More than 1,000 students in the undergraduate day school, the School of Continuing Education, and the Graduate Studies Program will receive diplomas during the College’s Eighty-Eighth Commencement Exercises on Sunday, May 21, 2006.

The exercises at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center in downtown Providence will begin at 11:00 a.m., with the procession starting at 10:30 a.m. Alumni are cordially invited to march in the procession; those who do so will be seated on the dais.

The first Commencement Exercises under the administration of College President Rev. Brian J. Shanley, O.P. ’80, the program will include a series of greetings; the presentation of baccalaureate, associate, and graduate degrees; the conferring of honorary degrees; and a keynote address by John O’Hurley ’76, the award-winning television and stage actor who is best known as “J. Peterman” on the popular Seinfeld TV program. 

In addition to O’Hurley, other honorary degree recipients are Edwin Forman, M.D., former director of the pediatric hematology and oncology division at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, R.I.; Rev. Robert J. Randall, priest, educator, and author who served as a PC faculty member for more than 25 years; the Honorable Donald F. Shea ’50, retired justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court; and Carolyn Woo, Ph.D., the Martin J. Gillen Dean of the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame and the Ray and Milann Siegfried Chair in Entrepreneurial Studies at Notre Dame.

All other Commencement Weekend activities will be held on campus. The ROTC Commissioning Ceremony and the Academic Awards Ceremony will take place on Friday, May 19, at 4:00 p.m. at the War Memorial Grotto and at 7:00 p.m. in Peterson Recreation Center, respectively. On Saturday, May 20, the Commencement Mass will be celebrated at 3:00 p.m. (the procession begins at 2:40 p.m.) in Peterson Recreation Center, followed at approximately 4:30 p.m. by a Parents’ Reception on the Slavin Center Lawn.

Instructions for alumni marchers
Alumni who would like to march in the commencement procession do not need academic gowns and will be provided with a ribboned pin. They should go to Room #2 of the Dunkin’ Donuts Center before 10:00 a.m., when the procession line starts to form. Alumni who will be marching are asked to inform the Office of Institutional Advancement at (401) 865-2407.