People from the worlds of sports, academia and entertainment are among those participating in commencement ceremonies this month at Catholic colleges in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.Tommy Lasorda, retired Hall of Fame manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, will be the commencement speaker at Marymount College’s May 12 ceremony, where the first group of students who have completed four years of study at the Rancho Palos Verdes campus will receive their diplomas. Marymount recently expanded its curriculum to include Bachelor’s Degree programs in Business, Media and Liberal Arts.

On May 12, Mother Mary Assumpta Long, foundress and prioress general of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, in Ann Arbor, Mich., will serve as commencement speaker at Thomas Aquinas College’s annual graduation exercises in Santa Paula. Mother Assumpta will address a graduating class of 66 men and women who hail from across the United States, Canada, Ireland, and Australia. 

Last weekend at Loyola Marymount University, award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns and L.A. Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy addressed graduates. Burns spoke at the 100th annual undergraduate commencement May 5, where more than 1,300 Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Arts degrees were conferred, and Deasy addressed the graduate commencement on May 6, with more than 600 graduate degrees conferred.

Also acknowledged was Lyn Lusi who received a posthumous honorary doctor of humane letters degree. Lusi, who died in March, was co-founder of the humanitarian organization HEAL Africa. In 2011 at LMU, she received the $1 million Opus Prize, which is given each year to an unsung hero working on persistent social problems.   

Mount St. Mary’s College welcomed award-winning Los Angeles Times columnist Sandy Banks as its 2012 commencement speaker in undergraduate commencement ceremonies held May 7 in the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City.

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