BGSU to cap off 2015 with commencement ceremonies

BOWLING GREEN, O.—Bowling Green State University will hold its 284th commencement ceremonies in the Stroh Center Friday and Saturday, Dec. 18 and 19. The graduating class includes 52 international students from 13 countries.

Commencement for the Graduate College and the colleges of Business Administration; Health and Human Services; Musical Arts; Technology, Architecture and Applied Engineering, and BGSU Firelands will be held at 7 p.m. Friday.

The Honors College and the colleges of Arts and Sciences and Education and Human Development will hold commencement at 10 a.m. Saturday.

Addressing the Friday graduates will be BGSU alumnus Emanuele Conti, who received a bachelor’s degree in finance in 1989 and is now an operating partner for Providence, a premiere global asset management firm with over $40 billion in assets under management across complementary private equity and credit businesses. Conti has more than 20 years of executive leadership experience at companies across a diverse range of industries around the world.

During the Saturday service, the University will present an honorary Doctor of Social Sciences degree to commencement speaker Dr. Howard Aldrich. The 1965 alumnus is the Kenan Professor of Sociology and an adjunct professor of business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Aldrich, who received a bachelor’s degree in sociology from BGSU, is also a faculty research associate at the Department of Strategy and Entrepreneurship in the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, and a fellow of Sidney Sussex College of Cambridge University. He is a Faculty Fellow of the Center for Study of Economy and Society at Cornell University. He is also a prolific author and award-winning teacher.

The December graduating class includes 947 candidates. Among the undergraduates, 70 will be presented associate degrees and 723 bachelor’s degrees. Of those, 156 have received honors for their high grade point averages.

The 137 graduate students include 116 candidates for master’s degrees and 21 for doctoral degrees.