Monica S. AswaniDoctoral hooding and commencement ceremonies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham will be held on Friday, Dec. 14, and Saturday, Dec. 15.
Approximately 1,627 will graduate from UAB this fall. An estimated 800 students will participate in the ceremonies. The ceremonies will be livestreamed on the UAB Facebook page.
A doctoral hooding and commencement ceremony for nearly all graduate programs will be held at 6 p.m. Friday, Dec. 14, in Bartow Arena. Students receiving master’s degrees now receive their diplomas with the doctoral candidates. For fall 2018, the UAB Graduate School will confer the university’s highest degrees on 73 students from 16 states and 10 countries in 22 disciplines; approximately 55 will participate in the ceremony. The mace will be carried by Yogesh K. Vohra, Ph.D., professor and university scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Physics and associate dean of CAS. Vohra is the founding director of the UAB Center for Nanoscale Materials and Biointegration.
Undergraduate diplomas will be awarded to students in a ceremony at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 15, in Bartow Arena. For the Saturday ceremony, the mace will be carried by Michael Sloane, Ph.D., associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Psychology. Sloane is the 2018 recipient of the Ellen Gregg Ingalls/UAB National Alumni Society Award for Lifetime Achievement in Teaching.
A to-do list for graduates, as well as information for guests, is available on the commencement website. Tickets are not required; but seating for the commencement ceremonies are first come, first served. Bartow Arena doors will open one hour prior to each 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.
Ashley BoggsThe student speaker for the Dec. 14 ceremony will be Monica S. Aswani, graduating with a Doctor of Public Health degree with a concentration in health care organization and policy, under the mentorship of Meredith L. Kilgore, Ph.D. Aswani’s dissertation employs econometric methods to investigate how hospitals may respond to pay-for-performance incentives in Medicare. In addition to her being one of two Phi Kappa Phi dissertation fellowship recipients in 2016, her research has also been supported by the National Institute of Aging and UAB’s Comprehensive Center for Health Aging. Aswani has also contributed to health care quality and patient safety projects through fellowships at Johns Hopkins University and the World Health Organization. She graduated with her Master of Science in Public Health degree in health care organization and policy from UAB in 2010. Prior to attending UAB, she studied biology and chemistry as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduating in 2006. After graduation, Aswani remains committed to improving health care quality through rigorous, policy-relevant research, as well as training and mentoring the next generation of health policy students.
The student speaker for the Dec. 15 ceremony will be Ashley Boggs, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering degree. During her tenure at UAB, Boggs was president of the Alabama Gamma chapter of Tau Beta Pi, a national engineering honor society. Under her leadership, the UAB chapter’s membership increased 450 percent. She is a member of the UAB Honors College’s Science and Technology Honors Program, and her honors include the Presidential Honors List and the Engineering Dean’s List. Boggs has worked throughout the pursuit of her degree gaining valuable experience, most recently at BioHorizons Dental Implants. She played a substantial role in the design and development of more than 15 components, and led a variety of sustaining engineering projects.
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As a student researcher at UAB, her undergraduate thesis focuses on the accuracy of dental implant placement with a 3D-printed surgical guide. Boggs has been active in the local community, serving organizations such as YMCA Greater Birmingham as an after-school volunteer, team leader with Iron City Church and science fair mentor for Phillips Academy. After graduation, she plans to seek employment as a biomedical engineer in the medical device industry.