More than 2,900 students to receive degrees May 18

Author: Julie Hail Flory

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More than 2,900 students will receive degrees May 18 (Sunday) at Notre Dames 163rd University Commencement Ceremony, which will be held at 2 p.m. in the Joyce Center on campus.

Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, archbishop emeritus of Washington, D.C., will be the principal speaker and the recipient of an honorary doctor of laws degree. Actor and human rights activist Martin Sheen will receive the 2008 Laetare Medal, Notre Dame’s highest honor and the most prestigious award given to American Catholics.

Joshua Hammack, an accountancy major from Huntington, W.Va., will deliver the valedictory address.

Degrees will be conferred on 1,980 undergraduates, 438 masters degree students in the Mendoza College of Business, and 205 Notre Dame Law School students.

An additional 358 students will receive masters and doctoral degrees at the Graduate School Commencement Ceremony, which will be held Saturday (May 17) at 10 a.m. in the Joyce Center. Marye Anne Fox, a nationally known physical organic chemist chancellor of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and a Notre Dame Trustee, will be the principal speaker and will receive an honorary degree at the next days ceremony.

In addition to Cardinal McCarrick and Fox, other honorary degree recipients are: Frances E. Allen, computer technology pioneer and IBM fellow emerita; Princeton University historian Peter R. Brown; novelist, essayist and playwright Samuel Hazo; broadcasting pioneer and founder of Radio One, Catherine L. Hughes; Judge Michael W. McConnell of the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals; Michael L. Shuler, the James and Martha McCormick Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Samuel B. Eckert Professor of Chemical Engineering in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University; John OShea, a former Irish Evening Press sportswriter and founder of the humanitarian organization GOAL; and John W. Thompson, chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer of Symantec Corporation.

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