Spring commencement ceremonies set for May 18

May 02, 2013

Graduates and their proud families will converge on the UW-Whitewater campus for commencement ceremonies on Saturday, May 18.

Separate events will be held for the 1,153 undergraduates receiving bachelor's degrees and the 285 students receiving master's and education specialist degrees.

Both ceremonies will be held in the Kachel Fieldhouse, with the undergraduate event beginning at 10 a.m. and the graduate event beginning at 4 p.m.

The commencement speaker for the undergraduate ceremony will be Peter Layton, a founding partner of Blackthorne Capital Management, a managed futures fund with offices in the Innovation Center at Whitewater University Technology Park.  He is also CEO of the Tallgrass Group, companies that specialize in ecological restoration.

Sydney Nelson, an accounting major from Milwaukee, will address her fellow students in the Class of 2013. She has been active in student organizations and is the current president of the Warhawk chapter of the National Association of Black Accountants.  A Spanish minor, she has participated in three travel-study trips and spent a semester as an audit intern in Queretaro, Mexico.

This year's undergraduates include 183 non-traditional students who are older than 25, as well as 21 military veterans and 11 international students receiving bachelor's degrees.  Graduate degrees will be awarded to 36 international students and 19 veterans.

For the graduate ceremony, faculty member Barbara Penington, a professor in the Communication Department who is retiring after this semester, will address the students and guests.  She has conducted research in the areas of family communication.

The graduate student speaker will be Catherine McCall, from Brookfield, who is receiving a master's degree in communication. She also works part time as a firefighter and emergency medical technician for the Town of Lisbon Fire Department.

Commencement ceremonies will be broadcast live online by NMTV Sports, which streams video coverage of Warhawk athletic events at this link: http://uwwwarhawks.nmtvsports.com/. The video stream is also available through UWW-TV, the campus television station, at http://nmtvsports.com/static/uww/.

The registrar's office reports that the 1,153 students receiving bachelor's degrees represent 392 students from the College of Business and Economics, 364 from the College of Letters and Sciences, 198 from the College of Education and Professional Studies and 199 from the College of Arts and Communication.