Baccalaureate Service
Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life
Each year, on Commencement Weekend, the OCRL Office honors our graduates with an inter-religious celebration. The service is the evening before the Commencement Ceremony. The service draws on the religious diversity of our student body to speak to a special theme for that year.
The 2010 Baccalaureate Service will be celebrated at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 22 in the Weis Center for the Performing Arts. There will be a special guest speaker and the Rooke Chapel Choir and Rooke Chapel Ringers will also participate in the service.
Seating in the Weis Center is limited and tickets for the service are required. Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Graduates are limited to five tickets, including the graduate. Graduates may pick up the tickets at the Switchboard in the Elaine Langone Center beginning on Monday, March 29, 2010. Faculty and staff are welcome to attend. Two tickets per your faculty or staff ID are available on a first-come, first-served basis at the Switchboard, or by RSVP invitations you might have received. Tickets will guarantee seating only until 10 minutes before the beginning of the service, after which time any remaining seats will be made available to those without tickets.
Baccalaureate Blessings
Prior to each year's Inter-religious Baccalaureate Service, the Chaplains' office contacts the families and loved ones of our seniors to invite them to offer inspirational words, a simple blessing, a hope, a poem, a prayer, or other artistic expressions for their graduate, or the class as a whole, on a 3" x 5" card. The cards received are strung together and hung in the windows of the Weis Center for the Performing Arts.
2009 Selected Baccalaureate Blessings Photo Gallery
Themes and speakers from recent years have been:
2009: Speaker: Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
2008: "Our Welfare is Bound Together"; Speaker: The Rev. Dr. Alison L. Boden, Dean of Religious Life and of the Chapel, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
2007: "We Look at Ourselves; the Kinds of People We Are"; Speaker: Chaplain Jewelnel Davis, University Chaplain, Associate Provost, and Director of the Earl Hall Center, Columbia University, NYC
2006: Senior Speakers: Kenneth Greenbaum, Gretchen Perry, Rosa Terlazzo
2005: Senior Speakers: Khalid Alghamdi, Ann K. Rosko, Kelly Jeanne Raffety, and Jeffrey Wodlinger
2004: "The Place of Privilege"; Speaker: Karen M. Morin, Associate Professor of Geography
2003: "Reflections on Hope in an Age of Cynicism"; Speaker: Dee Casteel, Associate Professor of Chemistry
2002: "Reflections on Crisis and Continuity"; Speaker: Deborah Abowitz, Associate Professor of Sociology
2001: "Reflections on Journey's Ending, Journey's Beginning"; Speaker: Gary Sojka, President, 1984-95 and Professor of Biology.
2000: "Learning, Living, Loving, and Leaving"; Speaker: Brad Tufts, long-time Bucknell administrator and coach.
1999: "Reflections on Reconcilation and Harmony"; Speaker: Maureen Murphy, retiring Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences
1998: "Reflections on Community"; Speaker: Elias Abelson, retiring University General Counsel
1997: "Reflections on Compassion and Loving One's Neighbors"; Speaker: William Becker, retiring Professor of Religion
1996: "Reflections on Money, Simplicity and Priorities..."; Speaker: Joyce Bylander, Associate Dean of Students
1995: "Reflections on the Way of Peace"; Speakers: Dillonna Lewis, '95; Teresa Amott, Professor of Economics
1994: "Reflections on Wisdom and Life's Journey"; Speaker: Douglas Sturm, Professor of Political Science and Religion
