WORCESTER, Mass. – Nearly 1,200 undergraduate students at WPI celebrated their commencement on Friday.

The school held its ceremonies at Worcester’s DCU Center.

Ten of the grads entered WPI in the fall of 2020 as part of the first Great Minds CoMPASS Scholars Program.

The students, who worked with mentors, started their college career over Zoom, but were still able to form a supportive community, with most of them living together on the same residence hall floor.

Spectrum News 1 spoke with Peter Korfuzi, a first-generation college graduate just before the ceremony.

He was a part of CoMPASS and majored in aerospace engineering.

“As a first-generation student, you can imagine there is a lot of naivety coming into the college landscape,” said Korfuzi. “And what the Great Minds CoMPASS Scholarship does is it provides you that support network so that you can go to them with questions and figure out how to navigate this college landscape and excel.”

On Thursday, 788 students graduated from WPI with their master’s degrees, and 69 graduated with doctoral degrees.