards,” stated Nicole Gingras, External Relations Officer at Northern. “Each of these awards are issued to students who display exceptionalism in their approach to their studies, their dedication to their future career path and their contributions to student and community life.”
Awards are issued to students throughout the year, only made possible through the generosity of hundreds of local and regional donors who believe in supporting the success of Northern College students. Among the awards issued each year during convocation is the coveted Governor General Award, which is awarded to the student with the highest GPA at the institution.
“I’m honoured, I truly didn’t expect this,” stated Uzma Khokhar-Shanboor, Social Service Worker grad and Northern’s 2025 Governor General Award recipient. “I went to college at 18, I did the whole shebang, and it just didn’t work out for me. I was put on academic probation, and I left there with a 1.6 GPA, so the fact that I’ve done a complete 180 and ended up here is amazing.”
Choosing to approach post-secondary education again in her late twenties following an Autism and ADHD diagnosis, Khokar-Shanboor knew that student supports would be key to her success and found exactly what she needed to excel at Northern, earning a 97.691 grade point average.
“Northern was recommended to me, because it checked all of the boxes for me,” added Khokar-Shanboor. “It was a big moment for me – I was scared – what if I fail? But it was amazing, the profs were incredible, they are such a wealth of knowledge and I think the benefit of going to Northern is that it’s a smaller class size and you get a truly impactful educational experience.”
Khokar-Shanboor will continue her studies at Laurentian University, for a Bachelor’s in Indigenous Social Work, confident that her training at Northern will provide a solid foundation for this next educational step.
Northern extends its sincere congratulations to Khokar-Shanboor and the Class of 2025.
“I’d like to convey my pride and my congratulations to all of the students who make up Northern’s Class of 2025,” stated Mitch Dumas. “Each of you will go on to make Northern proud and join the thousands of alumni who do so every day.