UNL commencement exercises are Dec. 18-19 for 1,400-plus

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln fall commencement exercises are scheduled for Dec. 18 and 19.

Graduate commencement exercises, including doctoral hooding, will begin at 3 p.m. Dec. 18 for students earning doctoral and master's degrees. Undergraduate exercises will begin at 9:30 a.m. Dec. 19. Both Ceremonies will be at the Bob Devaney Sports Center. The College of Law will have a separate hooding and commencement ceremony at 1 p.m. Dec. 18 in Ross McCollum Hall, East Campus Loop and Fair Street.

More than 1,400 students will receive degrees. Chancellor Harvey Perlman will preside at both events at the Devaney Center and confer the degrees at the Law College ceremony. Anna Shavers, interim dean of the college, will preside at the law ceremony.

Paul A. Johnsgard, foundation professor of biological sciences emeritus at UNL, will receive an honorary doctor of science degree and deliver the undergraduate commencement address, "Life after Graduation Is a Lot Like Zoology 101." Margaret Jacobs, professor of history and director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at UNL, will deliver the address at the graduate-degree ceremony. John M. Gerrard, justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court, will address the Law College graduates.

Johnsgard served as a UNL faculty member from 1961 until 2001, and was a foundation regents professor at the time of his retirement. He was the first UNL faculty member to win the Distinguished Teaching Award, the Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Award, and a Regent's Professorship. He continues to be an active emeritus professor.

Owner of a substantial national and international reputation as a leading ornithologist and author, Johnsgard published his first book in 1965 and his most recent, published in 2007, was his 50th. He is also a well-known artist whose drawings, paintings and sculptures of wildlife are widely admired. During his years as a UNL professor, he supervised many graduate students and taught both animal behavior and ornithology to thousands of students.

Jacobs, who joined the UNL faculty in 2004, recently published her second book, "White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940" (University of Nebraska Press, 2009). Her first book, "Engendered Encounters: Feminism and Pueblo Cultures, 1879-1934" (NU Press, 1999), won three awards.

She was a Fulbright scholar in Australia in 2001 and had a visiting fellowship in the summer of 2008 at the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at the Australian National University in Canberra. The winner of grants from the Spencer Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Jacobs regularly teaches classes on women's history, the history of the American West, and comparative colonialism. Before coming to UNL, she was on the faculty at New Mexico State University from 1997 to 2004. She earned her bachelor's degree at Stanford University and her master's and doctoral degrees at the University of California, Davis.

Gerrard assumed office as Nebraska Supreme Court justice July 6, 1995. He earned his bachelor's degree at Nebraska Wesleyan University (1976), a master's in public administration at the University of Arizona (1977) and his juris doctorate at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific (1981). He was in private practice in Norfolk from 1981 to 1995 and was city attorney for Battle Creek from 1982 to 1995.

Handicap-accessible shuttle buses will be available for easy access to the Devaney Center entrance and handicap permit parking will be available on the north side of the building.

Both ceremonies are free and open to the public, and tickets are not required. The ceremonies will be Web-streamed live from the Devaney Center through a link at the UNL Web site (www.unl.edu).

A drop-off area for graduates and mobility-restricted guests will be available on the south side of the Devaney Center. Closed captioning for hearing-impaired individuals will be provided through the HuskerVision screens. Reserved seats for guests who are ambulatory restricted will be available next to the stage on the arena floor (Dec. 19 only, seats will also be available in Section B-11). Guests in wheelchairs will be seated on the northeast corner of the arena floor.

Because of security concerns, parcels, handbags and camera bags will be subject to search.