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Greensboro College to host Commencement, Baccalaureate Ceremonies

by Matthew Johnson

Greensboro, NC (04/23/2024) — Greensboro College is pleased to share that it will host its Baccalaureate/Cap and Gown and Commencement Ceremonies for the 2023-2024 Academic Year on May 3 and May 4, respectively.


The Baccalaureate/Cap and Gown Ceremony will be held at 5 p.m. on May 3 in the Gail Brower Huggins Performance Center in the college's Odell Building. Commencement will take place at 10 a.m. on May 4 on the front of the college's campus.


If heavy rain or severe weather is forecast on May 4, Greensboro College will invoke its rain plan, and Commencement will be held in the Gail Brower Huggins Performance Center.


Both ceremonies will be live-streamed, and the links to view each these events will be available on the morning of the events on the Greensboro College YouTube channel and website.


The Baccalaureate/Cap and Gown Ceremony is a time-honored tradition at Greensboro College. This is an opportunity for graduating students to pay respect to someone they feel has assisted them in completing their degrees.

The guest speaker for Greensboro College's Baccalaurate/Cap and Gown Ceremony will be Bishop Kenneth H. Carter, Jr., who is the resident bishop of the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church. Along with the Cabinet at Greensboro College, he gives pastoral and administrative leadership to over 900 congregations, fresh expressions of church, campus ministries, and outreach initiatives in an episcopal area that stretches across the 44 western counties of the state.

Bishop Carter served as the president of the Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church from 2018-2020, and he was one of three moderators of The Commission on a Way Forward, from 2016 to 2018. In addition to his responsibilities with the Western North Carolina Conference, he is bishop-in-residence and a consulting faculty member at Duke University Divinity School. He served as bishop of the Florida Conference from 2012-2022.

Bishop Carter is the author of nineteen books, most recently Unrelenting Grace (Abingdon, 2023) and a memoir, God Will Make a Way (Abingdon, 2021). He has also written two books on the Fresh Expressions movement with Audrey Warren: Fresh Expressions: A New Kind of Methodist Church (Abingdon, 2017), and Fresh Expressions of People Over Property (Abingdon, 2020). His editorials have appeared in the Charlotte Observer, Greensboro News and Record, and Winston-Salem Journal, and his commentary on Christianity in the United States has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and on National Public Radio.

Commencement celebrates the completion of degrees of Greensboro College students who have graduated during the spring 2023 semester. Students who graduate in August or December are invited to participate in Commencement ceremonies.

The guest speaker for Greensboro College's Commencement Ceremony will be the Reverend Frederick A. Davie '78, D.H.L (Hon.) '24.

Rev. Davie is a 1978 graduate of Greensboro College, where he received the Harold H. Hutson Award, graduated on the Dean's List, and served as the President of the Student Government Association, the first African American to be elected to this position. Rev. Davie is also a graduate of Yale Divinity School with a Master of Divinity degree. At Yale, he was a Benjamin Elijah Mays Fellow of The Fund for Theological Education and President of Yale Black Seminarians.

For more than a decade, Rev. Davie was Executive Vice President of Union Theological Seminary, where he now holds the position of Senior Strategic Advisor to the President. He's also served as President and CEO of Public/Private Ventures, program director at the Ford Foundation, Deputy Borough President of Manhattan, Chief of Staff to a Deputy Mayor and Deputy Executive Director of the New York City Mission Society. He is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church USA, a Senior Fellow at Interfaith America, and on the board of the Interfaith Center of New York.

Rev. Davie serves as Vice Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bi-partisan federal advisory agency focused on foreign policy and religious freedom abroad. He is Chairman of the New York State Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, appointed by Governor Kathy Hochul.

He was appointed by President Barack Obama to the White House Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships; gave a keynote address at a White House conference at the invitation of President Barack Obama to the White House Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships; gave a keynote address at a White House conference at the invitation of President George W. Bush. He was appointed Chairman of the civilian police oversight board (Civilian Complaint Review Board) in New York City and served as a Commissioner on the NYC Racial Justice Commission.

For complete details of Greensboro College's Baccalaureate and Commencement ceremonies, these can be accessed at: https://www.greensboro.edu/student-life/commencement/

Greensboro College provides a liberal arts education grounded in the traditions of the United Methodist Church and fosters the intellectual, social, and, spiritual development of all students while supporting their individual needs.

Founded in 1838 and located in downtown Greensboro, the college enrolls about 1,000 students from 29 states and territories, the District of Columbia, and seven foreign countries in its undergraduate liberal-arts program and six master's degree programs. In addition to rigorous academics and a well-supported Honors program, the school features a 17-sport NCAA Division III athletic program and dozens of service and recreational opportunities.

Learn more at www.greensboro.edu.

Think critically. Act justly. Live faithfully.

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Greensboro College seniors prior to Commencement in May of 2023.

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