Colin L. Powell to give commencement address, receive honorary degree May 17

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Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will deliver his first commencement address as U.S. secretary of state and receive an honorary doctor of laws degree during Wake Forest University’s May 17 commencement ceremony.

Powell is scheduled to address approximately 1,500 undergraduate and graduate students during the 9 a.m. outdoor ceremony on Wake Forest’s University Plaza (the Quad.) The ceremony is not open to the public and parking passes will be required to enter campus on commencement day. Tickets to the ceremony and all commencement weekend events are reserved for graduates and their guests.

John R. Claypool, professor of preaching at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology and author of several books, will deliver the baccalaureate address May 16 at 11 a.m. in Wait Chapel. Claypool will receive an honorary doctor of divinity degree during the commencement ceremony.

Other honorary degrees to be awarded during the ceremony include: doctor of humanities to Geneva B. Brown, educator and member of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education; doctor of science to M. Joycelyn Elders, former U.S. surgeon general and Distinguished Professor of Public Health at the University of Arkansas; and a doctor of fine arts to Lewis Lockwood, the Fanny Peabody Research Professor of Music at Harvard University.

Approximately 900 undergraduates and 600 graduate and professional school students will receive degrees during the ceremony. Each of the university’s graduate and professional schools will hold private ceremonies on either May 15 or 16 in Wait Chapel where graduating students will receive their school’s hood to wear during the commencement ceremony.

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Divinity School will hold their hooding ceremonies May 15. The Graduate School ceremony will begin at 3 p.m. and feature Reed Humphrey, a Wake Forest graduate and associate professor in the department of physical and occupational therapy at Idaho State University, as speaker. At 7 p.m. Stephen Boyd, John Allen Easley Professor of Religion in the Wake Forest religion department, will address graduates of the Divinity School.

On May 16, the Wake Forest School of Law, Babcock Graduate School of Management and Wake Forest School of Medicine will hold their hooding ceremonies. The law school’s hooding ceremony will be at 1:45 p.m. and feature Robert J. Grey Jr., president-elect of the American Bar Association and partner in the law firm Hunton & Williams, as speaker. At 4:15 p.m., Elders will address graduates of the medical school, and at 7 p.m., John Medica, senior vice president of product group of Dell Inc., will deliver the address for the Babcock School’s hooding ceremony.

Editors’ Note: Media are invited to cover commencement; media credentials and parking passes will be required. Contact the News Service to request passes.