Ron Hansen, distinguished author and Santa Clara University professor, has been chosen to give the commencement address at Loyola's 157th commencement exercises on Saturday, May 16, to be held at Baltimore's 1st Mariner Arena.
Mr. Hansen went to a Jesuit high school and holds a bachelor's degree from Creighton University, also a Jesuit institution, which is in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. He then spent two years as a lieutenant in the army during the Vietnam War.
After leaving the army he earned his MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa. He later held a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship at Stanford University. He is currently the Gerard Manley Hopkins professor in the Arts and Humanities department at Santa Clara, where he earned an M.A. in Spirituality.
He teaches courses such as Fiction Writing, Screenwriting, Writing in the Community, The Bible as Literature, Contemporary Literature, and The 20th Century American Short Story.
Mr. Hansen has written numerous books, including Exiles, where he focused on 19th century Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Mariette in Ecstasy, which earned the fiction prize from the Bay Area Reviewers Association and the Gold Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California.
His other honors include a National Book Award nomination for Atticus, which is about the bond between a father and son who died mysteriously in a Mexican town, as well as several PEN/Faulkner Award nominations. He frequently writes about the Old West, mixing history with morality and drama.
He has also received fellowships from the Michigan Society of Fellows, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Lyndhurst Foundation and was presented with an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
In addition to being an accomplished author, he is also an ordained deacon of the Catholic Church and has published a compilation of essays on faith and fiction and the children's book, The Shadowmaker.
"Ron Hansen is one of the country's leading contemporary Catholic writers, and much of his fiction explores themes of spirituality in the modern world that I believe are very relevant to our students," Fr. Linnane said.
The Commencement Committee, which included students as well as deans and administrators from various parts of the Loyola community, decided to recommend Ron Hansen to Father Linane as the speaker for this year's graduation.
After weeks of discussing thirty possible speakers, which were selected out of a pool of hundreds of names recommended by students throughout the year, the committee decided Mr. Hansen would be a good choice.
It is believed that because of Mr. Hansen's expertise in Gerard Manley Hopkins and his education in Jesuit institutions, he will be able to offer this year's graduating class a unique perspective on Loyola's mission as a Jesuit college and give students a meaningful message as they leave Loyola to begin the next phase of their lives.
"He reflects Jesuit and Catholic values that the college promotes," said David Sears, vice president of advancement and head of the commencement committee. "He can speak to our students in a variety of ways. He is an author and ordained speaker. He is almost the renaissance man of today," continued Sears.
One of the ways the class of '09 will be able to connect with Mr. Hansen is through his well-known book, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which inspired the movie written and directed by Andrew Dominic, released 2007 and starred Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck. Hansen also wrote his own screenplay for the 1996 adaptation of his novel, Mariette in Ectasy.
In addition to delivering the commencement address, Mr. Hansen will also receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree, a formal tradition practiced by colleges and universities across the country, to honor him as a part of the Loyola Alumni family.
Mr. Hansen's speech will follow a trend of well-known, accomplished people speaking at the college in previous years' graduation ceremonies.
Journalist Lesley Stahl spoke to the class of 2008, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham spoke in 2007, and sports broadcaster Bob Costas delivered the address to the class of 2006.
About 800 undergraduate degrees and over 800 graduate degrees will be presented during the commencement exercises, set to begin at 11:00 a.m., May 16.
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