Washington University will award five honorary degrees this year at Commencement. The degrees will go to Commencement speaker and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel; John H. Biggs, former vice chancellor for administration and finance at the University; Shirley Ann Jackson, the 18th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic University; Griffin P.

Holocaust survivor, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel will deliver the Commencement address, Chancellor Mark Wrighton announced Tuesday evening. The Commencement will take place at 8:30 a.m. on May 20 in the Brookings Quadrangle. The ceremony will be the University’s 150^th commencement. Wiesel will receive an honorary degree from the University.

We would like a commencement speaker who can talk about issues such as American government policy or twenty-first century social life while conveying a broader, more universal message about what it means to enter adult life in 2012.

I looked back at old Commencement issues of Student Life expecting to find every column beginning with, “Well, I’m sitting down to write my last column, and I can’t imagine how to put into words the four great years I’ve spent here.” The plan was to cite how most final columns do that and simultaneously, in doing so, avoid doing it myself.

Washington University announced Wednesday afternoon that it will award five honorary degrees during the school’s 149th Commencement on May 21. In addition to Commencement speaker Steven Chu, the U.S. secretary of energy and a Nobel laureate, degrees will be awarded to research physician Brian J. Druker, Joanne Knight, Richard A. Roloff and Nelson S. “Strobe” [...]

Dear Secretary Chu: We at Washington University in St. Louis are excited that you will be visiting our University to deliver the 2010 Commencement address. The graduating class you will address is, like the larger student body, deeply concerned by the challenge climate change poses to this, and future generations. We sincerely admire your leadership and commitment to addressing this threat, and it is our hope that you will inspire us in our search for solutions to the gravest problem of our time.

Steven Chu will deliver the Commencement address in Brookings Quad to the graduating class of 2010, the University announced on Wednesday evening. Steven Chu will deliver the Commencement address in Brookings Quad to the graduating class of 2010, Chancellor Mark Wrighton announced on Wednesday evening. Chu is the secretary of energy for the United States and has long been an advocate for alternative energy sources.

From engaging with the vice-presidential debate to lobbying for MetroLink expansion and leading the campus’s response to the , the Class of 2010 has been defined by student activism. From engaging with the vice-presidential debate to lobbying for MetroLink expansion and leading the campus’s response to the incident this fall at Mother’s Bar, the class of 2010 has been defined by student activism.

You may be absorbed in the midst of recovering from your junior midterms, struggling through your writing intensive, and enjoying or preparing for your semester abroad, but—as difficult as it is to believe—hotel rooms for May 2011 are already filling up because of overzealous parents’ reservations. Believe it or not, it’s time for you to start thinking about Commencement speakers too.