Fall 2023 Commencement at Colorado School of Mines set for Dec. 15

Colorado School of Mines will celebrate its Fall 2023 Commencement with two ceremonies on Friday, Dec. 15.

Undergraduate Commencement will kick off the festivities at 9 a.m. in Lockridge Arena. Graduate Commencement will follow at 2 p.m. in the same location.

Giving the keynote address at the undergraduate ceremony is Lucinda Sanders, member of the Mines Board of Trustees and Founder and Executive in Residence of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), a national organization that works to broaden participation in computing.

Sanders has an extensive industry background, having worked in research and development and executive positions at AT&T Bell Labs, Lucent Bell Labs and Avaya Labs for more than 20 years, where she specialized in systems-level software and solutions (multimedia communication and customer relationship management). In 1996, she was awarded the Bell Labs Fellow Award, the highest technical accomplishment bestowed at the company, and she has six patents in the communications technology area.

Sanders serves as a trustee on several other organizational boards, including the Center for American Entrepreneurship, the CSforAll Foundation and the International Computer Science Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. She was a volunteer member of Governor Polis’ COVID response team in 2020, and currently is volunteering in the state’s submission to the U.S. Department of Commerce to designate Colorado a Quantum Technology Innovation Hub. 

In 2023, Sanders was inducted into the Boulder County Hall of Fame, also receiving the 2016 Bob Newman Lifetime Achievement Award from the Colorado Technology Association for her ongoing commitment to further innovative technology.  In 2004, she was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Department of Engineering at CU, and in 2011 she was recognized with the university’s George Norlin Distinguished Service Award. She has been inducted into the Women in Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame and is a recipient of the 2013 U.S. News STEM Leadership Hall of Fame Award. Sanders received her BS and MS in computer science from Louisiana State University and the University of Colorado Boulder, respectively.

Tickets are required to attend Undergraduate and Graduate Commencement for anyone over the age of two. Both ceremonies will be live streamed on the Mines’ YouTube channel. For more information, go to commencement.mines.edu.