Erskine commencement set for May 4

Erskine will cap its 2023-24 academic year with a ceremony honoring college and seminary graduates Saturday, May 4, at 10:00 a.m. under the towers of the Erskine Building. Dr. Carol M. Swain is this year’s commencement speaker.

Swain, an author, blogger, podcast host, public speaker, and media commentator, retired in 2017 as Professor of Political Science and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University. Prior to her work at Vanderbilt, she served from 1990 to 2000 as Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University (now the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs). She is the author of nearly a dozen books, including The Adversity of Diversity, Countercultural Living, and Black Eye for America.

A 1983 graduate of Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, Swain went on to complete a master’s degree in political science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1984. In 1989, she was awarded a Ph.D. in political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She completed a Master of Studies in Law at Yale University Law School in 2000.

A baccalaureate service is scheduled for Friday, May 3, at 4:00 p.m. in Lesesne Auditorium on the Erskine campus. The Rev. Bryan Bult, who serves as Associate Minister to Seniors at First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina, will be the speaker.

Bult is a 1995 graduate of Erskine College (majoring in Biology and Education), where he met his future wife, Michelle Drew. He worked as a teacher, basketball coach, and athletic director at Pee Dee Academy for two years before entering Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina. He transferred to Erskine Theological Seminary, where he earned the Master of Divinity degree in 2004. He and his wife have two daughters and two sons.

Please note the scheduled times of both commencement and baccalaureate as well as the location of baccalaureate, which have been changed from those of last year.