For Immediate Release
Contact:
Leslie Weddell
(719) 389-6038
Leslie.Weddell@ColoradoCollege.edu
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Aug. 28, 2009 – Colorado College will welcome 527 new first-year students at its Opening Convocation at 9 a.m. Monday, Aug. 31 at Shove Memorial Chapel, 1010 N. Nevada Ave. The ceremony marks the beginning of Colorado College’s 136th academic year.
The Opening Convocation ceremony begins with faculty members, dressed in their academic robes, marching into Shove Memorial Chapel from the quadrangle directly west of the chapel. Colorado College’s approximately 1,975 students will begin classes at 10:30 a.m., immediately after the ceremony.
Marc Acito, a 1990 graduate of Colorado College, novelist, former syndicated humor columnist and former professional opera singer, will be the keynote speaker at Opening Convocation.
Acito is one of three alumni to be presented with honorary degrees at the convocation; he will receive a doctor of humane letters degree. Acito’s first book, “How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater,” was published by Broadway Books in 2004 and won the Oregon Book Awards' Ken Kesey Award for the Novel; his second book, “Attack of the Theater People,” is a sequel. Acito had his first play, “Holidazed,” which examines the joys and pains of Christmas holidays, produced last fall by the Artist Repertory Theater in his hometown of Portland, Ore.
Krista Smith, who graduated from Colorado College in 1986, will receive a doctor of humane letters degree. An English major, Smith joined Vanity Fair magazine in New York as a freelance fact checker in 1989, literally starting at the bottom, working out of a basement office. She subsequently moved up from that position to become associate research editor and then features associate. In 1993, under the leadership of editor Graydon Carter, she relocated to Los Angeles to become Vanity Fair’s West Coast editor, a position she currently holds.
Tijani R. (T.J.) Cole, a 1987 CC graduate, will receive a doctor of laws degree. He is juvenile and family court magistrate for the 20th Judicial District in Boulder and co-founder of Boulder Prep High School, Justice High School and Zoubida Cole Junior College, named in honor of his parent. The author of three books, Cole is known for his innovations in developing outreach programs for high school students. He started an at-risk high school in the courthouse and has helped hundreds of delinquent students graduate and go on to college.
Nearly 5,000 students applied to Colorado College this year. The class of 2013 brings a wealth of knowledge, experience and talent to the campus.
The incoming class features:
First-year students arrived on Aug. 22 and participated in a week of orientation activities, which culminated in a variety of community-service trips throughout the region. The new-student orientation trips included opportunities to work with horses at a horse shelter; assist at the New Mexico Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped; work at the La Puente Home in the San Luis Valley; work at the Koshare Indian Museum in La Junta; and at the Trinidad State Nursing Home, among many others.
About Colorado College
Colorado College is a nationally prominent, four-year liberal arts college that was founded in Colorado Springs in 1874. The college operates on the innovative Block Plan, in which its 1,975 undergraduate students study one course at a time in intensive 3½-week blocks. The college also offers a master of arts in teaching degree. For more information, visit www.ColoradoCollege.edu <http://www.ColoradoCollege.edu>.