121st Commencement Ceremony

May 19, 2018

By Tommy Riggs

FREDERICK, Maryland—Hood College’s 121st Commencement ceremony on Saturday will see approximately 500 graduate and undergraduate students earn their degrees, beginning at 10 a.m. on the College’s residential quadrangle.

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, Ph.D., will deliver the Commencement address. Hayden, the first woman and first African American Librarian of Congress, was sworn in as the 14th Librarian of Congress in 2016. Her three decades of library experience have included positions with the Chicago Public Library, Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, and the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore. In 1995, while working for the Enoch Pratt Library, Hayden was awarded the Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year Award for developing an after-school center for teens, which offered homework assistance and college and career counseling.

“It is a privilege to have Carla Hayden as our speaker and to join us in celebrating our graduates,” said Hood President Andrea E. Chapdelaine. “Her ground-breaking career in public service, and in advancing the critical role of community libraries in creating access to knowledge, is an inspiration to all.”

Commencement celebrations begin on Friday at 6 p.m. with the Baccalaureate service in Coffman Chapel. All graduating students, their families and community members are invited to attend this service of celebration and farewell.

This year will mark the first graduates for the Bachelor of Science in Nursing Completion Program, the Master of Science in Cybersecurity and the Master of Science in Bioinformatics. This year’s undergraduate class hails from 18 states and five countries. Students in this class have studied abroad in nine countries, and more than 120 of them completed internships. At least six are veterans. The graduate class includes students from nine states and nine countries. They earned bachelor’s degrees from 102 different institutions, 29 of which are international. Twenty-five Hood alumni are graduating, and at least one graduate is a veteran.

Commencement will take place outside on the Hood College Quad. In the event of severe weather, the ceremony will be held inside the Ronald J. Volpe Athletic Center.