Vartan Gregorian, former Brown president, visits Providence school n

Vartan Gregorian, former Brown president, visits Providence school
named in his honor

June 18, 2013 3:36 pm
By Kate Bramson

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The city’s Vartan Gregorian Elementary School on
Tuesday celebrated the promotion of its fifth-graders onto middle
school with a “clap-out ceremony” that has become a tradition, in
which the younger grades and their teachers stand against the hallway
walls and applaud as the fifth-graders walk the corridors to the
auditorium.

This year, a special guest walked with them through the hallways —
the man for whom the school is named. Vartan Gregorian, once Brown
University’s 16th president, is now president of the grant-making
Carnegie Corporation in New York.

Before the ceremony, he met with students from the school’s eNewspaper
club, after third-grade club member Sasha Missiuro wrote him a letter,
asking about his childhood and early education and inviting him to
meet with them.

“Nobody like you is going to come again,” he told the club. “I want
each one of you to remember — not me, but you. And do justice to your
intellect, and I’d like you to learn, learn, learn.”