Section: Metro State News
Metro State to graduate more than 1,000 on Sunday, Dec. 16
Dec 12, 2007

More than 1,000 students are expected to receive their Metro State degrees at the Colorado Convention Center on Sunday, Dec. 16, representing the largest fall graduating class in the College’s history.

“The number of expected graduates is 1,064,” said Ellen Boswell, coordinator of Institutional Research. “Last fall, 940 students graduated.”

This will be the first time the Metro State fall commencement has eclipsed 1,000 bachelor-degree graduates.

About the class
This semester’s graduating class is primarily female and young, with 58 percent of the graduates being women and 69 percent being in their twenties. Four graduating students are 20 years old, and the oldest graduate, at 66 years old, is Russell Stiles, a history major. Twenty three percent are students of color.

The top five majors represented at graduation are behavioral science, criminal justice and criminology, history, management and accounting.

Thirteen percent of the expected graduates are seeking teacher licensure.

Elbra Wedgeworth to speak
This year’s commencement speaker is former Denver City Council president and current president and chair of the Denver 2008 Democratic Convention Host Committee Elbra Wedgeworth.

Wedgeworth served as City Council president from 2003 to 2005 and was City Council president pro tempore from 2001 to 2002. She has more than 16 years of experience working in Denver city government, with the unusual distinction of having served in all three branches.

Her leadership was crucial to Denver being chosen to host the 2008 Democratic National Convention. The DNC will be the largest convention in the history of the city, and is estimated to generate more than $160 million.

In April of this year, Wedgeworth was named chief government and community affairs officer for Denver Health. She is responsible for all governmental legislative matters on the local, state and federal level and is the hospital’s liaison for community outreach initiatives.

2007 President’s Award winner soaring
David Fifield, the 2007 President’s Award winner, maintained a flawless 4.0 grade point average with a double major in computer science and mathematics. And he did it entirely on his own dime with a number of academic financial awards and a lot of hard work in the years leading up to, and during, his time at the College.

“I am pleased that I was able to obtain my degree without incurring any debt,” Fifield writes in a personal essay submitted as part of his 2007 President’s Award application.

Fifield will speak at Commencement for the Fall Class of 2007 in the finale to a storied undergraduate career that has seen him involved in a number of prestigious academic competitions and programming including the College’s DemoSat program. (To read more go to http://www.mscd.edu/~collcom/artman/publish/
Demosat_Program_An_out-of-this-world_experience_for_students.shtml.)

Ceremony specifics
Commencement will be held Sunday, Dec. 16, at 2 p.m. at the Colorado Convention Center, 14th and California Streets. The doors will be closed promptly at 2 p.m. for approximately 20 minutes to allow for the graduate processional. The commencement exercises are expected to last until 4:45 p.m.

The ceremony can be viewed live online during the proceedings. Go to http://www.mscd.edu/student/commencement/webcast/.