The 460th Convocation will feature President Emerita Gray as a speaker

The University will confer 2,561 degrees during the 460th Convocation ceremonies in Harper Quadrangle Friday, June 9, through Sunday, June 11.

This will be the last convocation presided over by President Sonnenschein, who, following a year of leave, will return to teaching in the Department of Economics.

During the ceremony, convocation speaker President Emerita Hanna Holborn Gray will deliver a speech titled “Getting the Third Degree.”

The first woman to head a major research university in the United States, Gray served as President of the University from 1978 to 1993. As the Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor, she has taught in the Department of History at Chicago from 1961 to 1972 and again from 1993 to the present.

Her research interests center on European history in the era of the Renaissance and Reformation and on historiography and the history of humanism.

She has published articles and essays on intellectual history, the humanities and subjects related to the academy and the research university.

In 1996, she was awarded the University’s Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

Gray will speak at three of the University’s four graduation exercises on Friday, June 9, and Saturday, June 10. On Sunday, June 11, Austan Goolsbee, Associate Professor of Economics in the Graduate School of Business, and George Conrades (M.B.A., ’71), chairman and chief executive officer of Akamai Technologies, will deliver the convocation address to graduates of the business school.

Graduating seniors Oona Burke, Mark Carlo C. Nabong and Ryan Tracey-Mooney will deliver remarks at the College ceremony. According to Cami Neppl, a fourth-year and design chair of the senior class gift committee, the Class of 2000’s gift will be a book fund for the purchase of contemporary fiction and popular media, which will be housed in the Joseph Regenstein Library.

Guided by student requests, the selections will provide leisure reading for students taking a break from required class reading.

“We also plan on having a Class of 2000 podium in the library, which will be prominently placed and hold information about books purchased with the fund, so everyone is well aware of its existence,” said Neppl.

According to tradition, the University President personally presents each degree candidate with his or her diploma. University Marshals will direct the convocation ceremonies.

Chicago typically awards honorary degrees at its spring convocation exercises and only for scholarship of the highest order.

This year, honorary degrees will be awarded at the November inauguration of the University’s 12th President, Don Michael Randel.

During the three days of ceremonies, the University will award 855 bachelor’s degrees, 660 M.B.A.s, 639 other master’s degrees, 178 J.D.s, 92 M.D.s and 137 Ph.D.s.