The University of Mount Olive, previously known as Mount Olive College, will host its 60^th spring commencement service with Congressman G. K. Butterfield, the representative for the 1^st district of North Carolina, as the ceremony’s commencement speaker.

The graduation service, set to begin at 2 p.m. on May 3, will be held in the George and Annie Dail Kornegay Arena in Mount Olive, according to Lita Ward, location director for Mount Olive’s Washington campus. The university will graduate about 320 students. The graduates will be the first to have their diploma from the university. UMO officially changed its name from college to university at the beginning of the Spring 2014 semester. According to Ward, 25 of those graduates will come from the Washington campus. Those 25 graduates are a mixture of Beaufort and surrounding counties’ residents.

“This one is going to be historical,” Ward said. “They’re actually going to have the first diplomas with the new seal on them.”

In Congress, Butterfield, a lifelong resident of eastern North Carolina, is a champion of affordable medical care, education, investments in rural communities, veterans, renewable energies and federal programs that support low-income and middle-class Americans, according to a UMO press release. Butterfield was elected to serve the district in the U.S. House of Representatives in a special election in July of 2004, where he continues to serve today. He also serves in the Democratic leadership as chief deputy whip and as first vice-chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. He sits on the Committee of Energy and Commerce as the eighth most senior Democrat on the Health Subcommittee and serves as a member of the subcommittees of Communications and Technology and Oversight and Investigations, according to the release.

Ward said Reverend Aubrey Baxter Williamson, a Wayne County native, will serve as the speaker for the baccalaureate service, scheduled for 10:30 a.m. in Rodgers Chapel in the heart of the UMO campus. Williamson, a former student at Mount Olive, has been an ordained Original Free Will Baptist Minister for 31 years. In addition to his pastoral work, he has served on several ordaining boards including that of the Albemarle Conference and the Cape Fear Conference Ordaining Board, which he currently serves on. He also currently serves as the pastor of Kenly OFWB Church in Kenly.