LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Bellarmine University will award more than 280 degrees during its annual December commencement exercises Wednesday, December 17. The graduate(s) with the highest cumulative grade point average will receive the Archbishop’s Medal of Scholastic Excellence. Ceremonies begin at 5 p.m. in Knights Hall, with a commencement address from the Rt. Rev. Edwin F. Gulick Jr, the Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of Kentucky.
The university will recognize the Rt. Rev. Gulick with an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree.
"Bishop Gulick is a living embodiment of the spirit of Thomas Merton, an ordinary man whose very ordinariness has become extraordinary," said Bellarmine University President Joseph J. McGowan, who will present the honorary degree. "We are proud to honor him because there is no higher honor or anything that touches the divine quite so much as living an ordinary life in an extraordinary way."
Gulick, a graduate of Lynchburg College in Virginia, and Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1974. He served in various churches in Maryland and Virginia before becoming the bishop of the Diocese of Kentucky in 1993.
Bellarmine University is an independent Catholic university offering more than 50 majors, as well as graduate degree programs and a doctor of physical therapy. Forbes magazine and the Princeton Review rank Bellarmine among America’s best colleges, and U.S. News and World Report consistently ranks Bellarmine as a top tier university.
-end-