Lee University Commencement Is This Weekend
Cleveland, TN–Lee University will be celebrating a record number of graduates during the annual spring commencement this weekend, May 4 and 5, on the Lee campus.
During the weekend, 544 degrees are set to be conferred, of which 475 are undergraduate and 69 are graduate.
Lee University is marking 100 years of Christian higher education all this year. Lee was founded on January 1, 1918 as Church of God Bible Training School.
Dr. Carolyn Dirksen will deliver the address at the Saturday morning commencement at 9:30 a.m. Weather permitting, it will be held on the new South Campus Quad. This will be the first graduation ceremony to take place at this location, which is flanked by the School of Nursing, School of Business, Communications Arts Building and The Forum. All four structures have been built within the last five years to create the new space.
Dirksen is completing a fifty-year career on the Lee faculty. She came to Lee in 1968 as an instructor in English and currently serves as the director of faculty development. Previously, she served as the chair of the Department of Language & Literature, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, and vice president for academic affairs.
Dirksen was the recipient of Lee’s first Excellence in Teaching Award and has also received the Excellence in Scholarship Award. Recently, she was awarded the 2018 Dr. Charles W. Conn Servant Leadership Award, given for exemplary work in service learning.
According to Lee president Paul Conn, Dirksen “has played a major role in Lee’s evolution from small private college to comprehensive liberal arts university.” She will retire from full-time service on June 30.
Lee’s newest female dorm, Dirksen Row, was named in 2017 to honor her and her husband, Dr. Murl Dirksen, for their leadership in the academic life of Lee and their service to the campus.
In addition to her work at Lee, Dirksen also serves on the World Missions Board of the Church of God and has been named honorary professor at both Henan University and Sias University in the Peoples Republic of China.
Graduation festivities will begin with a hooding ceremony for students earning graduate degrees. This service is a ticketed event and will take place in the Lee University Chapel on Friday, May 4, at 4:30 p.m.
After the hooding ceremony on May 4, all graduates will march in the commissioning service at 6:30 p.m. on the South Campus Quad lawn. During commissioning, six graduates will share stories of their Lee experiences, one graduate will perform special music, and all graduates will receive Bibles to commemorate this personal milestone.
The hooding, commissioning, and commencement will be available for live stream viewing at https://livestream.com/leeu.
