Graduation ceremonies scheduled

UConn officials are putting the finishing touches on arrangements for Commencement weekend May 10-11, when 11 of the University’s 14 schools and colleges will celebrate the graduation of students in the Class of 2008.

The three other schools – law, medicine, and dental medicine – will celebrate their students’ achievements May 18.

This year, nearly 7,000 students will receive associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, juris doctor, dental, or medical degrees during the events, the first time the University has held separate ceremonies for all the schools and colleges.

Additionally, at 3 p.m. on May 10, the Army and Air Force ROTC programs will hold commissioning ceremonies.

“Three schools – education, fine arts, and pharmacy – agreed to experiment with individual ceremonies last year, and all three thought it was a success,” says Michael Darre, chair of the Commencement Committee and University Marshal.

“So this year we extended the idea across the board. Our student population has outgrown the dual ceremonies we’ve held in Gampel Pavilion in the past, and holding individual ceremonies in different locations has been successful at a number of other universities. It’s much more intimate, especially for the smaller schools.”

Only the graduate ceremony, which will be held at 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 10 in Gampel Pavilion, will remain the same, although the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ (CLAS) Commencement, which takes place at Gampel Pavilion at 4 p.m. May 11, will closely resemble those of previous years.

CLAS is the largest of the University’s schools and colleges.

Graduating students will hear from a wide range of speakers, including a legislator, an engineer, a pharmacists, an artist, a business executive, and a judge.

The master’s and doctoral students will be addressed by Garry Wills, an author and historian who has written more than two dozen books.

His works include Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America (1992), which won a Pulitzer Prize; and Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (1970). Wills will receive an honorary Doctor of Letters.

Joining Wills May 10 will be philanthropist Gary Gladstein, CLAS ’66, who will receive an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.

Gladstein, retired chief operating officer of Soros Fund Management, currently serves on the boards of several leading global companies and a number of high-profile hedge funds. He has been a member of the University of Connecticut Foundation Board of Directors since 1998.

With gifts made independently and through the Marsha Lilien Gladstein Foundation, Gladstein has supported human rights, Hillel, the UConn Health Center, and the School of Business at UConn.

Also during the ceremony, Charlotte Bunch, a women’s and human rights activist, author, and organizer for 40 years, will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws.

Bunch, the founder and executive director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University, was instrumental in the development of feminist studies as an academic discipline.

On Sunday, May 11, at 4 p.m., more than 2,400 students who have studied in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences will receive their bachelor’s degree.

The students will be addressed by UConn trustee Rebecca Lobo, who played on UConn’s undefeated and national champion 1995 women’s basketball team and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of CLAS.

Lobo also won a gold medal in the 1996 Olympics, and played for three Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) teams. She is currently a women’s basketball analyst for CBS and ESPN.

Other ceremonies and speakers include:

• Saturday, May 10, at 9 a.m. in Rome Ballroom: School of Pharmacy (D.Pharm.). About 100 Doctor of Pharmacy graduates will be addressed by Gerald Gianutsos, an associate professor of pharmacology at UConn, coordinator of the pharmacology/toxicology graduate program, and director of the pharmacy honors program. Gianutsos was named speaker by virtue of being voted Teacher of the Year by the graduating class.