175th Commencement Exercises to be Held May 21

175th Commencement Exercises to be Held May 21

Commencement, Special Events

May 4, 2017

175th Commencement Exercises to be Held May 21

Hollins will celebrate its 175th commencement on Sunday, May 21, at 10 a.m. on the university’s historic Front Quadrangle.

Undergraduate and graduate degrees will be conferred before an audience of families, friends, and members of the campus community. Other highlights will include the presentation of the following honors:

  • The Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award. Given by the New York Southern Society in memory of the founder, this award recognizes a senior who has shown by daily living those qualities that evidence a spirit of love and helpfulness to other men and women.
  • The Annie Terrill Bushnell Prize. Presented to the senior who has evidenced the finest spirit of leadership during her days at Hollins, this award was established by the late Mrs. William A. Anderson in memory of her mother.
  • The Jane Cocke Funkhouser Award. Honoring an alumna of the class of 1911, this award recognizes the junior or senior who, in addition to being a good student, is preeminent in character.

Renowned neuroscientist Mary Elizabeth “Mary Beth” Hatten, a member of Hollins’ class of 1971, is this year’s guest speaker.

Hatten is the Frederick P. Rose Professor in the Laboratory of Developmental Neurobiology at The Rockefeller University in New York City. After completing her Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry at Hollins, she earned a Ph.D. in biochemical sciences from Princeton University and did her postdoctoral research in neuroscience at Harvard Medical School. She subsequently served with the New York University School of Medicine and the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University.

In 1992, Hatten joined Rockefeller and was appointed the university’s first female full professor and the first female to lead a research laboratory there. Her initiatives have implications for conditions that are partially due to developmental abnormalities in the brain, such as learning disabilities, childhood epilepsy, schizophrenia, and autism. Her work on cerebellar development may one day inform research on treatments for childhood cancers.

In acknowledgment of her distinguished and continuing achievements in original research, Hatten was recently elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

More information about Hollins’ 175th commencement can be found here.