The drizzle of a rainy night on UTA’s campus may have canceled the fireworks for Graduation Celebration 2012, but the spirit of spring graduates was hardly dampened.

College Park Center was a welcome venue for UTA 2012 graduates to celebrate with their families and friends and the rest of the community Friday night.

The event, originally scheduled to occur at Levitt Pavilion, featured free music, food, drinks and a speech from award-winning actor James Franco, the keynote speaker.

A senior student will soon join her engineering family when she graduates this spring as one of the first students in the graduating class at the College Park Center.

Biomedical engineering graduate student Aram Naseri is the fourth member of her family to earn an engineering degree. Her father is an electrical engineer and both her sisters earned a master’s degree in biomedical engineering at UTA.

Barks, yips and ruffs will be heard on campus Friday.

Dog Day will be held from 10 a.m. to noon on the Central Library mall where the Arlington Animal Shelter will have dogs for students to play with. Dog Day is an event hosted by UTA Volunteers to promote good relations with animals and raise money for the local animal shelter.

Sometimes a Band-Aid isn’t enough.

Inspired by her role as a mother of three athletes and the stories of injured athletes Eric Legrand and Rasul “Rocky” Clark, alumna Zina Barrow formed the National Sports League of America last June to provide extra help to athletes who suffer from catastrophic injuries.

As the semester comes to a close, many College of Liberal Arts students will not return in the fall. For them, graduation marks the end of a long road, and for some, a passage to their next academic endeavor.

But those who plan on walking the stage in the new College Park Center at 8 p.m. Saturday could be in for a long night.