University of Chicago grants degrees in traditional colorful ceremonies

An artist who created a canopy of white cloth in the trees in the University of Chicago quadrangles and a student who studied icebergs in Antarctica are among the 2,600 undergraduate and graduate students receiving degrees in a series of ceremonies Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

All of the sessions of the University’s 465th Convocation will be held in the Harper Quadrangle, located just south of 58th Street in the center of the campus. Before the ceremonies, students will assemble at the Henry Crown Field House, University Avenue and 56th Street, for a colorful procession including bagpipes, flags and a parade of faculty in the academic robes and caps of the world’s great universities.

The first session, to be held at 10 a.m. Friday, will include the bestowing of degrees on students in the Law School, the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies and the School of Social Service Administration. At 3 p.m. Friday, graduate students in the Biological Sciences Division, the Pritzker School of Medicine, the Graham School of General Studies, the Humanities Division, the Physical Sciences Division, the Social Sciences Division and the Divinity School will receive their degrees

Students in the College will receive their bachelor’s degrees in a ceremony at 10 a.m Saturday, and students in the Graduate School of Business will receive their degrees at 3 p.m. Sunday.

Among the College students receiving a degree is Simon Miller, who installed a group of sculpted panels of illuminated white spandex hanging from the trunks and branches of a dozen oak trees in a quadrangle adjacent to the one where graduation takes place. Miller said that he created the piece, Illuminated Vortexes, as a farewell to the campus, and hopes to drink a champagne toast under the structure after graduating Saturday.

Bachelor degree candidate Andy Bliss traversed an iceberg in Antarctica one day last winter in search of crevasses where a team of glaciologists planned to install a remote weather station. Bliss, who intends to pursue graduate study, was part of a University of Chicago team studying in Antarctica.

Faculty speakers for this year’s convocation are Martha Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law & Ethics in the Law School, Philosophy and the Divinity School, who will deliver a speech titled “Political Animals: Luck, Need and Dignity,” during the ceremonies for the first three sessions; and Harry Davis, the Roger L. and Rachel M. Goetz Professor in the Graduate School of Business, will present a speech titled “The Professional and the Amateur” during the fourth session. U.S. Senator Jon Corzine (M.B.A., ’73) also will address the audience during the fourth session.