The May commencement honors the 465 day semester students and 29 physician assistant graduate students who are eligible to graduate. The Marina Christensen Justice Award, recognizing a graduating student who has demonstrated a dedication to community service and has reached out to disadvantaged communities, will be presented. This year’s student speaker representing the Class of 2012 will be Kathy DeKrey.

The Commencement speaker on Saturday is Naomi Tutu, daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. An international scholar, speaker, and human rights advocate, Ms. Tutu has served as a development consultant in West Africa and a program coordinator for programs on race and gender and gender-based violence in education at the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town. She has also taught at the Universities of Hartford and Connecticut and Brevard College. In addition, she is a consultant to the Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence, founded by renowned author Riane Eisler and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Betty Williams, and the Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Both Tutu and Bishop Zephania Kameeta, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Republic of Namibia, will receive honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees at Saturday’s Commencement ceremony. Serving as a pastor and then as deputy speaker of the National Assembly before being ordained Bishop in 2002, Kameeta has been a prominent church leader in the African struggle for independence and an advocate for women and victims of HIV/AIDS in Africa.

The Commencement on July 1 honors Weekend College, Rochester, and graduate students in six programs. Master’s degree graduates include those in education, leadership, nursing, business administration (MBA) and social work.

Friday, May 4, 8 p.m., Hoversten Chapel, Foss Center

The Augsburg Choir performs their Bon Voyage concert before departing for a tour of the West Coast, May 6-17. This concert is free and open to the public

May 5 Commencement schedule:

8:45 a.m., Baccalaureate in Hoversten Chapel

11 a.m., Commencement Ceremony in Si Melby Hall

12:30 p.m., Department receptions at various locations on campus

Go to the for complete information.

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Katie Edelen ’11 [right] arrived at Augsburg intent on becoming a doctor and helping people in war-torn countries. Following her junior year of college she traveled to Chennai, India to shadow doctors in government hospitals and work with a doctor who brought internal medicine services to refugee camps, slums, and villages.

In India, she began to see the effects of peoples’ actions on the environment. “What really spoke to me were all the people who had been exposed to water-borne, preventable diseases because of unsafe sanitary conditions,” she recalls. She saw that issues related to health, education, poverty, and social justice were connected to environmental problems.

This experience led Edelen to pursue other opportunities centered on water and its role in society. She took a course on environmental and river politics led by environmental studies professor Joe Underhill Cady. She also traveled to Uganda and worked with villagers on water access and conservation, even starting a “safe water and hygiene club” in the primary school.

Edeln received a Fulbright research fellowship and will work at the Peace Research Institute Oslo researching the correlation between armed conflict and water hazards and scarcity. Following her time in Norway, she will pursue graduate work in environmental studies at Oxford on a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship.

Similar to her friend, Kathy DeKrey ’12 [left] came to Augsburg wanting to find a way to help people who live in toxic areas. In her first year of school, she took the Environmental Connections course. “On the first day we talked about how the environment is everything, even the things that destroy nature. I was so angry because I thought that’s not true!” As she went through the program, she realized the value of being able to look at issues in that way.

DeKrey traveled to Portland, Ore. and Vancouver, BC with the Sustainable Cities in North America class and began to realize how complicated the environmental movement can be. “I saw gentrification at horrible levels that didn’t even seem real, and next to it was this amazing sustainable city,” she says. She says she wondered how some citizens felt pride in their sustainable habits and environments when others were digging through the garbage and selling trash to each other.

Throughout the program, DeKrey says she has learned that in order to make change in an area, it is important to have an open dialogue and honor what all parties bring to the discussion. As a project for one class, DeKrey worked on writing the environmental history of Minneapolis’ Midtown Greenway. “Writing this history has helped me realize how in my work as an environmental activist moving forward listening and understanding the needs of everyone involved is more important than your own agenda,” she says.

In 2011, DeKrey received a Udall Scholarship, named for U.S. Representative Morris K. Udall. The scholarship is awarded to students committed to careers related to the environment, tribal public policy, or Native American health care.

After college, DeKrey plans to study environmental and public interest law. “I want to help the people who don’t have power in our system regain a safe place to live that isn’t full of toxins. I think it’s important to empower people to do things that they think are important,” she says.

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