Index of University Press Releases

April 20, 2009

DWU Commencement events announced

MITCHELL, S.D. – Dakota Wesleyan University will celebrate Commencement May 1 and 2 with a host of traditional events.

The pinning ceremony for graduating nursing students will be Friday, May 1 at 7 p.m. in the Sherman Center. The pinning ceremony and the Nightingale lamp-lighting ceremony will be featured at the event. Thirty-two nurses from the Mitchell campus, eight nurses from Huron and 19 nurses from the Sioux Falls program will receive pins.

Baccalaureate is scheduled for Saturday, May 2 at 11 a.m. in the Sherman Center. Neil Blair, DWU Vice President for Institutional Advancement, will offer the message, and the Armstrong Award for Peace and Justice will be presented.

That afternoon at 2 p.m., Commencement will take place at the Corn Palace. Mike Rogers, Class of 1990, will give the Commencement address, “The Gifts We Give as Leaders.”

Rogers, a DWU Trustee, is the principal of Unity Elementary School in Sioux City. He received his doctorate in education administration in 1995. Rogers was inducted into the DWU Athletic Hall of Fame in 2007. He and his family live in South Sioux City, Nebr., where he serves as a Sunday school teacher and boys’ youth leader at his church, and a volunteer coach for his sons’ football, basketball and baseball teams.

Fourteen students will receive Master of Arts degrees, 90 students will receive Bachelor of Arts degrees and 59 students will receive Associate of Arts degrees. Norman Borlaug, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and founder of the World Food Prize, will be recognized as having received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters earlier in the academic year.

For more information about Commencement, contact the dean’s office at DWU at (605) 995-2645.