The University of Alabama at Birmingham will celebrate two commencement ceremonies and a doctoral hooding Saturday, April 30. At least 1,874 students are expected to graduate in spring 2016.
The commencement ceremonies will take place at 9:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. in Bartow Arena, 617 13th St. South. An estimated 1,100 are expected to walk in the ceremonies. College of Arts and Sciences and School of Education graduates will attend the 9:30 a.m. ceremony. All other graduates will attend the 2 p.m. ceremony.
The UAB Graduate School’s hooding ceremony is set for noon at UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center. The ceremony is for students earning doctorates in education, philosophy, public health and science. For spring 2016, the university’s highest degree will be conferred on 56 students from 10 states and 12 countries in nine disciplines; at least 40 will participate in the ceremony. The keynote speaker will be Assistant Professor of Human Studies in the School of Education Keith Gurley, Ed.D. Gurley will also bear the academic mace for the ceremony.
The 41st annual UAB Honors Convocation will be held at 10 a.m. on Friday, April 29, in the Alys Stephens Center. Nearly 200 students – both undergraduate and graduate – from every UAB school and college will be honored. A reception will follow the ceremony. All are welcome to attend.
The School of Health Professions Graduate Professionals Program ceremony will be held at 3 p.m. Friday, April 29, at the Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center. The School of Medicine commencement ceremony will be at 1 p.m. Sunday, May 15, in Bartow Arena. The School of Optometry doctoral convocation and hooding ceremony will be held at 2:30 p.m. Friday, May 20, at the Alys Stephens Center. The Doctor of Nursing Practice hooding ceremony will be held in summer 2016 at the National Alumni Society House. The School of Dentistry commencement ceremony will be held at noon Saturday, June 4, at the Alys Stephens Center.
A to-do list for graduates, as well as information for guests, is available on the commencement website. Tickets are not required; but seating is first come, first served. Bartow Arena doors will open at 8:30 a.m. for the morning ceremony and at 1 p.m. for the afternoon ceremony. University officials recommend guests leave nonessential bags at home or in the car. The ceremonies will be recorded and added online for viewing at www.uab.edu/commencement about a week after the ceremonies.
The bearer of the UAB academic mace for both commencement ceremonies will be Alison A. Chapman, Ph.D., professor and chair of the UAB Department of English. Chapman is the winner of the 2016 Odessa Woolfolk Community Service Award. She is a widely respected scholar of English Renaissance literature, having published numerous articles and just completed her second book, on Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” She was director of the UAB/Donaldson Lecture Series at Donaldson Correctional Facility from 2008 to 2015, teaching and coordinating lectures by UAB faculty and staff and others from around the state. She continues to be a strong advocate for access to educational opportunities for underserved populations.
| A to-do list for graduates, as well as information for guests, is available on the commencement website. Tickets are not required; but seating is first come, first served. Bartow Arena doors will open at 8:30 a.m. for the morning ceremony and at 1 p.m. for the afternoon ceremony. University officials recommend guests leave nonessential bags at home or in the car. The ceremonies will be recorded and added online for viewing at www.uab.edu/commencement about a week after the ceremonies. |
Each commencement ceremony will include undergraduate and graduate speakers.
Rory Garrett Stephens is the undergraduate commencement speaker for the morning ceremony. He will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science with minors in international studies and criminal justice. In 2015-2016, Stephens was president of the UAB Undergraduate Student Government Association and was the UAB student representative to the Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama System. He was awarded the UAB Breakthrough Scholarship, UAB Impact Award and the Camille Armstrong Memorial Scholarship. A member of Pi Sigma Alpha, a political science honor society, Stephens was also executive director and executive board member of the Multicultural Council, lead mentor and mentor for the Blazer Male Excellence Network, and a member of the UAB Student Task Force as well as the Leadership Foundation. Stephens was an intern in the office of U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell in Washington, D.C., during summer of 2015, and was an investigative intern for the Office of the Federal Public Defender in the District of North Alabama during the spring of 2013 and 2014. He volunteered in Sewell’s Birmingham office and was a site leader for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service; a volunteer for the Into the Streets program, an organization dedicated to cleaning up surrounding local communities; and a volunteer for the SPOONS Program at UAB Highlands, a program designed to help elderly patients who require assistance or encouragement to eat their daily meals.
Halley M. Cotton is the graduate commencement speaker for the morning ceremony. She will graduate with a Master of Arts degree in English with a concentration in creative writing. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English with a concentration in creative writing from UAB. Cotton has worked as a UAB graduate teaching assistant teaching English 101, where she crafted the course Eavesdropping: Taking Part in Encoded Conversations, which paid particular focus on identifying, interpreting and recreating a variety of visual, audial and textual rhetorical situations. Among the awards she received for her original poetry are the 2015 Short Story College Literary Award from the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum Association Inc., for her work “Sons.” Cotton has published works in the Smokelong Quarterly, the Birmingham Arts Journal, and The F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum Blog. Her editorial work includes reader for the Birmingham Poetry Review, senior poetry editor at PoemMemoirStory and assistant editor at Steel Toe Review.
Lacey Amerson Wise is the undergraduate commencement speaker for the afternoon ceremony. She will graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing with honors from the UAB School of Nursing Honors Program. Among her many scholarships are the Comer Nursing Scholarship, TSYS Scholarship and the UAB Affinity Scholarship. She is also a member of Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Honors Society. Wise has been a unit coordinator for the UAB Labor and Delivery and Maternity Evaluation Unit since August 2013 and has been working on her preceptorship in the Children’s Hospital of Alabama Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Wise has been an active volunteer for the UAB Student Nurses’ Association, Ducks Unlimited Wildlife Organization, YoungLife and Children’s Hospital of Alabama. She was a UAB Nursing student mentor, public relations director for the UAB Student Nurses’ Association and a UAB Nursing simulation assistant for the UAB Office of Interprofessional Simulations.
Clifford “Cliff” N. Goolsby is the graduate commencement speaker for the afternoon ceremony. He will graduate with a Master of Science degree in health administration and a Master of Business Administration degree. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from UAB in 2013. Goolsby was marketing director and health care analyst for the UAB Green and Gold Fund within the UAB Collat School of Business; president of the Management Society at UAB, which strives to provide opportunities for career growth and enhancement in the field of management; and a student leader for the Wilcox County Bamboo Project, in which college students helped high school students understand the importance of working within diverse teams. He is a student associate of the American College of Healthcare Executives and a student member of the Healthcare Financial Management Association. Goolsby is a graduate assistant for UAB’s Collat School of Business, where he helps manage more than 200 students within different undergraduate classes and assists the instructional design team with online courses in Canvas. By the time Goolsby entered UAB’s graduate program, he had worked for six different health care entities to better apply the knowledge of the classroom to the real world. In summer 2015, he was a graduate administrative intern for Sacred Heart Hospital on the Emerald Coast, where he developed a business plan for a $3 million surgical services expansion to increase capacity by 50 percent, expand robotic services with the DaVinci Xi surgical system for more complex procedures, and complement the hospital’s current $30 million inpatient expansion.