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Graduate student commencement will be held Wednesday, May 19 at 10 a.m. on theUMBC campus at the Retriever Activities Center (RAC.) Dr. William A. Haseltine, Chairman and ChiefExecutive Officer of Human Genome Sciences, Inc. (HGSI), will be the keynote speaker.

The undergraduate ceremony will be held on Thursday, May 20, at 1 p.m., at the 1stMariner Arena (formerly Baltimore Arena) in downtown Baltimore. Ursula M. Burns, President of Business Group Operations and Corporate SeniorVice President at Xerox Corporation, will deliver the commencement keynote address tothe Class of 2004.

At this spring's ceremonies, UMBC will award degrees in disciplines ranging fromphysics to visual arts, biological sciences to information systems. The UMBC Class of2004 includes students headed to prestigious graduate programs at universities includingPrinceton, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, UNC-Chapel Hill, William & Mary, Rice andColumbia.

UMBC graduates have secured jobs across a wide spectrum of corporations, nonprofitsand government agencies, including IBM, Northrop Grumman, Booz Allen Hamilton,ABC News, Titan Systems and SAIC.

Anthony Hoffman, UMBC's 2004 valedictorian, will alsospeak at Thursday's ceremony. Hoffman, who maintained a 4.0 GPA while earning aB.S. in physics with a minor in mathematics, will begin Princeton University's Ph.D.program in electrical engineering this fall on a Princeton Graduate School EndowedFellowship.

Hoffman, whose ultimate goal is to become a NASA astronaut, says he chose to attendUMBC because of opportunities to conduct research in the new Physics building'sfacilities. Another strong draw was the dedication of UMBC's faculty. "The professorshere seemed the most welcoming," Hoffman says. "They aren't just teachers; they reachout to mentor students."

Also graduating on Thursday is former University System of Maryland student regent Phil Shockley, a double major in PoliticalScience and Information Systems. Shockley also served as UMBC Student GovernmentAssociation president.

Shockley was just the second student in UMBC history to be named to the Board ofRegents, and holds the distinction of being the only student regent to never miss ameeting. While serving on the Board, Shockley became known as a consistent voice forstudents during state budget cuts to higher education and resulting tuition increases.

Commencement Speakers

Haseltine, who founded HGSI in 1992, is a former professor at Harvard's schools ofmedicine and public health. He has received numerous honors and awards for his cancerand AIDS research and work in the field of regenerative medicine and is active on manycorporate boards and civic organizations.

At Thursday's ceremony, UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski will present Burnswith her first honorary degree, a doctorate of engineering. Burns' career highlightsinclude being named to Fortune magazine's 2002 list of "Most Powerful BlackExecutives;" Time magazine/CNN's annual list of "Global Business Influentials;" andU.S. Black Engineering & Information Technology magazine's 2004 list of the "50 MostImportant African-Americans in Technology."

For more information on UMBC Commencement Ceremonies, please visit: http://www.umbc.edu/commencement

Posted by dwinds1 at May 18, 2004 12:00 AM