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ASU graduates record class


May 05, 2008

A record 8,000 students graduated May 8 from ASU, a number that surpasses last spring by at least a thousand. The commencement ceremony held in Wells Fargo Arena was a full house.

Larger enrollment and an economy that still beckons college graduates may be pushing the increase. The demand for an educated work force persists, with more employers recruiting on campus this year and a 15 percent increase in online job postings, according to Elaine Stover of ASU Career Services.

The largest-ever class of 243 nurses will graduate, along with 900 teachers, 675 engineers, 210 lawyers, 600 business undergraduates and 550 MBAs.

From the School of Design will come 390 architects, designers and urban planners. The Walter Cronkite School has educated 188 journalists, and the Herberger College of the Arts is graduating 328 artists, musicians, dancers, theater and film professionals, and scholars and historians of the arts.

Political science is now the most popular bachelor’s degree in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which boasts more than 2,000 graduates from 41 majors. More students also are getting life sciences, psychology and communication degrees than ever before.

Overall, the West campus is graduating about 1,070 students, Polytechnic has about 550 graduates and the Downtown Phoenix campus is graduating 980, with almost half of these taking their classes on all four campuses through University College.

Speaker at the commencement will be James Duderstadt, president emeritus at the University of Michigan, who will receive an honorary doctorate at the ceremony.

Duderstadt has been a leader and influential author on higher education, helping to identify and address significant issues facing public research universities.

Among the students getting their degrees will be a social work graduate who was once homeless with her two boys, a woman who gave up a 21-year law enforcement career to go into teaching, a young disabled veteran who has helped other veterans access their benefits and a rising academic star headed for graduate school in London on a Marshall Scholarship.

Individual colleges and student groups also will have separate convocation ceremonies May 8-10 at various locations. A schedule is available online at www.asu.edu/graduation/spring.