Ball State to graduate nearly 1,300 students July 21 at summer commencement ceremony

Topics: College of Sciences and Humanities, Administrative

July 9, 2007

Herbert Stahlke, a Ball State emeritus professor of English, will urge students to embrace unexpected challenges when he addresses the summer 2007 graduates during their July 21 commencement.

Stahlke, winner of the university's 2006 Outstanding Faculty Award, will give the keynote address "Unexpected Challenges: Global Language in the 21st Century" to nearly 1,300 graduating students at the Worthen Arena ceremonies.

Ball State's summer commencement recognizes students who have completed their degree requirements by the end of the second summer session. The ceremony begins at 10 a.m. and should last about two hours. No tickets are required.

The university will award 66 associate degrees, 697 bachelor's degrees, 468 master's degrees and 24 doctoral or specialist in education degrees.

In recent years, Ball State's annual Outstanding Faculty Award recipient has delivered the keynote speech during the following summer's graduation ceremonies. Stahlke received the award in August 2006 during the fall faculty meeting.

Ball State President Jo Ann M. Gora will introduce Stahlke and then will conclude the ceremony with brief remarks to the graduating students and their families and friends.

Stahlke, who joined the Ball State faculty in 1980, has specialized in African linguistics, historical and comparative linguistics, phonology and the history of English. In addition, he taught 24 different linguistics courses throughout his career, and he often inspired undergraduates and graduates to take more linguistics courses and even to minor in the academic field.

Stahlke had been at the heart of Ball State's language and linguistics area since its inception. He founded the Intensive English Institute in 198l, reorganized the master's programs and established the doctoral program in applied linguistics. These graduate programs are the largest in the English department and among the most successful in the university. For more than two years he was the department's director of graduate programs, serving more than 120 students in seven master's and three doctoral programs.

He received his master's and doctorate degrees in linguistics from the University of California Los Angeles.

Starting at 9:15 a.m., undergraduate and master's students should assemble in the concourse level of Worthen Arena at Gate 3. Doctoral and specialist in education candidates as well as participating faculty and professional staff should line up in the lower lobby of the arena by the ticket office.

For more information about commencement, go to www.bsu.edu/commencement or contact Sharon Woodruff, commencement coordinator, at (765) 285-1689.