Ivy Day, commencement ceremonies this week

Following Friday’s Ivy Day ceremony, CSC will confer degrees to 311 graduates during two commencement exercises Saturday. The ceremony for students earning master’s degrees will be at 8 a.m. at Memorial Hall, followed by the graduation for those earning bachelor’s degrees at 10 a.m. in Armstrong Gym.

Of the graduates, there are 262 candidates for bachelor’s degrees and 49 for master’s degrees.

Glenn Novotny, a CSC Distinguished Alumni Award recipient and business leader from Danville, Calif., will deliver the commencement address at the undergraduate ceremony Saturday. Dr. Joel Hyer, CSC associate professor of history, will speak at the ceremony for graduate students.

Ivy Day, the event that honors CSC’s outstanding graduates, will be at 7 p.m. Friday at Memorial Hall. More than 100 students will be recognized for a variety of honors, including outstanding departmental awards, tutoring certification and the designations of summa cum laude, magna cum laude and cum laude.

As part of Friday’s events, results of the voting for Ivy Day queen and king will be announced. Queen candidates are Victoria Barraza of Bayard, Paige Bosch of Wheatland, Wyo., Lauren Emory of Fort Collins, Colo., Ashley Nutsch of Highlands Ranch, Colo., and Kortany Schultz of Scottsbluff. Candidates for king are Alex Adden of Sidney, Jesse Arbogast of Laramie, Wyo., Douglas Liewer of Butte, Chedric Monahan of Chadron and Adam Rasmussen of Mead.

In addition, CSC on Friday will present a Platinum Eagle Award to one male and one female student for distinguished leadership and service. The award, which is considered to the highest honor a CSC student can receive, is chosen by a faculty committee.

The finalists for the Platinum Eagle are Adden, Lily Amare of Ethiopia, Schultz, Chelsea Keeney of Callaway, Nichole Koerwitz of Wheatland, Wyo., Daniel Schwager of Bartlett, Liewer and Rasmussen.

Koerwitz and Monahan will serve as orators for Ivy Day, while Dr. Lorie Hunn, assistant professor of education, will be the event’s faculty greeter. The masters of ceremonies will be Schultz and Liewer.

Chadron State President Dr. Janie Park and Vice President for Administration Dr. Lois Veath also will have prominent roles in conducting each of the events. Gary Bieganski of Chadron will present greetings from the Nebraska State College System Board of Trustees.

Elizabeth Ledbetter of Chadron and Bruce Kambarami of Zimbabwe will deliver moments of reflection for the early ceremony while Hella Bekele of Ethiopia and Liewer will have that honor for the undergraduates. The latter ceremony also will feature military commissioning for CSC’s Reserve Officer Training Corps program.

The commencement ceremony in Armstrong Gym will be broadcast live on cable Channel 20 in Chadron. To accommodate for the expected overflow crowd, the broadcast will be shown on the big screen in the Student Center.

Individual photographs of the graduates and videos of the graduation ceremonies will be available for purchase from the CSC Student Alumni Council. The group also will sell roses at the commencement exercises.