MURFREESBORO
— A special pair of MTSU alumni will be on hand Saturday, Dec. 13, to
celebrate with an estimated 1,799 students receiving their degrees in two fall
2014 commencement ceremonies inside Murphy Center.
Shane McFarland, the new mayor of Murfreesboro, is
the guest speaker for the university’s 9 a.m. commencement ceremony Dec. 13.
Ken Strickland, NBC News vice president and Washington,
D.C., bureau chief, will speak at the 2 p.m. ceremony.
Students
from the College of Graduate Studies, Basic and Applied Sciences, Jennings A.
Jones College of Business and the College of Education will receive their
degrees in the morning ceremony. That afternoon, students in the College of
Behavioral and Health Sciences, College of Liberal Arts, College of Mass
Communication and the University College will receive their degrees.
MTSU’s
commencement ceremonies are always free and open to the public. Friends,
families and supporters who can’t attend in person can watch each ceremony live
online via streaming video on Dec. 13.
The live
commencement coverage will begin about 15 minutes before each ceremony starts;
visit http://ow.ly/rwxOz for a link
to the video feed and more details.
MTSU’s
Registrar’s Office reported this week that 1,512 of the 1,799
students set to graduate Dec. 13 are undergraduates and 287 are graduate
students, including 270 master’s candidates, five education-specialist degree
recipients and 12 doctoral candidates. Another 13 students are set to receive undergraduate
certificates, and two more will receive graduate certificates.
McFarland, who has served on the Murfreesboro City Council
since 2006 and was elected mayor in mid-2014, earned his Bachelor of Arts in accounting
from MTSU in 1997. He also served the university as 1995-96 student body
president and is a member of the Blue Raider Athletic Association.
McFarland owns Shane McFarland Construction, a
custom residential and commercial construction firm, and is a member of the
Master Custom Builder Council of Tennessee. He also has served on many city
boards and commissions, including the Murfreesboro Planning Commission and the
Murfreesboro Historic Zoning Commission, and is a past chairman of the Rutherford
County Crime Stoppers and a founding member of the Murfreesboro Half Marathon.
Strickland earned his Bachelor of Science in mass
communication from MTSU in 1989. Before joining NBC News, he worked for WKRN-TV
in Nashville, WVTM-TV in Birmingham and CNN in Atlanta.
Strickland joined NBC
in April 1995 as an associate producer for "Dateline NBC." Quickly
rising through the ranks, he was named White House producer in June 1997, then
U.S. Senate producer and later deputy Washington bureau chief, managing the
day-to-day operation of the bureau and overseeing all aspects of NBC News'
coverage. Strickland became vice president and Washington bureau
chief in 2012 and currently oversees all bureau management, editorial
affairs and administration and works closely with NBC executives.
According to the MTSU Graduation Committee, all graduating
students are required to stay for their entire commencement ceremony. Each
ceremony may last up to three hours.
Graduation
information — including links to maps and driving directions to Murphy Center,
cap-and-gown information, official photographs and contacts for the Registrar’s
Office — is available anytime at http://www.mtsunews.com/graduation-info.
You also
can view a PDF of the complete 36-page Dec. 13 commencement program at http://ow.ly/Fb66h.
No comments:
Post a Comment