Duke to Award More Than 5,300 Degrees Sunday

Students walk into Wallace Wade Stadium for the 2014 commencement ceremony, the last one held in the stadium. Photo by Duke Photography

Duke University will award more than 5,300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees during its annual commencement ceremony Sunday, May 15.

Duke President Richard H. Brodhead will preside over the 9 a.m. ceremony and Mike Krzyzewski, Duke’s men’s basketball coach, will deliver the commencement address.

After a one-year detour to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, the ceremony will return to a newly renovated Wallace Wade Stadium on Duke’s campus. The event is open to the public and Duke will stream the event live on the university’s YouTube channel, available here.

Twitter users can follow commencement and contribute to the conversation using the hashtag #Duke2016.

The student speaker at commencement is Shannon Beckham, a public policy major from Arizona.  

Since arriving at Duke in 1980, Krzyzewski has led the Blue Devils to five NCAA championships and 12 Final Four appearances. He has amassed the most wins in NCAA Division 1 men’s basketball history. In 2001, he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. “Coach K,” as he is known to fans, is also the head coach of the USA Men’s National team. In that role, he guided the men’s basketball team to gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2012 London Olympics. Krzyzewski will coach the U.S. men’s basketball team once more during the upcoming Summer Olympics in Brazil. Krzyzewski also teaches courses in leadership at the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics and is active in the Durham community. He chairs the board of directors of the Emily Krzyzewski Center, a Durham community center named for his late mother that serves economically disadvantaged students. And he is actively involved with several charitable organizations, including Duke Children’s Hospital and the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research. The university recognized his vital role on campus in 1997 by awarding him Duke’s highest honor -- the Medal of Honor -- at the University Founders’ Day Convocation.

Five honorary degrees will be awarded during commencement ceremony. The recipients are: global health pioneer William Foege; Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; journalist and TV talk show host Charlie Rose; former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey; and mathematician Srinivasa Varadhan.

In addition to Sunday’s ceremony, Duke’s graduation weekend is filled with special events held by individual schools, departments and programs. About13,000 guests are expected to attend the main commencement exercise, according to Duke’s Office of Special Events and University Ceremonies, which oversees graduation weekend planning.

Guests are encouraged to use the park-and-ride shuttle service available from most of the campus general parking lots, including the Bryan Center parking deck and the East Campus bus stop.  Shuttles will run from 7 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. and are color-coded by route.  Guests can take the shuttles to the stadium and later to designated stops near their afternoon diploma events.  In addition, a post-ceremony shuttle will take guests from the Blue Zone to the Chapel bus stop.

Shuttle buses will run from the Marriott Residence Inn, Hilton Garden Inn, Washington Duke Inn and the Millennium Hotel. More information is available here.

Speakers at other ceremonies include:



-- At 5:30 p.m. Friday, fourth-year medical school students will take part in the Hippocratic Oath Ceremony and Diploma Ceremony at Duke Chapel.

-- At 6 p.m. Friday, Kathryn Hollister, managing partner, Deloitte Global Tax & Legal Strategy, will address graduates of Fuqua’s Master of Management Studies: Foundations of Business class of 2016 at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The ceremony is not open to the public but Fuqua will broadcast the event live on the school’s  YouTube channel.

-- At 9 a.m. Saturday, Dick Costolo, chief executive officer of Chorus and former CEO of Twitter, will address graduates of Fuqua’s Executive MBA: Cross Continent and Weekend Classes of 2015 and the Global Executive Class of 2016 at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The ceremony is not open to the public but Fuqua will also broadcast this event live on its YouTube channel.

-- At 9 a.m. Saturday, Norman L. Christensen, founding dean and professor emeritus at the Nicholas School of the Environment, will address Master of Environmental Management, Master of Forestry and doctoral degree candidates and their families at the school’s 25th anniversary Recognition Ceremony at the Chemistry Lot on Duke’s West Campus.  The ceremony is not open to the public.

-- At 1 p.m. Saturday, Dick Costolo, chief executive officer of Chorus and former CEO of Twitter, will address graduates of Fuqua’s Daytime MBA and Ph.D. classes of 2016, at Cameron Indoor Stadium.  The ceremony is not open to the public but Fuqua will broadcast the event live on the school’s YouTube channel.

-- At 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Charlie Rose ’68 T’64, journalist and talk show host, will address Duke Law's 2016 graduates at their hooding ceremony. The ceremony is not open to the public.

-- At 5:30 p.m. Saturday, noted Shakespearean scholar Ralph Alan Cohen will address doctoral graduates at the school’s Ph.D. hooding ceremony at the Durham Convention Center. Also, Duke will honor Cohen with the school’s Distinguished Alumni Award. The ceremony is not open to the public.

-- At 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 14, Eboni Marshall Turman, assistant research professor of theological ethics and black church studies and the director of the Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School, will deliver the baccalaureate service to Divinity School graduates in Duke Chapel. The 90-minute service is open to the public and the chapel will webcast the event live on its YouTube channel. People holding priority seating tickets will be seated beginning at 5:30 p.m., followed by general seating at 6:10 p.m. There will be overflow seating in Rooms 0016 and 0014 of the Divinity School’s Westbrook Building.

-- At 4 p.m. Sunday, Courtney Ellis Caiola, Ph.D., RN, MPH, School of Nursing alumna and UNC-Chapel Hill Postdoctoral Fellow, will address graduates of the School of Nursing’s accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Master of Science in Nursing, Post-Master’s Certificate, Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing and Doctor of Nursing Practice programs, at Duke Chapel. The ceremony is not open to the public.

 -- At 5:30 p.m. Friday May 20, Jesse Wu, former chairman of Johnson & Johnson China, will address graduates of Fuqua’s Master of Management Studies: Duke Kunshan University class of 2016 at the Duke Kunshan University Academic Building. 

Degrees to be conferred:

Duke will award degrees to about 1,641 undergraduates and2,378 graduate and professional students who are graduating this spring. An additional 1,252 students who graduated in September or December 2015 have been invited to participate in Sunday's commencement.

Twelve of this year’s graduates will be recipients of Duke’s undergraduate Certificate in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, a new program enabling students to pursue a rigorous, cross-disciplinary study building on Duke’s existing emphasis on knowledge in service to society.

 

The estimated degree breakdowns for the May graduates are as follows:

 

Undergraduate degrees:

Trinity College of Arts & Sciences -- B.A. 658; B.S. 641.

Pratt School of Engineering -- B.S.E. 267.

Nursing -- B.S.N. 75.

 

Graduate and professional degrees:

Duke Divinity School -- M.Div. 127; Th.M. 11; M.T.S. 21; M.A.C.S. 10; Th.D. 3; D.Min. 10.

Fuqua School of Business -- MBA 466; M.M.S. – Durham campus 131; M.M.S. – Duke Kunshan campus – 24.

Graduate School -- M.A. 158; M.S. 152; M.A.T. 1; M.F.A. 16; Ph.D. 214.

School of Law -- J.D. 216; LL.M. 126; S.J.D. 5.

Nicholas School of the Environment -- M.E.M. 135; M.F. 5.

Pratt School of Engineering -- M.Eng.M. 56; M.Eng. 21.

Sanford School of Public Policy -- M.I.D.P. 25; M.P.P. 65.

School of Medicine -- M.D. 98; M.H.S. 1; M.H.S.-CR 61; D.P.T. 63; M.B.S.T. 15.

School of Nursing -- M.S.N. 61; D.N.P. 36.

For more information on Duke's commencement weekend, visit http://commencement.duke.edu/