Buies Creek, N.C. – Campbell University will host its 2009 spring graduation and hooding ceremonies this weekend, May 8 and 9. The general spring commencement ceremony will be held for the first time in the Gilbert Craig Gore Arena of the new John W. Pope Jr. Convocation Center. The Center will also host separate ceremonies for the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law and School of Pharmacy. The Divinity School’s ceremony will be held in Turner Auditorium of the D. Rich Memorial Building. Approximately 600 undergraduate and 350 graduate degrees are expected to be conferred.
U.S. Representative and Campbell alumnus Bob Etheridge will deliver the commencement address at the general ceremony on Saturday, May 9, at 2 p.m. in the Convocation Center. Etheridge, who graduated from Campbell in 1965, served in the North Carolina General Assembly and as state superintendent of schools for North Carolina. He was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1997. The service recognizes students receiving undergraduate degrees and those enrolled in graduate programs at the Lundy-Fetterman School of Business and the School of Education.
Students enrolled in Campbell University’s Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law, School of Pharmacy and the Campbell Divinity School will receive professional degrees at hooding services scheduled for Friday, May 8.
The Honorable Robert H. Edmunds, Jr. associate justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina since 2001, will speak at the law school hooding service at 10 a.m. in the John W. Pope Jr. Convocation Center. Edmunds holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master of Laws in Judicial Process from the University of Virginia.
Dr. Terry Hamrick, coordinator for Missional Leadership for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Atlanta, Ga., will speak at the Divinity School services at 7 p.m. in Turner Auditorium. Hamrick culminated a 22-year career as Minister of Education in churches in Kentucky, Georgia and Texas when he came to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 1996 to serve in the area of leadership development.
One of the founders of the Pharmacy Network of North Carolina, Mitchell W. Watts, will speak at the School of Pharmacy services at 3 p.m. in the John W. Pope Jr. Convocation Center. Watts has worked as a retail pharmacist and professional activist for North Carolina pharmacists since he graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1963.
The May commencement services mark the 123rd graduation exercises to be held at Campbell since its establishment in 1887 as an academy with a charter enrollment of 16 students. Today, Campbell is comprised of the College of Arts and Sciences and five graduate and professional schools, including pharmacy, law, business, divinity and education, and four extended campus education programs at Fort Liberty, Pope Air Force Base, Camp Lejuene and Research Triangle Park in Raleigh. The university also offers a Bachelor of Science degree program at Tunku Abdul Rahman College in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
A baccalaureate service with featured speaker Dr. Dwaine Greene, vice president for Academic Affairs and provost, will be held Saturday morning at 10 a.m. in Turner Auditorium.