Published: 7/14/2022 10:54:09 PM
Modified: 7/14/2022 10:53:55 PM
HANOVER — Dartmouth College is scheduled to hold a COVID-19 pandemic-delayed commencement for the Class of 2020 on Aug. 6 on the Green, according to the college’s news service.
More than 600 undergraduates, about 50% of the class, as well as some graduate and professional school students, have made plans to return for the celebration. A gift from an anonymous donor is underwriting housing fees for the returning graduates for the weekend.
The class previously celebrated its graduation through virtual degree ceremony in the early days of the pandemic.
This summer’s celebration begins on Aug. 5, when members of the Class of 2020 and their loved ones are invited to a reception and a candlelight ceremony. A committee of class members planned the weekend with the college’s alumni relations team.
The Aug. 6 morning ceremony is to include bagpipes, a procession, remarks from Dartmouth President Philip Hanlon and others, music and the announcement of the graduates’ names as they cross the stage.
Geeta Anand, a 1989 Dartmouth graduate, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and dean of the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, is slated to deliver the keynote address.
Anand began teaching at Berkeley Journalism in 2018 and was appointed dean in 2020, becoming the first woman and the first woman of color to lead the journalism school. Before that, she spent nearly three decades as a journalist, beginning as a reporter for Cape Cod News and Vermont’s Rutland Herald. She later wrote for The Boston Globe,The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.