1780 – The Official Blog of Transylvania University

1780 | The Official Blog of Transylvania University

Largest graduating class in Transylvania’s 228-year history will receive degrees Saturday, May 24

LEXINGTON, Ky.—A record 259 seniors will receive the Bachelor of Arts degree during Transylvania’s Commencement exercises on Saturday, May 24, at 10 a.m. in front of historic Old Morrison. (The rain location is the Clive M. Beck Center). The previous largest class was 257 in 2004.

John Churchill, secretary of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, will deliver the commencement address and graduating senior Lucienne Hartmann, a political science and psychology major with a women’s studies minor, will speak on behalf of the students.

Churchill was educated at Rhodes College, where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, at Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar and at Yale University, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in 1978.

Churchill was formerly vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college at Hendrix College, where he also served as professor of philosophy and twice as interim president. In the 1970s, he served as assistant American secretary to the Rhodes Scholarship Trust and has been active since that time in the selection of Rhodes scholars.

His scholarly interests include the philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and David Hume, as well as topics in the history of philosophy, the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of liberal education. He has published several dozen articles in these and related fields.

Churchill’s professional activities have included membership on the Board of Directors of the American Conference of Academic Deans and the Arkansas Endowment for the Humanities, founding head of the Arkansas Governor’s School’s Area II, service as chair of the Council of Deans of the Associated Colleges of the South and editorial work for “The Thomist,” “The Southern Journal of Philosophy,” “The International Philosophical Quarterly” and “Choice” magazine. He was a Danforth Foundation associate, a program review panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities and for 13 years a North Central Association consultant/evaluator and team chair.

For more information, please call the public relations office at (859) 233-8120.