MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College will confer degrees on 248 students at commencement on Saturday, June 3, at 1:30 p.m. in the Richard and Norma Small Multi-Sport Center.

Christina McOmber, associate professor of art, will give the faculty address, “Apples and Knowledge: The Care and Feeding of the Adult Human.” Her talk will stress how fostering a caring environment encourages intellectual growth, with references to artists Michelangelo, Jackson Pollock and Frida Kahlo.

Mark Gordon of Albuquerque, N.M., who is graduating with a triple major in Spanish, politics and psychology, will be the senior class speaker.

English professor Rich Martin and religion professor Charles Vernoff will receive emeriti status. Martin is retiring after 36 years of service. Vernoff is retiring after 28 years at Cornell.

Saturday events begin at 9 a.m. with a baccalaureate service in King Chapel. Father Catherine Quehl-Engel, college chaplain, will deliver the sermon. Seniors’ words of thanksgiving for family, friends and mentors will be read at the service.

Cornell’s Delta of Iowa chapter of Phi Beta Kappa will hold a reception at 10:30 a.m. in Cole Library. Phi Beta Kappa is the oldest and most widely respected academic honor society in the United States. There are 270 chapters in the United States, including seven in Iowa.

After a buffet luncheon from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Cornell seniors, faculty and administrators will assemble at 12:45 p.m. in the Multi-Sport Center for the traditional academic procession that begins the 1:30 p.m. commencement ceremony. The public is invited.

MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College students who spent their spring break helping New Orleans recover from Hurricane Katrina will join youth from Mount Vernon’s First Presbyterian Church who assisted hurricane victims in Mississippi for a presentation about their experiences at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 25, on the Orange Carpet in The Commons at Cornell.

Twenty-two Cornell students were in Chalmette, La., just outside of New Orleans, clearing debris from storm-damaged businesses and working at a relief center distributing food and clothing to local residents.

Nine members of the church’s youth group spent their spring break in Gulfport, Miss., clearing debris from neighborhoods and distributing relief supplies.

Their joint presentation will include a question-and-answer session. Admission is free to the presentation.

MOUNT VERNON — College student Jase Jensen of Lisbon, who underwent surgery and chemotherapy to become cancer-free, will speak at the opening ceremonies Friday, May 12, for the American Cancer Society’s 4th Annual Relay For Life at Cornell College.

Jensen was entering his senior year at Coe College when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer last summer. He underwent emergency surgery to remove the cancerous testicle. When the cancer spread to his lymph nodes he underwent chemotherapy and eventually received a cancer-free diagnosis. He remained in school during his treatments, active as the student body president, homecoming king and a member of the Kohawks’ football and baseball teams. He is honorary chairman of the 2006 Linn County Relay For Life in June.

An estimated 350 people are expected to walk or run around the outdoor track at Cornell’s Ash Park from 8 p.m. Friday until 8 a.m. Saturday, May 13. Money raised by 33 teams – 20 from Cornell, eight from area schools and five from the community – will help finance cancer research, education, advocacy and patient services. The fund-raising goal is $37,000. Last year’s take was $32,000. Raising $30,000 this year would put the Cornell Relay For Life over $100,000 in its four-year history.

Survivors will be honored Friday in a special service that includes a survivors’ lap and luminaria ceremony, starting between 8:30 and 9 p.m. With the theme “History in the Making,” the 12-hour event will feature entertainment, games and educational materials focused on different eras, from prehistoric times to the future. There will be a silent auction of items from downtown Mount Vernon businesses, and the Ash Park concession stand will be open.

For more information about Cornell’s Relay For Life, to donate money or volunteer for the event, go online to www.cornellcollege.edu/lso/ and select the Relay For Life link, or call Cornell’s Civic Engagement Office, (319) 895-4003.

MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College will host guitarist Chuy Negrete performing the folk music of his native Mexico on Tuesday, May 16, at 6:30 p.m. in the Rathskeller of The Commons. Admission is free.

The son of migrant farm workers who later settled in Chicago, Negrete has become a leading musicologist and interpreter of Mexican and Chicano music. Through concerts and workshops nationwide, he takes his audience on a musical journey of his heritage. He has been called “the Chicano Woody Guthrie” by historian and radio host Studs Terkel.

Negrete is founder and director of the Mexican Cultural Institute in Chicago.

His visit is sponsored by Cornell’s Office of Intercultural Life, the Organization for Latino Awareness, the Performing Arts and Activities Council, the Lecture, Artists, Cultural Events Consortium and programs in ethnic studies, Latin American studies and sociology and anthropology.

MOUNT VERNON - Cornell College’s theatre and communications studies department has received a $3,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant to workshop and develop a new play, with work on the production occurring in Term 3 of 2006-2007.

The grant, provided through the New Plays On Campus program of the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, will help fund the residency of playwright C. Denby Swanson. She will work this fall with select students under the supervision of Mark Hunter, chair of theatre and communications studies, to develop her new play, A Brief Narrative of an Extraordinary Birth of Rabbits, and potentially stage it at Cornell the following academic year.

Swanson is a graduate of Smith College and the University of Texas Michener Center for Writers. Her play The Death of a Cat received 18 nominations for local awards after its premiere in Austin, Texas. She has been commissioned twice by the Guthrie Theater to write short plays for young actors and has become a popular guest artist and teacher on the thespian festival circuit. She is on the faculty at Southwestern University.

Cornell was one of three institutions awarded $3,000 NEA grants through the Playwrights’ Center; the others were the University of California-Santa Barbara and the University of Puget Sound ( Wash.).

MOUNT VERNON - Ryan Taugher, a senior international relations major from Madison, Wis., has been awarded a Fulbright grant. Starting in September he will spend nine months in Turkey studying and researching the international impact of controlling the region’s water resources.

The Turkish government has started a $32 billion project to build 22 dams to control the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for agricultural and social development. The dams are limiting water resources to countries downstream, such as Syria and Iraq.

This will be Ryan’s third stint in Turkey. As a high school senior he was an exchange student, and last summer he returned to Turkey with a University of Iowa School of Engineering course. He is the 18th Cornell student to receive a Fulbright grant since 1956. He is currently on an internship at the National Defense University Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C.