THIBODAUX – Mike Strain, commissioner of the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry, will deliver the keynote address Saturday, Dec. 11, when Nicholls State University confers approximately 500 degrees during commencement exercises in Stopher Gymnasium.
Strain will speak at 10 a.m. to graduates of the College of Business Administration and University College. At 2 p.m. he will address graduates of the College of Arts and Sciences, College of Education and College of Nursing and Allied Health.
A native of Covington, La., Strain earned a doctorate in veterinary medicine from LSU in 1983. Beginning in 1999, he was elected to two terms as state representative from House District 74, serving on the Agriculture, Forestry, Aquaculture, and Rural Development Committee, and chairing the Legislative Rural Caucus. Strain was twice named Legislator of the Year by the St. Tammany Parish Alliance for Good Government, and in 2003, the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine presented him with the Distinguished Alumni Award. Strain was elected to serve as commissioner of the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry in 2007 and was sworn into office in January 2008.
Nicholls will also bestow an honorary Doctor of Letters to Bob Miller of Morgan City, La. The first major donor to the University Honors Program, Miller has provided honor students the opportunity to study abroad in England and Costa Rica at no cost to the students. He is the founder, president and owner of Major Equipment and Remediation Services Inc., which serves the oil field industry with equipment rentals and services and also has a state license for the detection and remediation of naturally occurring radioactive material.
The Rev. Dean Danos of St. Genevieve Catholic Church in Thibodaux will offer the invocation and benediction at the morning ceremony, and the Rev. Donnie Wilkinson of the First United Methodist Church in Thibodaux will deliver the invocation and benediction at the afternoon exercise.