A traditional meeting of youth, knowledge and excellence, this fall's graduation ceremony takes place on Sunday, October 31 at the National Arts Centre, where more than 1,200 students will graduate.
The University will also confer honorary doctorates to two eminent personalities in the fields of literature and astrophysics: John Ralston Saul and Hubert Reeves.
The University of Ottawa will highlight John Ralston Saul's active work in promoting a diverse, bilingual Canada. An award-winning essayist and novelist, his writing seeks out a new humanism through what he calls responsible individualism. His novels and philosophical works have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Saul is founder and honorary chair of Le français pour l'avenir / French for the Future and chair of the advisory board of the LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium.
By conferring an honorary degree to Hubert Reeves, the University is highlighting the exceptional career of not only an astrophysicist and cosmologist, but also a populariser. Currently director of research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in France, Reeves has made this subject accessible to the public through several mainstream books on cosmology. He has received numerous honours for his research, which has focused on thermonuclear reactions inside stars, the origin and development of free energy in the universe and the density of matter.
As part of the event, two outstanding students will receive the Governor General's Gold Medal from the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies: Seung-Hwan Lee in the Sciences, and Emma Stodel in the Humanities. During the fall convocation, 265 master's and 22 doctoral degrees will be granted.
