Welcome
Welcome to the 2012 commencement website for the University of Maryland in Baltimore. We have created this site to help graduates, faculty, families, and friends prepare for the most exciting day of our year.
On Friday, May 18, students, families, and friends will again “take over” the Westside of Baltimore with a wide array of formal and informal activities and ceremonies to mark the commencement of approximately 1,800 graduates from the schools of medicine, law, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing, social work, and the Graduate School.
Building on the success of recent years, we again will have an academic processional from the campus to the 1st Mariner Arena three short blocks away for the University commencement ceremony. We hope even more of you participate in what is a stunning display with the colors and the banners of the schools and the huge group of graduates and faculty in their caps and gowns proceeding from University Plaza down Baltimore Street to the arena.
For the convenience of the graduates’ families, rooms have been reserved at local hotels at discount rates and arrangements have been made for affordable and convenient parking.
The Universitywide commencement ceremony at 1st Mariner Arena will take place at 2 p.m. Graduates will depart the arena by 4 p.m. with their diplomas in hand. We are excited and honored that Freeman A. Hrabowski III, PhD, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, will be our keynote speaker. Recently, he was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine, joining luminaries like Oprah Winfrey and Mark Zuckerberg. More about Dr. Hrabowski is available below.
This website will feature frequent updates with information on activities and programs that promise to make May 18, 2012, a memorable day. Congratulations to the graduates and their families as they celebrate years of sacrifice and hard work.
Jay A. Perman, MD
President
Keynote Speaker
Freeman A. Hrabowski III, PhD, has served as president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County since 1992. His research and publications focus on science and math education, with special emphasis on minority participation and performance.
In April 2012, Hrabowski was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine. In 2008, he was named one of America’s Best Leaders by U.S. News & World Report. In 2009, Time magazine named him one of America’s 10 Best College Presidents. In 2011, he received both the TIAA-CREF Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence and the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Academic Leadership Award, recognized by many as the nation’s highest awards among higher education leaders. Also in 2011, he was named one of seven Top American Leaders by The Washington Post and the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership.
We are privileged that Dr. Hrabowski, a leader in educational advancement and a true friend of the University, will offer the keynote address at this milestone event for our graduates.
Honorary Degree Recipient
Peter I. Buerhaus, PhD, RN, FAAN, is the director for the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Workforce Studies with the Institute for Medicine and Public Health at Vanderbilt Medical Center and serves as the Valere Potter Professor of Nursing at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Dr. Buerhaus will be awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Science in recognition of his distinguished career.
His groundbreaking program of research on the nursing workforce and contributions to understanding the dynamics of nursing and the broader health care workforce have earned him this prestigious honor. His current research interests include monitoring and analyzing trends in nurse employment and earnings, projecting the age and supply of the nurse and physician workforces; developing, testing, and refining measures of nurse-sensitive quality of care measures, determining opinions on the nursing workforce and health care-related issues held by the public, health policy thought leaders, and health care professionals; and assessing the contributions of nurse practitioners and physicians providing primary care in the United States.
Honorary Marshals
Frank M. Calia, MD, MACP, will be the honorary University marshal, an honor not bestowed at UM’s commencement since 2007. Professor emeritus and most recently vice dean of Clinical Affairs, Dr. Calia recently retired after more than four decades of dedicated service to the School of Medicine. Dr. Calia was a favorite of both students, who voted him the medical school’s Teacher of the Year an unprecedented 18 times, and University officials, including medical school Dean E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, and UM President Jay A. Perman, MD, who lavished praise on Dr. Calia at his retirement send-off.
Raju Varghese, EdD, MPH, MSW, MA, associate professor at the School of Social Work and clinical associate professor at the Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, will be an honorary student marshal. Dr. Varghese began working at the School of Social Work in 1972 as an assistant professor and has been there ever since. With intercultural relations among his research interests, Dr. Varghese has worked in bridging the boundaries of international education, including connecting students and faculty at the School of Social Work with several schools of social work in India and other countries.
David A. Knapp, PhD, will be an honorary student marshal. He stepped down as dean of the School of Pharmacy after commencement in 2007, continuing to serve the School in recent years as a professor at the Universities at Shady Grove. During his 18-year stint as dean, Dr. Knapp led the School to become the first in the Northeast to offer a four-year pharmacy degree, the PharmD, and the School grew to become one of the largest and most selective pharmacy schools in the country.
J. Richard Bradbury, DDS, an associate professor at the School of Dentistry, will be a faculty marshal. A graduate of Ohio State University, Dr. Bradbury joined the School’s faculty in 1974. He has been director of preclinical programs in Dental Anatomy and Occlusion, Operative Dentistry, and Fixed Partial Prosthodontics. He has also been a Restorative Dentistry clinical supervisor and is currently the director of Operative Dentistry. He has received several awards for teaching excellence, and has traveled for the past six years with Operation Smile to treat children, including three trips to Vietnam. He also lent his voice to University commencement exercises for 23 years, singing the national anthem from 1985 to 2008.
Morton Wood, DDS, MEd, an associate professor in the School of Dentistry, will be a faculty marshal. A 1969 graduate of the School, he returned to teach at his alma mater in 1975 and has never left. He has held many academic and administrative positions, including supervisor of fixed prosthodontic laboratory services, clinical supervisor for operative dentistry and fixed prosthodontics, program director of dental anatomy/occlusion for 14 years, and chairman of the Department of Restorative Dentistry for eight years. A researcher of note in the area of resin bonded fixed partial dentures, Dr. Wood continues to teach in the preclinical and clinical programs. He recently retired from the intramural Faculty Practice after 37 years.
Student Remarker
The student remarker will be Andrew York, president of the University Student Government Association. York is a student in both the School of Pharmacy and the Francis King Carey School of Law.
