SPARTANBURG, S.C. – May is full of fun end-of-the-year events at Wofford College with student performances, the annual Wofford Live Concert, and Commencement Exercises scheduled for Sunday, May 18.

These events are open to the public and are free of charge unless otherwise noted. Please check the online calendar at calendar.wofford.edu for frequent updates. For athletic events, please go to athletics.wofford.edu.

For more information, contact Laura Corbin at WoffordNews@Wofford.edu or 864-596-4180.

Thursday, May 1
Pops Concert
7-8 p.m.
The Pavilion
The annual Pops Concert featuring Men’s Glee Club, Women’s Choir, Goldtones, and Wofford Men. Songs will include “O Brother Where Art Thou,” Lorde, and Katy Perry.

Friday, May 2
Reception to Honor Professor John Lane
4-5:30 p.m.
Sandor Teszler Library Gallery
Wofford’s John Lane, professor of English and environmental studies and director of the Goodall Environmental Studies Center, was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors on April 27, 2014. Lane is the author of numerous books and articles and has been a member of the Wofford College faculty since 1988.

Spring Choral/Instrumental Concert
7-8 p.m.
Leonard Auditorium, Main Building
The annual Spring Choral will feature the Wofford Singers, Concert Band and Strings Ensemble. Each group will perform songs they have rehearsed all semester.

Wofford Live Concert
7-9 p.m.
Benjamin Johnson Arena
The annual Wofford Live Concert, formerly known as Spring Concert, will feature Culture-Sol, The Colorist, Dirty Guv’nahs and Bush Hawg. Fuddruckers will be selling food and Growler Haus will be selling beer (must have valid ID). Wofford students get in free with their valid student ID. Tickets for students from other campuses are $10 with valid student ID.

Thursday, May 8
Trance and Spirit Possession in the Himalayas
11 a.m.-noon
Room 126, Main Building
Margaux Foster presents “Trance and Spirit Possession in the Himalayas,” focusing on society and religion in the context of culture change. Foster’s research draws from her work in the independent study course “Himalayan Ethnography” during the spring 2014 semester and her experiences studying abroad in Nepal during the fall 2013 semester.

Sunday, May 18
Commencement
9:30 a.m.
Lawn of Main Building
Wofford will conduct its 160th Commencement Exercises with some 360 graduates receiving their diplomas. The college will confer three honorary degrees. The college also will present the prestigious Algernon Sydney Sullivan and Mary Mildred Sullivan Awards to two students and two non-students. The Roger Milliken Award for Excellence in the teaching of Science and the Philip Covington Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Humanities and Social Sciences also will be presented to faculty members. Members of the Class of 1964 will be recognized.

Gallery Exhibitions:

Through May 31:
Julia Elizabeth Tolbert, Paintings and Drawings
Sandor Teszler Library Gallery
Julia Elizabeth Tolbert was a native of Ninety Six, South Carolina. She earned the M.A. from the University of Georgia where she studied under Lamar Dodd. Throughout her life she worked variously in Athens, Georgia; several South Carolina locations; Cashiers, North Carolina; and Syracuse, New York. Her active period was through the 1940s into the mid-1950s. Because she was not interested in selling her work or even showing it very much, except for a few museums, such as the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina, and Atlanta’s High Museum, she is now unknown. In 2011, the Tolbert family donated nearly the entire life-work corpus of her art to Wofford College, including paintings in oil and watercolor, drawings, prints, and ceramics. The first small group from the collection was presented to the public in 2012. This second group continues our effort to bring a worthy artist back to the public eye.

Five Wofford Photographers / Five Perspectives
Martha Cloud Chapman Gallery, Campus Life Building
For 40 years or more, Wofford faculty members G.R. Davis, Terry Ferguson, Peter Schmunk, and David Whisnant and campus photographer Mark Olencki have all been seriously engaged with photography as an artistic medium. As a corollary to travel and scientific investigation, as a serious avocation, as a profession, and certainly as a passion, photography has been a frequent, even daily, activity through most of their adult lives. Longtime friends and travel companions in various combinations, they have gathered photographs across the United States as well as in Europe, Africa, and South America. For this exhibition, each photographer will display a group of images that focus on a theme of his own choosing. The collection of works on view reveals the overlapping interests and individual perspectives of these five Wofford photographers.