Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is one of two speakers scheduled to deliver a commencement address at Mississippi State University’s fall graduation ceremonies in Humphrey Coliseum.
MSU alumni Will Carpenter will deliver the address at the first commencement ceremony, which takes place Dec. 9 at 7 p.m. He will address graduates in the Bagley College of Engineering, the College of Veterinary Medicine, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the College of Forest Resources and the College of Education, vice president for student affairs Bill Kibler said.
Barbour will speak during the second commencement Dec. 10 at 10 a.m. to graduates in the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Architecture, Art and Design, the College of Business and Industry and the School of Accountancy, Kibler said.
Students can learn a lot from Barbour because he often talks about expanding horizons and keeping the long view in mind, Marty Wiseman, director for the Stennis Institute of Government, said. He’s been a successful person in his career, and it’s a great opportunity for the students to have him come and share his successes with them, he said.
“Most of the speeches he gives have to do with leadership, and he has certainly exhibited leadership in the last several weeks since Hurricane Katrina,” Wiseman said.
Carpenter graduated in 1952 from MSU with a degree in agronomy. He is an international advocate for the prohibition of chemical and biological warfare and has received several national honors such as the Hilliard Roderick Prize and Medal in Science. In 1992 Carpenter retired from Monsanto Co., where he was vice president and general manager of its new products division.
“It’s always a plus when you have an MSU graduate who has gone and become very successful in life to come back and give comments to our graduates,” Kibler said.
This semester 1,350 students applied for graduation, and so far 820 are scheduled to attend the commencement. The number of students in each college have been distributed between the two ceremonies in order to have the same size audience for each one, registrar Butch Stokes said.
MSU decided to change the graduation process about three years ago and now holds two ceremonies instead of one. The students’ names are now called out, and all graduates walk across the stage, a time-consuming process that sparked the need for two ceremonies, Stokes said.
December commencements are often smaller than the one’s in May but are every bit as important and significant to the university, Kibler said.
“The commencement is an enjoyable time. It’s a time for the university to celebrate the end of the students’ academic careers here at MSU,” he said.