By any standards, the class of 2009 is entering a challenging market place.

But the 686 graduate and undergraduate students of Georgian Court University, Lakewood, who received their degrees under symbolically cloudy skies May 15 exit the campus armed not only with critical thinking skills and credentials, but with core Mercy values embedded in the knowledge they accumulated.

Those values should stand them in good stead in what may be difficult days to come, said Bishop John M. Smith and Mercy Sister Rosemary E. Jeffries, Georgian Court president.

During commencement ceremonies where degrees were granted to 441 undergraduates and 245 graduate students, Sister Rosemary and Bishop Smith spoke to contemporary circumstances facing the scholars and urged them to value the truth they learned at Georgian Court and rely on it.

"Your journey has been long," Bishop Smith said to the graduate students but "Georgian Court University is sending forth women and men with a burning desire to make a difference in the world in which we live."

Bishop Smith was awarded an honorary doctor of ministry degree during the graduate portion of the Centennial Commencement Exercises on the historic, national landmark campus in Lakewood. In a blessing at the beginning of the exercises, he urged the graduates to work "to see that no one endures poverty...help them never to be people who do not see" the needs of society at large and do not respond to those needs with love.

In the brief remarks that followed the conferring of his own degree, he restated the value of a Catholic education, especially in these "chaotic times."

"You have been here searching for the truth at this great university," he said. "You have found the truth." He encouraged the graduates to go out and put what they learned to very good use.

Sister Rosemary called the 2009 commencement "particularly significant in the history of the university because it is taking place in our centennial year. The graduates join their professions with a liberal arts education so critical to analysis and problem solving, and many with specific training in professional skills.

"With the economic crisis facing our country, these high-level critical thinking skills and credentials for entry into the business world and professions are necessary to manage the challenges ahead."

The graduate commencement speaker was Mercy Sister Mary C. Sullivan, professor emerita of literature and dean emerita of the College of Liberal Arts at Rochester Institute of Technology and a leading expert on the life and history of Catherine McAuley, foundress of the Sisters of Mercy, GCU's sponsoring organization.

Sister Mary received an honorary doctor of humanities.

In her speech, she urged the graduates to live a "generous life with a purpose beyond ourselves, guided by real and profound communion…with our brothers and sisters in this world; demonstrating nonviolent peace that is the fruit of a humble, gentle, respectful attitude toward all and toward the earth."

At the undergraduate commencement ceremony later that day, Reverend Ann Struthers Coburn, director of alumni and church relations at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, Ca. and a Georgian Court graduate, received an honorary doctorate for her work in ministry.

The speaker for the undergraduate ceremony was Judith M. Persichilli, executive vice president for the acute care division of Catholic Health East, one of the nation's leading Catholic health care systems.