Awards, People, Campus & community, Profiles, Campus news, Events at Berkeley

Fall graduates to celebrate at commencement ceremony

By Yasmin Anwar

grads410

A campus-wide ceremony honoring all fall 2013 graduates of UC Berkeley will take place this Sunday, Dec. 22 at 10 a.m. at Haas Pavilion on the main campus. Some 500 students in caps and gowns are expected to participate in the event, along with 4,000 friends, family members, faculty and other well-wishers.

Nobelist Randy Schekman

Nobelist Randy Schekman is keynote speaker at the commencement ceremony

More than 1,860 undergraduates and 900 graduate students are set to earn degrees this month, according to the campus’s Office of the Registrar. No diplomas will be awarded at Sunday’s event.

The keynote speaker will be Randy Schekman, professor of molecular and cell biology and winner of the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for his role in uncovering the mechanism that regulates the transport and secretion of proteins in our cells.  A resident of El Cerrito with more than three decades on the UC Berkeley faculty, Schekman, 64, is a passionate advocate for increased investment in public universities, among other issues.

Chancellor Nicholas Dirks will also address the graduates and their families.

This year’s student speaker is Daniel Chesmore, a graduate in sociology and business analyst at an organization that supports the charter school movement.  Among other things, Chesmore plans to discus how UC Berkeley’s culture of diversity and acceptance sparked in him the passion and courage to fight bigotry, he said.