Hats, and Caps, Off to the 2019 Commencement Cap Winners

For the second year in a row, Drexel University held a special — and very competitive — commencement cap contest for graduating Dragons to show off their creativity and school pride. To enter, students decorated their official graduation cap, posted it to Instagram and used the #foreverdragons and #capcontest19 hashtags.

This year’s winner was Gabrielle Donatucci, a biological sciences graduate in the College of Arts and Sciences. She decorated her cap by paying homage to her city through a depiction of her in cap and gown in front of the Philadelphia Art Museum steps, arms raised high in a “Rocky”-inspired pose.

Stella (Qiu-Rui) Huang, a nursing graduate from the College of Nursing & Health Professions, took second place with some self-described “Disney magic.” Her cap featured a starry nighttime view of Rapunzel’s castle from “Tangled” emblazoned with the lyric “And at last I see the light” from the film’s Oscar-nominated “I See the Light” song. Her friend and fellow Drexel graduate Delaney Newhart, a marketing graduate in the Lebow College of Business, took the award-winning photo.

Lindsey Kinser, who graduated with her BS and MS in mechanical engineering from the College of Engineering, was the third-place winner with an outlined depiction of the Philly skyline.

Under the #capcontest19 hashtag, there were 67 posted entries on Instagram, if you want to check out the rest of the submitted caps. The winners were chosen by members of the Drexel Commencement Committee, which is a group of Drexel staff members in charge of putting Commencement together.