UNIVERSITY PARK – Penn State’s University Park campus will hold its Fall 2006 commencement ceremonies for approximately 2,907 associate, baccalaureate and graduate degree students on Dec. 22.
The 10 a.m. undergraduate ceremony will be held in the Bryce Jordan Center for the College of Agricultural Sciences, The Smeal College of Business, the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, the College of Engineering and the College of Information Sciences and Technology.
The 1:30 p.m. undergraduate ceremony, also in the Bryce Jordan Center, will be held for the College of Arts and Architecture, the College of Communications, the College of Education, the College of Health and Human Development, the College of the Liberal Arts, the Eberly College of Science, and associate degree recipients.
Graduate degrees will be awarded at 5 p.m. in Eisenhower Auditorium.
John R. Horner, regents’ professor and curator of paleontology for the Museum of the Rockies at Montana State University in Bozeman, Mont., and famed consultant for Hollywood’s “Jurassic Park” films, will receive an honorary doctoral degree from the University and speak at the 10 a.m. undergraduate ceremony.
In the 1970s, Horner and fellow paleontologist Bob Makela were the first to find evidence of parental care by dinosaurs. The team discovered a large number of dinosaur nests containing fossils of a duckbilled dinosaur in Montana. After examining how the nests were organized and determining there would have been a lack of vegetation in the area of the nests, Horner was able to surmise that the mother dinosaurs must have provided for and protected their young until they were old enough to leave the nests and be independent foragers. Based on this evidence, Horner and Makela named the new dinosaur Maiasaura, meaning “good mother lizards.”
Horner is likely best known for supporting the contested theory that Tyrannosaurus rex was an obligate scavenger, rather than a predatory killer. Upon finding the largest T. rex to date — estimated to have weighed between 10 and 13 tons — Horner also discovered five other T. rex fossils, which indicate that the dinosaurs may have been moving as a pack when they died. Horner postulates this type of communal movement is suggestive of scavenger behavior, rather than the long-suspected predatory behavior.
President Graham B. Spanier will speak at the 1:30 p.m. ceremony. Henry C. “Hank” Foley, newly appointed dean of Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology, will speak at the Graduate School Ceremony.
As of early December, 2,907 students are scheduled to receive degrees at the University Park ceremonies. That figure includes 12 associate degrees, 2,338 baccalaureate degrees, 351 master’s and 206 doctorate degrees.
Systemwide Penn State will graduate a total of 4,511 students — approximately 303 with associate degrees, 3356 with baccalaureate degrees, 841 with graduate degrees and 11 with juris doctorates.