A Cool Beginning

Commencement 2003 took place under cool grey skies in this unseasonably chilly May. (Pause for a chorus of “How cold was it?”) It was cold enough that the bookstore did a land-office business in Moravian sweatshirts and throws, while the HUB sold 550 cups of hot chocolate. But at least it didn’t rain. This was no repeat of the deluge of 2002.

Other than its March-like weather, this year’s Commencement was notable for:

• Its size. There were 328 undergraduates (compared with 281 in 2002), including a hearty 63 recipients of the Bachelor of Science (compared with 36 in 2002). Fourteen M.B.A. degrees were awarded, as well as eight in the new Master of Education curriculum, a degree program for working teachers.

• Its awards. Twenty-four students received Honors for research projects submitted in their majors, including a rare entry in philosophy. Edward C. Schultz ’62, a high school history teacher retired from the Parkland School District in Allentown, established a new prize in history that carries a generous $1,000 annual award. The first went to Stacie Roos, who spent last summer in South Africa working for an alternative newspaper and researching an Honors project on rape, one of the least-studied aftereffects of the apartheid system. Two more new awards were established for the School of Nursing.

• Its honorees. The College gave honorary doctorates to Margaret McClure ’61 and Walter Turnbull, founder and director of the Boys Choir of Harlem. The Seminary honored Wallace M. Alston Jr., who founded the Pastoral-Theologian Program of the Center for Theological Inquiry in Princeton, N.J., and the Rev. Virginia Goodman, the first woman of African descent to be appointed a deacon in the Moravian Church.