SWT prepares for winter commencement

SAN MARCOS, TEXAS — An Emmy Award-winning director and the head of Southwest Texas State University’s nationally recognized Geography Department will be the keynote speakers at three commencement ceremonies Dec. 22 and 23 on the SWT campus.

Thomas Carter, a three-time winner of the prestigious Emmy Award for television directing, will deliver the undergraduate commencement address at two ceremonies to be held Saturday, Dec. 23, at SWT’s Strahan Coliseum.

Degree candidates from the colleges of Education, Fine Arts and Communication, and Liberal Arts will attend the 9:30 a.m. ceremony. Candidates from the colleges of Applied Arts, Business Administration, Health Professions, and Science will attend the 2 p.m. ceremony. A total of 1,503 students are candidates for bachelor’s degrees at SWT this winter.

Carter, a distinguished alumnus of SWT, has been nominated for six Emmy Awards. He received the 1998 Emmy for outstanding television movie for Don King: Only in America and was twice awarded the Emmy as best director of a dramatic series for episodes of Equal Justice, a series he co-created and produced.

Carter is a native of Smithville, Texas, and a 1973 graduate of SWT in theatre arts. While on campus, he helped found the Ebony Players, a troupe that once performed Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun for President Lyndon Johnson and his guests at the LBJ Ranch.

Lawrence Estaville, chair and professor of geography at SWT, will deliver the commencement address for the Graduate College at a ceremony beginning at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 22, in Strahan Coliseum.

Estaville has been a member of the SWT faculty since 1994. He was hired to lead the establishment of the geography Ph.D. program, which began in 1996 as the university’s first doctoral program. Through his leadership, the Geography Department has also established a master of science program, an undergraduate pre-major program and the first internet master’s degree in geographic education in the world.

Two hundred eighty-four students are candidates for graduate degrees at SWT this winter.