Illinois Wesleyan University celebrated the Class of 2014, one of the institution’s largest graduating classes, during the 164th Commencement ceremonies on May 4. 

Alumnus speaker Deanna Jent ’84 told graduates to “Boldly write your story, but when another story starts to write you, surrender to that new narrative.” Class of 2014 graduates and their loved ones shared their excitement and well wishes on social media at #IWU2014.

You can view galleries of the ceremonies here. The list of 503 candidates for graduation can be found here. Three of those graduates, Jennifer Veitengruber, John Laughlin, and Jacklyn Morris, attended school together (mostly) since the first day of Kindergarten and were featured in the Pantagraph. Athena Cocallas, Hannah Smith, Josi Banales, Zach Smith, and Mary Jean Zyck were also featured in another Pantagraph article covering graduation.

Caitlyn Trevor and Akash Bhatia both co-presented with Dr. Joseph Plazak, assistant professor of music, at the national conference of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition. Caitlyn presented on multi-modal music perception, and Akash on irregular meter preferences.

After completing senior-year research projects studying geographical patterns of reported criminal incidents in the Town of Normal, economics and political science double major Jake Bates participated in the national Undergraduate Ethics Symposium at DePauw University on April 10-12.

Bates has recently presented his work at the annual meetings of the Midwest Economics Association and shared his research with the police departments of Bloomington and Normal. He was also a member of the award-winning and national-qualifying Illinois Wesleyan Ethics Bowl team.

Sara Daley has been elected to the Capital One Academic All-District 7 Division III softball team and will be on the ballot for the Capital One Academic All-America Team, where All-America honorees will be elected later this month.

The IWU softball team has won a school-record 21 straight games this season, and will host Wisconsin-Whitewater in the NCAA Division III Super Regional at 4pm on Friday, May 16th at IWU Field.

Lauren Henry, a double major in international studies and anthropology, will intern in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)’s Collections Management and Exhibition Registration department. 

Previous experience as an archival intern at the McLean County Museum of History, Lauren believes, helped her win this prestigious MoMA internship.

Nora Peterson was selected to receive a summer scholarship for study in Alcalá de Henares, Spain at the Instituto Franklin-Universidad de Alcalá de Henares. Peterson, an anthropology and women’s studies double major with a minor in hispanic studies, will study abroad for four weeks in July 2014 thanks to this scholarship through Sigma Delta Pi, the National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society. 

Erin Sweeney, president of IWU’s chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA), was honored at the St. Louis professional chapter of the AMA’s conference as the University’s Outstanding Marketing Student.

Erin Sweeney was a member of the AMA since her first year at Illinois Wesleyan.

Thomas Sobyra worked with adjunct faculty member James E. House to publish “An Experiment Utilizing Corrosion of Aluminum to Illustrate a Contracting Volume Rate Law” in The Chemical Educator.  

As part of her internship for the Illinois Environmental Council, Ellen Cornelius organized a lobby day which included transportation for community members to Springfield.