Congratulations, Graduates of 2016

College of Arts and Sciences

Lewis & Clark held this year’s ceremony in a new venue, Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Portland’s Rose Quarter. The new site enabled the college to better accommodate the graduating class’ large number of family members and well-wishers.

Commencement: May 7

Degree awarded: BA

Number of graduates: 418

Guest speaker: Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for the New York Times and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. Born in Chicago, Kristof grew up on a farm near Yamhill, Oregon. He graduated from Harvard College and won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. He later studied Arabic in Cairo and Chinese in Taipei. After joining the New York Times in 1984, initially covering economics, he served as a correspondent in Los Angeles and as bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo. Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, until recently also a Times journalist, are authors of four best-selling books, the latest of which is A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity.

School of Law

Commencement: May 28

Degrees awarded: JD; LLM in animal law; and LLM and MSL in environmental, natural resources, and energy law.

Number of graduates: 201

Guest speaker: Heidi Heitkamp JD ’80, U.S. senator from North Dakota. Heitkamp served as North Dakota’s attorney general from 1993 to 2001. Formerly the director of the Dakota Gasification Company’s synthetic fuels plant, she has a long record in the energy industry. She sits on five Senate committees: Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry; Indian Affairs; Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; and Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

Graduate School of Education and Counseling

Commencement: June 5

Degrees awarded in the fields of: marriage, couple, and family therapy; professional mental health counseling, including addictions; student affairs administration; teaching; curriculum and instruction; school counseling; school psychology; and administration and leadership.

Number of graduates: 220

Guest speaker: Kevin Kumashiro, dean of the School of Education at the University of San Francisco. Kumashiro is a leading expert on educational policy, school reform, teacher preparation, and educational equity and social justice, with a wide-ranging list of accomplishments nationally and internationally as a scholar, educator, leader, and advocate. He is an award-winning author and editor of 10 books on education and social justice.