Commencement: Loyola College in Maryland

More than 1,600 baccalaureate and advanced degrees are scheduled to be conferred May 16 at Baltimore’s 1st Mariner Arena for Loyola College in Maryland’s ceremony. The 157th commencement will be the last for the school under its current designation. When fall semester begins, it will be rechristened Loyola University Maryland.

The commencement address is to be delivered by Santa Clara University professor and author Ron Hansen. He will also receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree. Jesuit Father Brian Linnane, Loyola’s president, called Hansen “one of the country’s leading contemporary Catholic writers.” Hansen’s 2008 book, Exiles, tells the story of five nuns shipwrecked in 1875 and how it inspired Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.

“It was particularly appealing to me that his most recent book focuses on the work of 19th century Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins,” Father Linnane said. “As such, I believe he has a unique understanding of our mission as a Jesuit institution and will offer our graduating students a message that will prove very meaningful as they commence this next phase in their lives.”

Hansen wrote the 1983 novel “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” which was turned into a movie in recent years.

Link (here)