There will be 324 graduates participating in Westmont College commencement, 9:30 a.m. Saturday, May 4, on Thorrington Field with 147 graduating with honors.
About 50 Golden Warriors, who graduated in 1974, will march in the procession to celebrate their 50th reunion. Eleven nursing graduates will participate in the ceremony, two days after their pinning ceremony on May 2, at Montecito Covenant Church.
Commencement, which is closed to the general public, will be livestreamed at westmont.edu/commencement.
Professor emeritus Rick Pointer, who taught American history at Westmont from 1994-2020, will deliver the address, titled “What’s Your Story?”
Westmont President Gayle D. Beebe will present the Westmont Medal to Palmer Jr. and Susan Jackson and the Ann Jackson Family Foundation, which has given grants to about 150 Santa Barbara-based nonprofits during three decades.
Pointer, the social science division Teacher of the Year in 1997 and 2003, has written three books, “Protestant Pluralism and the New York Experience,” “Encounters of the Spirit: Native Americans and European Colonial Religion” and “Pacifist Prophet: Papunhank and the Quest for Peace in Early America.”
With his wife Barb, a longtime Westmont staff member, Pointer co-led six Europe Semester programs. In 2009, he became the first recipient of the Fletcher Jones Foundation Chair in the Social Sciences, and he served as interim provost from 2009 to 2012.
A Houghton College graduate, he earned master’s and doctoral degrees from Johns Hopkins University.
Palmer Jackson Jr., a Santa Barbara native who leads marketing teams in high technology companies, has provided leadership on numerous local boards, including those of the Granada Theatre, Lobero Theatre, and Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
He graduated from Yale University and earned an MBA from UC Berkley. Since 2011, Susan Jackson has served on the Westmont Foundation Board of Directors. She graduated from UC Berkeley and earned a master’s degree from Lancaster University in the United Kingdom.
Palmer Jackson Sr. established the foundation in honor of his mother and set a standard of philanthropy for the longtime Santa Barbara family.
The Golden Warriors include Nancy Favor Phinney ’74, who has served as director of college communications for nearly four decades.
The third cohort of Westmont nursing graduates includes Brandi Blackwell, Owen Carlson, Emily Castellanos, Sabrina Cerda, Victor Madrigal, Selene Hernandez, Sarah Ducasse, Reyna Rioux, Tessa Grano, Mary Gray and Jacqueline Hernandez.