07-27-06

ISU to award degrees at summer commencement ceremony

AMES, Iowa -- An estimated 883 students graduating from Iowa State University will be honored during a single commencement ceremony at 9:30 a.m., Saturday, Aug. 5, at Hilton Coliseum. Tickets are not needed to attend the ceremony.

Master's degrees will be awarded to 227 students, 553 students will receive bachelor's degrees, and 103 students will receive doctoral degrees.

Iowa State also will confer two honorary degrees during the ceremony, to Graham Spanier, president of The Pennsylvania State University, State College, and Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, an Indian agricultural scientist and chairman of a research foundation carrying his name. (More about the recipients.)

Spanier, who received bachelor's and master's degrees in sociology from Iowa State, has served as president at Penn State since 1995. He is a national leader in higher education and currently chairs the National Security Higher Education advisory board. He is a past chairman of the board of directors for the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, the NCAA Division I board of directors and the Big Ten Conference Council of Presidents/Chancellors. He also is a students' president, serving periodically as the Nittany Lion mascot, advising the magicians' club and performing with the musical theater students, the Blue Band, the glee club and the chamber orchestra.

Spanier will give the commencement address.

Swaminathan is the chief architect of the 1960s "green revolution" that helped India's food production increase enough to meet its own needs. Swaminathan was instrumental in developing rice and wheat varieties that yielded more grain, increasing food supplies for billions of people around the world. TIME Magazine placed him among its "20 Most Influential Asians of the 20th Century."

The recipient of the first World Food Prize (1987), Swaminathan was a plenary speaker at the first International Crop Science Congress (1992), hosted by Iowa State, and since then has taken an interest in the university's programs in agriculture and food. He has hosted ISU students and faculty members at his research foundation in Chennai, India. He delivered the first Norman Borlaug Lecture at ISU in 2003.

There are no college ceremonies or receptions prior to summer commencement.

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