Published on November 5, 2014 by Philip Poole  

Standing at 18,200 feet, Graham Lemmond and Steven Shirley stared at the summit of Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain.

Lemmond, a 2007 journalism and mass communication graduate, and Shirley, a 2008 biology and pre-med graduate, were part of a team that went to Nepal to trek Everest.

Lemmond's wife, Andrea, is a former women's basketball coach at Samford and is now the head coach at the University of Alabama at Huntsville.

 
Samford is a leading Christian university offering undergraduate programs grounded in the liberal arts with an array of nationally recognized graduate and professional schools. Founded in 1841, Samford is the 87th-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Samford enrolls 5,791 students from 49 states, Puerto Rico and 16 countries in its 10 academic schools: arts, arts and sciences, business, divinity, education, health professions, law, nursing, pharmacy and public health. Samford fields 17 athletic teams that compete in the tradition-rich Southern Conference and ranks 6th nationally for its Graduation Success Rate among all NCAA Division I schools.