The University of Central Arkansas on May 5 will hold commencement exercises for the 2007 Spring semester as the institution celebrates its 100th anniversary.
The activities will include three separate ceremonies at the UCA Farris Center to confer degrees. At each ceremony, UCA President Lu Hardin will deliver an address to the graduates.
James Bridges and Mary Lowe Good will receive honorary degrees, Rush Harding will receive the Distinguished Alumnus Award and Conrad Stanitski will be designated Distinguished Professor Emeritus.1.) The first ceremony, at 10 a.m., is for graduates of the College of Education, the College of Fine Arts and Communication and University College.
James Bridges posthumously will receive an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree. Bridges attended UCA in the 1950’s before embarking upon an illustrious career in Hollywood as a writer and director of numerous motion pictures, including Urban Cowboy, The China Syndrome, and Bright Lights, Big City. He wrote and directed The Paper Chase, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, and he established the James Bridges Scholarship Fund to nurture and support theatre
majors at UCA.
Jack Larson will accept the degree in behalf of Bridges.
2.) The second ceremony, at 1:30 p.m., is for graduates of the College of Health and Behavioral Sciences.
Rush Harding will receive the Distinguished Alumnus Award. Harding graduated with honors from the University of Central Arkansas in 1976 with a bachelor of science degree in Math and English. While a UCA student, he was a member of the men?s basketball team, a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, and a member of the Wesley Foundation. In 1979, Harding co-founded the Little Rock investment banking firm Crews & Associates and served as executive vice president from 1979 to 1996. He was named president in 1996 and chief executive officer in 2000. Harding also serves on the board of First Security Bancorp. He is president and a board member of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, and has served as a board member of Pulaski Academy and the University of Central Arkansas for over a decade. Harding established the UCA Holloway-Hicks Scholarship for African-American students, and in 2004, he gave more than $1.4 million to UCA, the largest single gift in the university?s history, which was used to support student scholarships and to construct UCA?s signature landmark, Harding Centennial Plaza.
3.) The third ceremony, at 5 p.m., is for graduates of the College of Business Administration, the College of Liberal Arts and the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.
Mary Lowe Good will receive an Honorary Doctor of Science degree. Good is the founding Dean of the Donaghey College of Information Science and Systems Engineering at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, but she received her Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from UCA in 1950, and was recognized by UCA as a distinguished alumna in 1990. Now a national leader in science and technology, Good served in the presidential administrations of Jimmy Carter, Ronals Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and she was President of the American Chemical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Good has been awarded the Priestley Medal, the Phillip Hogue Abelson Prize from AAAS, and the Vannevar Bush Award from the National Science Foundation. She more than 21 honorary degrees from colleges and
universities, including the College of William and Mary, Polytechnic University of New York, Louisiana State University, and Michigan State University.
Conrad Stanitski will be designated Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Stanitski retired from UCA in 2005 as professor and chairman of the chemistry department, where he led a period of strong growth, almost doubling the size of the faculty. He authored or co-authored 18 chemistry textbooks and won numerous awards from national organizations.
