The College of Engineering Spring 2012 graduation ceremony took place on Wednesday, May 9, with over 260 engineering graduates participating in the ceremony. A group of approximately 2500 parents, friends and relatives attended the event, which took place in Thompson-Boling Arena on the UT-Knoxville campus at 11:30 a.m.

Dr. Wayne T. Davis, dean of engineering, and Dr. Susan Martin, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, provost, led the academic procession that signaled the beginning of the ceremony. The procession included associate deans, department heads and faculty representatives.

Dr. Thom Mason, the director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and president and CEO of UT-Battelle, was the commencement speaker. Dr. Mason received his Ph.D. from McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario, Canada. He joined ORNL in 1998 as scientific director for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) project. Dr. Mason was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2001, a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2007, and a Fellow of the Neutron Scattering Society of America in 2010.

The college’s top students, Karl Christian Bentjen, a computer engineering major; Emmabeth Parrish, a materials science and engineering major; and Jonathan Phillips Weigand, a civil engineering major, were recognized. In addition to the commencement activities, the event also featured an ROTC ceremony, where Lt. Colonel Brian Delamater, a professor of aerospace studies at UT, officially commissioned five COE graduates into the U.S. Air Force. The new second lieutenants are Shaun Brennan Hooker, Justin Tyler Knott, Michael W. Peterson, Eric Stephen Roe and David Clinton Spencer.

In recent years, the university’s colleges have been conferring diplomas during smaller, more individualized graduation events. For more information, contact Kim Cowart, Communications Director, at (865) 974-0686/kcowart@utk.edu.

For more information, contact Kim Cowart, Communications Director, Office of Engineering Communications, at (865) 974-0686/kcowart@utk.edu.