More than 2,900 students will receive degrees May 17 (Sunday) at Notre Dame’s 164th University Commencement Ceremony, which will be held at 2 p.m. in the Joyce Center on campus.
President Barack Obama will be the principal speaker and the recipient of an honorary doctor of laws degree. Judge John T. Noonan Jr., the 1984 recipient of the Laetare Medal, Notre Dame’s highest honor and the most prestigious award given to American Catholics, has accepted an invitation to deliver an address in the spirit of the award. His speech will be in lieu of awarding the medal this year.
E. Brennan Bollman, a biological sciences major from St. Joseph, Mich., will deliver the valedictory address.
Degrees will be conferred on 2,001 undergraduates, 389 master’s degree students in the Mendoza College of Business, and 213 Notre Dame Law School students.
An additional 361 students will receive master’s and doctoral degrees at the Graduate School Commencement Ceremony, which will be held Saturday (May 16) at 10 a.m. in the Joyce Center. Don Michael Randel, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will be the principal speaker and will receive an honorary degree at the next day’s ceremony.
In addition to President Obama and Randel, other honorary degree recipients are: Steven Beering, president emeritus of Purdue University; Myles Brand, president of the NCAA and former president of Indiana University and the University of Oregon; Fritz L. Duda, a member of Notre Dame’s Board of Trustees and chief executive officer of Genus Holdings Ltd.; Patrick Finneran, vice president of program management and business excellence for Boeing Integrated Defense Systems; Cindy Parseghian, co-founder of the
Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation; and Randall T. Shepard, chief justice of the Indiana Supreme Court.