Commencement Ceremony

Biographies of Commencement Speakers

Commencement Speaker

Pawo Choyning Dorji ’06

Pawo Choyning Dorji ’06, a Bhutanese filmmaker who was nominated for a 2022 Academy Award, will be the 2024 Commencement speaker and will be awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree.

Dorji’s debut film, Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, drew international acclaim, earning major awards at film festivals and receiving a 2022 Oscar nomination in the Best International Feature Film category. It was filmed in a remote school in the Himalayas, 14,500 feet above sea level and a 14-day trek from the nearest motorable road. The location was so remote that the film had to be made with solar batteries and many in the cast had never seen the world outside their village.

“I am aware that for filmmakers across the world, an Oscar nomination is the crowning achievement of their creative careers, careers where they have worked hard and sacrificed so much to perfect the art of storytelling,” Dorji said at the time. “I feel extremely fortunate and blessed to find myself in this position with my directorial debut. This inspires and motivates me to work even harder.”

Dorji followed that with the release in 2023 of The Monk and the Gun, a satire also filmed in Bhutan. It won awards at multiple film festivals and was shortlisted for a 2024 Oscar. Variety magazine selected it as the fifth best film of 2023 in its annual best films of the year feature.

A government major at Lawrence, Dorji was an award-winning photographer before launching his filmmaking career. He published two photo journals, Seeing Sacred: Light and Shadows and The Light of the Moon: The Legacy of Xuanzang of Tang. The latter was a five-year photo project to retrace the lost history of Buddhism.

Honorary Degree Recipient

James Gandre ’81

James Gandre ’81, president of Manhattan School of Music in New York City, will deliver an address to graduates and their families at the Baccalaureate Service during Commencement weekend. He will be awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music degree at Commencement.

Gandre returned to Manhattan School of Music as its president in 2013. He had served in various leadership positions at the school from 1985 to 2000 before taking on leadership roles at Roosevelt University in Chicago and then Chicago College of Performing Arts.

A tenor vocalist, Gandre has performed with the Cleveland Orchestra and the London Classical Players as a soloist. He has completed more than 175 choral performances with a variety of organizations, including the New York Philharmonic, and has been featured on more than 20 commercial recordings.

The Wisconsin native majored in music performance (voice) at Lawrence. He earned his master’s degree (performance) from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1983 and his Ed.D. in higher education administration from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2001.

Gandre’s writing is included in Music in American Life: An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories that Shape Our Culture (2013) and he has been a contributor to two books, The Provost’s Handbook (2015) and LGBTQ Leadership in Higher Education (2022), both published by Johns Hopkins University Press.