As Mars Hill University conferred degrees on its graduates of the summer and fall of 2025, the chair of the university’s board of trustees acknowledged the challenges they faced along the way to walking across the commencement stage on December 12, 2025.
Brent Townsend, a Mars Hill alumnus of 2002 who is an executive with Chick Fil-A, told the graduates he was proud and encouraged to have witnessed the way they and their fellow students responded to Hurricane Helene, which devastated the region in the midst of the fall semester of 2024.
“This university has never just been about classes and credits—it’s about community,” Townsend said. “It’s about becoming the kind of person who serves with purpose and lives with meaning.”
Student speaker Ashlin Mathews Hensley, a health and human performance major originally from Cleveland, Tennessee, who now lives in Burnsville, North Carolina, delivered the invocation for the ceremony as well as the student address.
She told her classmates, “Each of us learned who we are as people. Some of us are kind and compassionate; some of us, hardworking and ambitious; some, creative and adventurous. But, most of all, I hope we learned to be authentically ourselves, no matter what. These lessons and memories are what we will take with us in our next steps.”
The commencement ceremony also included special music by graduating senior Daniel Pearsall, a music education major from Fairview, North Carolina, who sang “O Isis and Osiris” from Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte).”
The university conferred degrees on 37 graduates at the December 2025 ceremony. Four of them received master’s degrees, with the remainder receiving bachelor’s degrees in either arts, music, science, or social work.
Mars Hill University holds two graduation ceremonies each year: one in May for graduates who complete their degrees in the spring semester, and one in December for graduates who complete degree requirements over the summer or fall terms.
About Mars Hill University:
Mars Hill University is a premier private, liberal arts institution offering over 30 baccalaureate degrees, as well as master’s degrees in criminal justice, elementary education, teaching, and management. Founded in 1856 by Baptist families of the region, the campus is located just 20 minutes north of Asheville in the mountains of western North Carolina.
