Brenau University will graduate a record 468 undergraduates and confer 285 graduate degrees during commencement ceremonies Friday and Saturday, May 9 and May 10, at the Northeast Georgia Mountain Center in Gainesville. In addition 15 occupational therapy students will receive combination bachelors and masters of sciences degrees, and the university will award its first fifth-year certificate in opera performance.

Brenau Women’s College graduates will receive their diplomas at the 6 p.m. ceremony Friday, May 9. All others will be honored at a 10 a.m. ceremony on Saturday, May 10.

Dean R. Hirsch, president and CEO of World Vision International, the $2 billion-a-year global partnership committed to serving the human needs of the world’s poor and which last year assisted some 100 million people. The agency has been in the news globally this week as a result of its work with victims of the devastating cyclone in Myanmar, a closed military dictatorship that frustrates all external relief efforts.

The 753 receiving undergraduate diplomas and graduate degrees from Brenau is the largest number of total Brenau degree conferees since 783 received diplomas in the 1988-89 academic year.  However, Brenau then awarded throughout the entire year. This year’s total marks the largest number conferred at any end-of-year graduation exercise at Brenau.

“Although we are justly proud of the record-breaking numbers of degrees and diplomas, we are even prouder of the people who will receive them,” said Brenau President Ed Schrader. “The 2008 class will be tomorrow’s leaders in business, healthcare, education, the arts and many other professions and, in large measure, part of who they are and what they will become will trace back to the quality of education they received at Brenau.”

Following a recent action by the university’s board of trustees to double enrollments in the next 15 years, the number of degrees Brenau awards each year will continue to increase. Schrader said the trustees’ approval of the framework for transforming the university into the premier private liberal arts institution in the Southeast also means that the university soon will begin conferring clinical and professional specialty doctorates and other advanced degrees.

 The basic foundation of Brenau’s strategic plan is to become an internationally recognized academic leader in the southeastern United States with establishment of several doctoral degree programs and expansion of many existing graduate degree programs. The plan envisions doubling enrollment at the university to about 5,000 students by 2025 through the addition of new graduate and undergraduate degree programs; shortening the path for students between college admission and advanced graduate degrees; and enriching cross-discipline curriculum based on four “portals of learning” that will become the model for liberal arts education in the future.

Honorees in Brenau University’s 129th commencement completed their studies in all three of the university’s divisions – the Women’s College, the Online College and the Weekend and Evening College with operations in Gainesville, Atlanta, Augusta and Kings Bay. 

About 15 percent of those who will receive diplomas at the Brenau commencement, 112 total, completed their studies through the Online College, which has grown steadily since the first 29 received diplomas in the 2002-03 academic year.  

One is Camerata Matchett, of Sneads Ferry, N.C. wife of U.S. Marine Sgt. Sibley Matchett III, who has completed two tours in Iraq, and the mother of three children. She’d attended Evening and Weekend classes on the Kings Bay campus, but realized after moving to North Carolina that she was one course shy of graduation, so she took it online. Now she is working online toward an M.B.A. in healthcare management. 

Schrader said the commencement speaker, Dean Hirsch, is “a perfect choice for Brenau and a very timely one” with the university’s emphasis on preparing students for extraordinary roles in global citizenship and World Vision’s role in helping victims of this week’s devastating cyclone in Myanmar, which has left thousands dead and millions in need of food, shelter, potable water and medical attention. World Vision was one of the first relief agencies granted access to the closed military dictatorship. 

Prior to his 1996 appointment as international president for the relief organization, Hirsch served World Vision as chief operating officer, vice president for development and vice president for relief operations. He has worked in the United States, Africa and Europe and visited virtually all of the 98 nations in which World Vision works. He joined the organization in 1976.