Duke to Award Degrees to 2008 Graduates on Sunday, May 11
On Sunday, May 11, Duke University will award more than 4,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees during its annual commencement ceremony in Wallace Wade Stadium.
Duke President Richard H. Brodhead will preside over the 10 a.m. ceremony and author Barbara Kingsolver, whose daughter is a rising junior at Duke, will deliver the commencement address.
Kingsolver will also receive an honorary degree. Other honorary degree recipients are author Wendell Berry, public health leader Helene Gayle, broadcast executive James Goodmon and judge Patricia Wald. The ceremony is free and open to the public.
Aside from Sunday's commencement ceremony, Duke's graduation weekend May 9-11 will be filled with special events held by individual schools, departments and programs to recognize the 2008 graduates.
About 16,000 people are expected to visit the campus to attend the main commencement exercise and other ceremonies, according to the University Marshal's Office, which oversees graduation weekend planning.
Reyn Bowman, president of the Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau, estimates the economic impact of graduation weekend on the city of Durham -- through sales of food, hotel rooms, retail items, gasoline, car rentals and entertainment -- will be about $4 million.
Bowman said area restaurants and hotels will likely be strained by the weekend's celebrations because May 11 is also Mother's Day and graduation day at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"Sometimes we don't remember the thousands of Mother's Day celebrations that weekend," Bowman said. "People may not have their first choice for restaurants."
"It would always be more manageable if the Duke and UNC graduations were on different weekends, but because UNC generates a far lower proportion of overnight visitors, it is do-able," Bowman added.
The DCVB website has a regularly updated "lodging hotline" that allows visitors to see which hotels have available rooms during graduation weekend.
On campus, additional police officers and event staff will assist with traffic and parking. Free parking will be provided throughout campus on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Nearly all campus lots, including gated facilities, will be open, but some of the lots on the east side of Wallace Wade Stadium will be restricted. Parking is recommended in the lot on Frank Bassett Drive off Science Drive; the Science Drive visitors lot between 751 and Towerview; the lot at the corner of 751 and Science Drive; the Blue Zone lots on the east side of the stadium off Duke University Road; and Parking Garage IV, on Science Drive near the Bryan Center.
On Sunday, Duke Transportation will provide shuttle buses to Wallace Wade from area hotels, including the Millennium, the Durham Marriott at the Civic Center, the Courtyard (Hampton Inn guests can walk across the street to take the shuttle) and the Hilton (Quality Inn guests can walk across the parking lot to the shuttle). The shuttle service will begin at 8 a.m. Sunday and run every 20 minutes until 1 p.m.
The Washington Duke Inn and Golf Club has its own shuttle service beginning at 7:30 a.m. It also will run until 1 p.m.
There will be accessible transportation from the lots adjacent to Wallace Wade for guests using wheelchairs and their families.
There also will be campus bus service beginning from East Campus at 8:30 a.m.
Speakers at other ceremonies
Individual schools also will bring notable speakers to campus to address their graduates in special ceremonies. The events are open to the public, unless otherwise noted:
--At 7 p.m. Friday in Duke Chapel, Dr. Francis C. Neelon, associate professor emeritus of general internal medicine at Duke, will give the address at the Hippocratic Oath Ceremony for medical school graduates.
-- At 9:15 a.m. Saturday, David W. Orr, author, educator and international expert on environmental literacy and design, will speak to graduates of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences on the East Anderson Street Lawn of the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. An undergraduate ceremony will be held at noon Sunday at the Levine Science Research Center. Neither ceremony is open to the public.
-- At 10 a.m. Saturday, Ahmad Sharaf, CEO of Tatweer and a 2001 Duke graduate, will address the daytime MBA graduates from the Fuqua School of Business at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
-- At 6 p.m. Saturday, William H. Neukom, president of the American Bar Association, will speak at the law school's hooding ceremony in Cameron. The ceremony is not open to the public.
-- At 6:30 p.m. Saturday, J. Warren Smith, assistant professor of historical theology, will deliver a sermon to Divinity School graduates in Duke Chapel.
-- At 1:30 p.m. Sunday, editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Nursing and New York City radio host/producer Diana J. Mason will speak at the School of Nursing Hooding and Recognition Ceremony in Page Auditorium. The ceremony is not open to the public.
Degrees to be conferred Degrees will be awarded to about 1,455 undergraduates and about 1,800 graduate and professional students who are graduating this spring. An additional 855 students who graduated in September or December 2007 are also invited to participate in Sunday's commencement. The estimated degree breakdowns for the May graduates are as follows:
Undergraduate degrees:
Trinity College of Arts and Sciences -- A.B. 779; B.S. 457;
Pratt School of Engineering -- B.S.E. 219;
Graduate and Professional degrees:
School of Nursing -- M.S.N. 54;
Pratt School of Engineering -- M.Eng.M. 58;
School of Medicine -- M.H.S. 61; M.H.S.-CR 13; M.D. 90; D.P.T. 40;
Nicholas School of the Environment -- M.E.M. 106; M.F. 3;
Duke Divinity School -- M.Div. 122; Th.M. 8; M.T.S. 14;
Fuqua School of Business -- M.B.A. 538;
School of Law -- J.D. 203; LL.M. 98; S.J.D. 1;
Graduate School -- M.A. 139; M.A.T. 3; M.S. 47; M.P.P. 50; Ph.D. 151.
For more information, see the Duke graduation website.