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This article is from the EMU News Archive. Current EMU new is available at www.emu.edu/news
EMU Sets 86th Commencement
Eastern Mennonite University will hold its 86th annual commencement exercises 1 p.m. Sunday, Apr. 25, on the front lawn of campus, weather permitting.
Presiding at his first graduation as EMU’s eighth president, Loren E. Swartzendruber will confer degrees on the 406 members of the graduating class of 2004. Last year, EMU awarded 400 degrees.
EMU Commencement Keynote Speaker Martin Marty.
Martin E. Marty, veteran educator, author and columnist, will give the commencement address on the topic, "Disponibilité," which the speaker described as "an untranslatable French word that translates 'the quality of being at the disposal of others,' to be available. It is a philosophy, a religious attitude, signaled by posture, something we recognize in some people, an asset in the lives of graduates, but which makes some demands on them."
Dr. Marty is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School where he taught for 35 years and where the Martin Marty Center has since been founded to promote "public religion" endeavors. He is currently the Robert W. Woodruff visiting professor of Interdisciplinary Religious Studies at Emory University in Atlanta.
Marty is author of more than 50 books, including the three-volume "Modern American Religion" (University of Chicago Press). His "Righteous Empire" received the National Book Award, and his "Martin Luther" in the Penguin Lives series was published in February, 2004.
Marty writes the "M.E.M.O" column for the biweekly "Christian Century" magazine, on whose staff he has served since 1956. He also writes a weekly e-mail column, "Sightings," for the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago.
The West Point, Neb., native was ordained to the ministry in 1952 and served for a decade as a Lutheran parish pastor before joining the University of Chicago faculty in 1963. He and his wife, Harriet, a musician, live in Riverside, Ill., and have an extended family of seven children.
"Graduates Perspectives" will be given by undergraduates Daniel Umbel, Friendsville, Md., and Jennifer Brown, Tyrone, Pa.; Larry Yates, Maurertown, Va., an Adult Degree Completion Program graduate, and Jeffrey L. Nolt, Lancaster, M.A. an Education graduate.
EMU Baccalaureate Speaker Ruth-Anne Widemann.
Ruth-Anne Wideman will give the university baccalaureate address on the theme, "Love is Eternal," at 7 p.m. Saturday, Apr. 24, in Lehman Auditorium. Wideman, an assistant professor of physical education, has been an EMU faculty member since 1996. She has a B.A. degree from Messiah College, a B.Ed. from the University of Toronto and a masters degree in theological studies from Ontario Theological Seminary.
Grete Horst, Harrisonburg, and Eric Kennel, Lancaster, Pa., undergraduate senior class co-presidents, will give the salutation.
President and Mrs. Swartzendruber will host a reception for the graduates and their families at 9 p.m. in the Campus Center Greeting Hall.
In case of rain, commencement exercises will be held in the main arena of University Commons, which can accommodate 3,600 people. An announcement to that effect will be made by 11 a.m. that day on WEMC, 91.7 FM, and other area radio stations.
