Calistoga resident Brittany Joyce Brown graduated from Azusa Pacific University with a bachelor of arts in sociology on May 9, 2009. More than 1,300 students graduated at the spring commencement ceremony./Register

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Megan Falstad of Napa recently earned a bachelor of arts in liberal arts plus a bachelor of arts in Bible and theology at William Jessup University, the greater Sacramento area’s only private four-year residential university.

A graduate of Napa High School, Falstad was a member of the university’s women’s soccer team for four years. She would like to pursue becoming an elementary school teacher upon graduation. She is the daughter of Ron and Marsha Falstad./Register

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Robert Benjamin Thorpe of Napa graduated from St. John’s College on May 23. Students study a comprehensive, all-required curriculum based on the Great Books. There are no majors and no departments; all students study the same program, which includes extensive discussion, reflection and writing on the classics of literature, philosophy, theology, psychology, political science, economics, history, mathematics, laboratory sciences, and music. Each senior is required to write and defend a senior essay in an oral examination as a requirement of graduation. Robert’s senior essay was entitled “No Less Essential: Behavioral Science and the Laws of History.”/Register

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Jazmin Lopez, of Napa, graduated from Pomona College with a bachelor of arts in international relations and Spanish. Commencement exercises were held May 17.

While a student at Pomona, Lopez was awarded a summer undergraduate research program grant; studied abroad in Yucatan, Mexico; was named a Public Policy and International Affairs fellow at UC Berkeley; helped start the mariachi ensemble at the Claremont Colleges and directed it her senior year. She graduated with Sigma Delta Pi (National Spanish Honor Society) honors.

She is the daughter of Rodolfo and Maria Lopez of Napa. Lopez is a graduate of Napa High School./Register