Dialog, UA Faculty and Staff News

Advisory

Sorensen to Address Grads in Final Speech at UA

Dr. Andrew Sorensen, UA president since 1996, has been named the 27th president of the University of South Carolina, replacing retiring president John Palms. At USC, Sorensen will oversee eight campuses with 37,000 students and a budget of $623 million. According to UAS Chancellor Mack Portera, the search for a permanent president may begin in late summer. The UA president oversees a residential campus with more than 19,000 students and a budget of some $400 million.

UA’s May commencement ceremonies will be held Friday, May 17, at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. in Coleman Coliseum. Sorensen will deliver the Commencement address at both ceremonies. He will offer, in part, a retrospective look at the past decade. For complete commencement information, go to the Commencement Web site at www.registrar.ua.edu/commencement.

Acclaimed author and scholar Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. will be awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters. Gates is the W.E.B. DuBois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, where he is also chair of Afro-American studies and director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research.

An influential cultural critic, Gates is the author of "Colored People: A Memoir," which traces his childhood experiences in a small West Virginia town in the 1950s and 1960s; "The Future of the Race," co-authored with Cornel West.

The UA School of Law will have its ceremony at 5 p.m. at Coleman Coliseum. The featured speaker will be David Ellwanger, president of the Center for American and International Law. A 1962 alumnus of the UA Law School, Ellwanger has served as the Alabama assistant attorney general, executive director of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, and CEO of the State Bar of California.

To see which schools and colleges confer degrees (bachelor’s, master’s, educational specialists, PhD. and Ed.D) at which time, visit the Web site at www.registrar.ua.edu/commencement.