FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- 5/11/01 | Contact: Diana Smith, 719-389-6138
COLORADO SPRINGS -- Colorado College celebrates its 120th graduating class commencement May 19 – 21.The weekend’s festivities include a gala luncheon, a graduation dance, an alumni association welcome event, a baccalaureate service, academic department receptions, the commencement ceremony, and the president’s reception for graduates and guests.
Baccalaureate, a ceremony with religious origins designed to promote reflection before graduation, will take place on Sunday, May 20, at 3 p.m. in Shove Chapel. CC Professor Emerita and poet Joan Stone will speak. Mariachi Tigre, CC’s own Mexican folk orchestra, will perform two springtime selections traditionally played for ceremonial events.
Stone, who retired in 1998 after more than 20 years on the CC faculty, will travel from her ranch in Washington State to address the CC Class of 2001. The author of Our Lady of the Harbor and The Swimmer and Other Poems, her work has appeared in The Yale Review, The Georgia Review, New York Quarterly, Poetry Australia, and others. In addition to teaching creative writing and modern English and American literature, she co-founded JonesAlley Fine Press in 1993. The press has published several handmade letterpress books and broadsides, including her collection of poetry, A Letter to Myself to Water.
Commencement ceremonies begin at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, May 21, on Armstrong Quad (in case of rain, the ceremony will be moved to the Colorado Springs World Arena – listen to KRCC 91.5 FM for weather-related bulletins). Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar, a 1977 Colorado College alumnus, will deliver the keynote address.
Salazar, elected Attorney General in 1998, has focused his efforts on reducing youth and family violence, combating fraud against the elderly, and protecting Colorado’s environment. He oversees the Department of Law and its staff of 300. He is currently a member of the American Farmland Trust President’s Council and the Board of Trustees of Colorado College. He received an honorary doctorate of laws from CC in 1993. He practiced law for six years at Sherman & Howard, Denver’s oldest law firm.
Recent commencement speakers have included U.S. Congresswoman Diana DeGette, U.S. Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson, and former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias.
President Kathryn Mohrman will present Jim Heckman '65, the first alumnus to win a Nobel Prize, and current trustee Nancy Schlosser ’49, with honorary degrees. Instead of a doctoral degree, Schloseer is getting an honorary bachelor of arts, only the fourth one in CC history, following Ed Honnen '21 in 1960, Mack Davis '18 in 1965, and Barbara L. Yalich '53 in 1994.
Psychology major, senior class president, and national achievement scholar Jade Nicole Durkee from Shawnee, Kansas, has been elected by the Class of 2001 to deliver the senior address. At the conclusion of Durkee’s talk, President Mohrman will award the graduates their degrees in the college’s traditional Z – A fashion.
Commencement is free and open to the public. For more information, call Diana Smith at (719) 389-6138. Though attendance at Sunday’s baccalaureate ceremony is restricted to graduates and their guests due to limited seating in Shove Chapel, an audio feed of the service will be broadcast to the lawn outside Shove Chapel, and there will be a live telecast transmitted to Armstrong Theatre.
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