MORGANTOWN, W. Va.— Approximately 1,000 Eberly undergraduate and graduate students will walk across the stage at the WVU Coliseum on Sunday, May 15 during two commencement ceremonies.
Eberly’s graduate commencement ceremony will begin at 9 a.m. and the undergraduate
ceremony will begin at noon. Both ceremonies will feature keynote speakers who received Honorary Degrees this year from Eberly College.
Denise Giardina, a 2022 Honorary Doctoral Degree recipient, will speak during the graduate
commencement ceremony.
Giardina, a West Virginia native and citizen advocate, is an award-winning author with six novels. In the early 1890s, she took part in the Appalachian Land Ownership Study which documented that the region is dominated by absentee land ownership. In the late 1980s, she was arrested twice during the United Mine Workers’ strike against the Pittston Company.
Giardina grew up in a coal camp in McDowell County and received a B.A. in history from West Virginia Wesleyan College. She also holds a M.Div. from Virginia Theological Seminary (Episcopal) in Alexandria, Virginia and is an ordained deacon in The Episcopal Church. Her op-ed pieces have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Charleston Gazette and Daily Mail. She is the author of an original screenplay that was filmed by West Virginia Public Television in 1996. She also wrote a play, “Robert and Ted” (2012), about Senators Robert C. Byrd and Ted Kennedy.
Guests at Eberly’s undergraduate ceremony will hear remarks from Stavros Lambrinidis,
a 2022 Presidential Honorary Doctoral Degree recipient.
Lambrinidis has served as the Ambassador of the European Union to the United States since March 2019. His previous roles include European Union Special Representative for Human Rights and Foreign Affairs Minister of Greece. He has been twice elected a member of the European Parliament with the Greek Social Democratic Party (PASOK). From 2000-2004, he was Director-General of the International Olympic Truce Centre, an International Olympic Committee organization. During that time, he also served as Ambassador ad personam of the Hellenic Republic.
Lambrinidis was born in Athens, Greece. He graduated with degrees in economics and political science from
Amherst College before earning a J.D. at Yale. Prior to his career in politics,
Lambrinidis worked as an attorney at the Washington, D.C. law firm Wilmer, Cutler
& Pickering, specializing in international trade, transactions, and arbitration.
Tickets are not required for admission to either ceremony
and there is no limit on the number of guests a graduate may invite. Graduates
and their guests attending either ceremony can find more information, including
the University’s clear bag policy,
here.
The ceremonies will be livestreamed for those unable to
attend in person. The webcast link will go live a few minutes prior to
ceremony time.
-WVU-
