More than 2,900 students to receive degrees Sunday

Author: Julie Hail Flory

graduation_release.gif

More than 2,900 students will receive degrees Sunday (May 15) at the University of Notre Dames 160 th Commencement exercises, which will be held at2 p.m.in theJoyceCenteron campus. **

Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation and former president ofBrownUniversity, will be the principal speaker and the recipient of an honorary doctor of laws degree. Dr. Joseph E. Murray, the Nobel laureate who performed the first successful organ transplant 51 years ago, will receive the 2005 Laetare Medal, the most prestigious award given to American Catholics.

Enrique Schaerer, a double major in political science and finance fromLas Vegas, will deliver the valedictory address.

Degrees will be conferred on 2,040 undergraduates, 274 masters and doctoral students in theNotre DameGraduateSchool, 398 masters degree students in the Mendoza College of Business, and 205Notre DameLawSchoolstudents.

In addition to Gregorian, other honorary degree recipients are: Major League Baseball legend Hank Aaron; Cardinal Francis Arinze, the Vatican’s prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments; Dr. Benjamin Carson, director of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University; Robert Conway, senior director of Goldman Sachs; civil and human rights lawyer Jack Greenberg; acclaimed mathematician Joseph Keller; actress Sonia Manzano, best known for her role as Maria onSesame Street; James Morris, executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme; Anne Mulcahy, chairman and chief executive officer ofXerox; Steven Sample, president of the University of Southern California; eye surgeon Dr. Carol Lally Shields; and Dr. Joseph Walther, founder of the Walther Cancer Institute of Indianapolis.

TopicID: 11244