Misericordia’s Commencement Slated for May 13th

Misericordia’s Commencement Slated for May 13^th

Professors formally from Boston College and currently at Notre Dame to speak to Misericordia graduates

Misericordia University's spring commencement is on Saturday, May 13, with separate undergraduate and graduate commencement ceremonies held at the Anderson Sports and Health Center on the university's scenic campus in Dallas, PA. The graduate commencement ceremony will be held at 10:00 a.m. with keynote speaker Mary C. Boys, SNJM, from Union Theological Seminary, New York City. The undergraduate ceremony will be held at 2:00 p.m. with keynote speaker R. Scott Appleby, Professor of History and the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame.

The graduate ceremony, with 126 eligible graduates, will honor Mary C. Boys, SNJM, with a Doctor of Humane Letters degree, during the ceremony, and she will deliver her keynote speech to the graduates. Sr. Boys, a Seattle native, is the Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary, New York City, and its former Academic Vice President and Dean. Having previously served as a professor at Boston College, she is the author of six books, including Redeeming our Sacred Story: The Death of Jesus and Relations between Jews and Christians; she is also editor or co-editor of four other books as well as numerous articles and reviews. Sr. Boys received honorary doctorates from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, The Catholic Theological Union, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and Gratz College. She has been a vowed member of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, a congregation of Roman Catholic women since 1968. She received her master's and doctoral degrees from Columbia University in 1978 in a joint program with Union Theological Seminary. She has done advanced study at the Ecumenical Institute for Theological Research in Jerusalem, Israel. She is the recipient of honorary doctorates from Hebrew College-Jewish Institute of Religion (2004), The Catholic Theological Union (2007), The Jewish Theological Seminary of America (2011), and Gratz College (2012).

Sr. Boys is the author of six books: Biblical Interpretation in Religious Education (1980), Educating in Faith: Maps and Visions (1989), Jewish-Christian Dialogue: One Woman’s Experience (1997), Has God Only One Blessing? Judaism as a Source of Christian Self-Understanding (2000), Christians and Jews in Dialogue: Learning in the Presence of the Other (2006), co-authored with Sara S. Lee; and Redeeming our Sacred Story: The Death of Jesus and Relations between Jews and Christians (2013).  Her edited books include Seeing Judaism Anew: A Sacred Obligation of Christians (2005) and the co-edited volume Christ Jesus and the Jewish People Today (2011). She has also been published in numerous books and journals.

During the undergraduate ceremony, with 246 eligible graduates, a Doctor of Humane Letters degree will be presented to R. Scott Appleby, a Professor of History and the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame.

Previously Appleby directed Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. The author or editor of 15 books, Appleby examines the ways religions and religiously inspired actors shape and are shaped by modern ideas, institutions, practices and conflicts. His publications include The Ambivalence of the Sacred Religion, Violence and Reconciliation, The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding, and the five volumes of the The Fundamentalism Project (University of Chicago Press), which he edited with Martin E. Marty.  Appleby has also written extensively about American religious history, Catholicism in the United States, and strategic peacebuilding around the world.  Among other media appearances, he was called to offer public commentary on 9/11 and on the clergy sexual abuse crisis in Roman Catholicism. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Appleby is the recipient of four honorary degrees.

The ceremony will be available live on the university’s YouTube channel. For more information on Misericordia University's spring commencement events, please visit the commencement section of the university's website by clicking here.