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Spring 2012 Commencement

Penn State Altoona's spring 2012 commencement ceremony will be held on Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 10:00 a.m. in the Jaffa Shrine in Altoona.

GRADUATES, click Commencement Details on the menu to find out more about the ceremony.

Tickets

Because of the large number of seats available at the Jaffa Shrine, no tickets are required for guests to attend the ceremony. Likewise there is no limit on the number of guests per graduate.

Professional Photography

To commemorate this milestone occasion, a professional photograph will be taken of each graduate being congratulated by the chancellor. No pre-orders will be taken. Rather, photos can be viewed and ordered after commencement at www.gophoto.bz online.

In order to avoid congestion and to maintain decorum during the ceremony, we ask that family and friends refrain from approaching the platform when taking pictures or using a video camera.

About the Jaffa Shrine

Altoona’s Jaffa Temple was chartered on July 9, 1903; the dedication of the Jaffa Mosque at Chestnut Avenue and Seventeenth Street occurred on August 29, 1920. Rapid growth of membership resulted in the establishment of larger headquarters.

Thus, on September 25, 1930, the present Jaffa Shrine was dedicated and opened, celebrating twenty-seven years of growth and development.

Although the Jaffa Shrine has not changed since its dedication, through efforts of the trustees and the Jaffa Improvement Association, thousands of dollars have been expended each year to update and improve the building. Various activities, both social and philanthropic, have been the source of the Shrine’s success over the years.

The Shrine Circus each spring is the biggest and most successful activity at the Shrine, hosting nearly 6,000 persons, including hundreds of school children. The Jaffa Shrine also is host to­­­ concerts, seminars, trade shows, banquets, and other events throughout the year. Penn State Altoona celebrated it seventieth anniversary at the Jaffa Shrine on October 25, 2009, with a concert by the Doobie Brothers.

Commencement Speaker: Mike Reid

Mike Reid grew up a short distance from Penn State Altoona and spent many hours on campus building physical endurance through long training runs and honing his considerable music skills by practicing piano in the Slep Student Center. But Reid’s destiny was to attend Penn State’s University Park campus on a football scholarship.

Reid first gained fame and celebrity as a Penn State football player. As a senior All-America selection in 1969, he won the Outland Trophy as the nation’s outstanding interior lineman and the Maxwell Trophy as the outstanding player in college football. Reid’s achievements were celebrated with his induction into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1987.

The first-round draft pick of the Cincinnati Bengals in 1970, Reid was named NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year. He developed into one of the premier linemen in the game and was voted NFL All-Pro in 1972 and ’73.

Reid was still one of the league’s top performers when he retired from the Bengals and moved to Nashville to pursue song writing in 1980. Since scoring his first number one country hit song—“Inside” by Ronnie Milsap in 1983—he has composed more than thirty top ten country and pop hits. Twenty-one of those records have gone all the way to number one on the charts.

Selected as Songwriter of the Year by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in 1985, Reid won a Grammy Award for “Stranger In My House,” another of his compositions recorded by Milsap.

Enshrined in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005, Reid has been described by fellow songwriter Don Schlitz as “the most complete writer in our field. He competes only with himself.”

In addition to Milsap, many of the industry’s legendary figures have recorded Reid’s songs, including Bonnie Raitt, Anita Baker, Bette Midler, Prince, George Michael, Nancy Wilson, Etta James, Rosemary Clooney, Kenny Loggins, Kenny Rogers, Ann Murray, Wynonna Judd, Alabama, Joe Cocker, Tanya Tucker, Willie Nelson, Collin Raye, Tim McGraw and Josh Turner.

In 1992, Reid composed the score for “Quilts,” a modern dance piece created by Andrew Krichels and Donna Rizzo of The Tennessee Dance Theatre. Following the premiere, Reid, Krichels and Rizzo received The Governor’s Award for the Arts in Tennessee for their work on “Quilts.”

Reid has collaborated with librettist Sarah Schlesinger on a one-act opera commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera Guild and Opera Memphis that explores the myth of celebrity in contemporary American sports. The opera, entitled Different Fields, premiered in New York City at the New Victory Theatre on Broadway. Different Fields has since been produced in Memphis and Nashville and by The Cincinnati Opera.

Reid and Schlesinger’s musical, entitled The Ballad of Little Jo, received a 1998 Richard Rodgers Foundation Award. The musical’s first production, at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater in September 2000, won the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Musical. It has also been produced at the Bridewell Theater in London.

A member of the Blair County Arts Hall of Fame Class of 2005, Mike has repeatedly stepped forward to support a host of non-profit and charitable organizations through personal appearances and volunteer service in his home county and across the country.

Reid and his wife, Susan, have two children: Matthew, a 2006 graduate of Auburn University; and Caitlin, a 2010 graduate of the University of Tennessee.