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Pickering to Deliver Commencement Address at
Oglethorpe University
Atlanta - Sam Pickering, author and model
for the teacher in the movie “Dead Poets Society,” will address the
280 graduates of Oglethorpe University on Saturday, May 11, on the
Academic Quadrangle of the Peachtree Road campus. The ceremony will
begin at 9:30 a.m.
Pickering will deliver the commencement address,
“This Great Gift,” and will be presented with an honorary Doctor of
Letters degree. Previous honorary degree recipients at Oglethorpe
commencements have included Bernard Baruch, Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Herbert Lehman, Tom J. Watson, T. Woodrow Wilson, and more recently
Daniel Boorstin, Andrew Young, Anne Rivers Siddons, Billy Payne,
Karl Haas, Yoel Levi, Max Cleland and Zell Miller.
Pickering has written numerous books, articles
and essays in fields including eighteenth and nineteenth century
English literature, familiar essay, children’s literature, and
nature writers. His most recent books include “The Last Book,” “A
Little Fling,” “Deprived of Unhappiness,” “Living to Prowl,” and
“The Blue Caterpillar.” Pickering has been teaching English at
University of Connecticut since 1978. His professional career began
in 1970 when he taught at Dartmouth College after receiving degrees
from University of the South (Sewanee), Cambridge University and
Princeton. Pickering was born in Nashville, Tenn. in 1941.
Providing a superior education in the liberal arts, Oglethorpe
University is located in the heart of Brookhaven, just north of
Buckhead. The university is a highly selective, independent,
co-educational institution that enrolls approximately 1,200 students
each year. Oglethorpe’s students represent the best of their
graduating classes, with an average GPA above 3.6, and average SAT
above 1,200. Following graduation, students often go on to the best
graduate schools in the nation. Recent placements include Cambridge
University, Columbia University, Duke University, Harvard
University, Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University and Yale
University.
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