Graduation for Jeff

December 9, 2009 - OSU Graduation at St. John's Arena. My student, Jeff Morawetz, finished his Ph.D. this quarter and was awarded his diploma and hood at the graduation ceremony.





Jeff with his parents.












Here I am with my now former student. Congratulations, Jeff!










Jeff did his PhD dissertation on the parasitic plant genus Alectra, which occurs primarily in Africa. Jeff did a lot of fieldwork all over Africa and Madagascar, including two memorable trips with me in South Africa and Lesotho. If I ever find myself lacking material for a blog post, I should dig through my slides from 2001 and 2003 and post some trip reports from those two field seasons. They were gems!











Prior to the ceremony, the students and faculty gather in the field house to line up. There were so many people there, and this is just a small subset of the total that goes through graduation in the spring. That ceremony is usually held in the horseshoe (the football stadium, which isn't a horseshoe shape anymore).





Students file into their seats first and then the pomp and circumstance happens for the faculty. We had to walk all around the arena to parade the academic regalia for all to see.








Yep, quite a show.










President Gordon Gee addressed the students first, then we had the commencement address, some more talking by Gordon Gee, the honorary degrees and distinguished staff awards, and then the PhD students filed up to the stage to receive their hoods and diplomas.








This is the faculty lining up to hood their PhD students.










Jeff is the tallest one in this frame.











The hooding took only seconds before Jeff went on stage to receive his diploma. He's now at a postdoc at University of Michigan, working with Paul Berry. Jeff will be doing a lot of fieldwork in Africa for his postdoc. Congrats, Jeff.