Commencement Set for May 10th

Goodwell, Okla. — Commencement ceremonies at Oklahoma Panhandle State University are set for Thursday, May 10 at 6:30 p.m. at Anchor D Arena in Oscar Williams Field House. This is the 108th commencement ceremony and over 340 degrees are anticipated to be awarded.

Dr. Sara Richter is the commencement speaker. As Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Professor of English, Dr. Sara Jane Richter has spent 32 years teaching English, geography, history, and humanities at OPSU. Originally from Kansas, she calls Hennessey, Oklahoma, her hometown. She received her BA in history from Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma, and an MA in history and an MA in English from Oklahoma State University, which also granted her the Ph.D. in English.

Richter maintains an active speaking engagement schedule with literary and historical programs at local, regional, national, and international conferences on topics like Depression-era women, women of the western trails, Christmases on the Plains, the Hominy Indians Native American football team, Laura Ingalls Wilder, buffalo hunting, frontier teachers, and women of the Western gold fields.

Richter worked with Smoky Hills Public Television as a consultant on documentaries concerning orphan trains, the WPA, and the Dust Bowl and has been a member of the board of directors of the Oklahoma Arts Institute, the Oklahoma DaVinci Institute, High Plains Public Radio, the Northwest Oklahoma High Plains Resource Conservation and Development Board, and the Santa Fe Trail Association. For Arcadia Publishing, she published two books: The Oklahoma Panhandle and Guymon, Oklahoma. The Oklahoma Humanities Council honored her in 2011 with the prestigious Public Humanities Award for her life-long commitment to sharing humanities through teaching, writing, and lecturing.

Live video streaming will be available at opsu.edu/2018grad.