Some 2,201 undergraduates and 1,320 graduate students, representing 58 countries, received degrees at the 134th Commencement Exercises, held May 24 in Alumni Stadium. In remarks that opened the ceremony, University President William P. Leahy, SJ, urged the graduates to be “forces for good and powerful examples for those around you.”
This year’s honorary degree recipients included Commencement speaker Jeffrey R. Immelt (left), CEO and chairman of General Electric; Joy Haywood Moore ’81 (center), deputy head of academy of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa; John Harrington ’57, MBA’66 (right), Yawkey Foundation chairman and former Red Sox CEO; Anthony Bryk ’70, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; Sr. Mary Hart, RGS, who has run summer and after-school programs for Boston’s inner city children for nearly 30 years; and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, former president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, now a member of the Congregation for Bishops. In his Commencement address, Immelt called on graduates to answer the world’s need for “ethical optimists.”