This is the last issue of TGIF for the 2005-06 academic year, which concludes with Saturday’s Commencement ceremonies.

A summer edition of TGIF will be e-mailed in July, and the newsletter will resume weekly publication Aug. 25. Fall 2006 classes begin Monday, Aug. 28.

Happy summer!

About 2,500 graduates are invited to participate in Commencement exercises Saturday, May 13, at UM.

General ceremonies will be held in the Adams Center. The ceremony for UM’s professional schools and colleges -- business administration, education, forestry and conservation, fine arts, journalism, pharmacy, social work, and physical therapy and rehabilitative science -- begins at 9:30 a.m. The ceremony for the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Technology begins at 2 p.m.

After each ceremony, students from various schools and departments will disperse to other campus locations for individual awarding of diplomas.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer is this year’s Commencement speaker.

Commencement weekend gets under way at 1 p.m. today with the Outstanding Senior Recognition Awards Ceremony in the University Theatre. Other weekend events for graduates and their families include an ecumenical Baccalaureate Service at 6 p.m. tonight, a Saturday breakfast hosted by President George Dennison, an ROTC Commissioning, class reunions, campuswide open houses and special receptions.

See the UM Calendar for details.

Mary McAleese, the president of Ireland, will visit UM on Tuesday, May 16.

McAleese will speak at 2:30 p.m. in the University Theatre. The event is free and open to the public.

McAleese also will help launch UM’s new Irish Studies Program, and her remarks will address the strong historical, cultural and immigrant links between Montana and Ireland.

After she speaks, the Irish president and her husband, Dr. Martin McAleese, will attend an invitation-only reception for the local Irish community in the University Ballroom.

McAleese’s UM appearance is part of a May 15-22 visit to the United States at the invitation of the governors of Colorado and Montana, as well as the University of Notre Dame. She will be in Butte May 17 and Denver May 18-19.

The Science Learning Museum at UM and ExplorationWorks of Helena are developing a partnership that will bring semipermanent exhibits and inquiry-based science curriculum from San Francisco’s Exploratorium to Big Sky Country.

The Exploratorium, a world-renowned, hands-on museum of science, art and human perception, has partnerships with science learning centers, museums and educational institutions around the globe. Fundraising is under way for the two Montana science centers now under construction. Both will offer a rich environment of interactive science exhibits and activities starting summer 2007.

Educational and fundraising events include a science street fair from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Monday, May 15, at the Great Northern Carousel in Helena. The fair is free and open to the public and will include exhibits, activities, food vendors and live music.

The Regional Learning Project at UM has scoured archives across the continent, seeking historical maps of Big Sky Country. The latest finds -- 20 maps titled “Missouri & Yellowstone River Headwaters/Crow” -- have just been published.

The maps are fourth in a series of five called “Discovering Our Own Place, A Map Saga for Montana.” The 9-by-12-inch images show areas west of the Continental Divide at various stages of Montana’s development.

The newest publication in the set features some extraordinary finds, including a beautiful map discovered misfiled at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and maps illustrating the Crow Indian land base, reservation and land cessions during the 19th century. Four of the maps in this set are folded, double-sized.

The “Headwaters” maps are available at The Bookstore at UM for $54, and educational discounts are available. For more information, call (406) 243-1234.

The UM Center for Leadership Development recently presented two major awards.

Abdullah Al-Ghamdi, a UM graduate student, is the recipient of the spring 2006 Outstanding Student Leader Award.

Al-Ghamdi, who is from Saudi Arabia, is pursuing a master’s degree in education. The leadership award recognizes his work promoting diversity awareness on campus and in the Missoula community. He also has helped welcome many Saudi Arabian and other Middle Eastern students to campus, and he actively participates in several campus organizations.

The center’s 2005-06 Sentinel Service Award went to UM’s American Indian Science and Engineering Society. Thirteen AISES members contributed 690 volunteer hours for the organization’s two-day conference held in March, “Traditional Knowledge and Western Science: Finding Common Ground.”

Projects by UM radio-television students and Associate Professor Ray Ekness were chosen as best in the nation at the Broadcast Education Association conference held in April in Las Vegas.

Ekness, chair of UM’s Department of Radio-Television, took top honors in the faculty television news competition for his work “Cowboy Poet,” a profile of Great Falls resident Paul Zarzyski.

Eli Bierwag and Kevin Farmer took top honors in the television sports reporting category with a story on UM’s lacrosse team.

Producers of The Footbridge Forum, which airs on UM’s KBGA radio station, won first place in the student audio competition and also were named “Best of Festival” winners at the conference.

UM junior Ryan Coleman received the Harold E. Fellows Scholarship for academic performance and integrity. UM students also were selected as finalists in several categories of the News Division.

Stan Pillman, a senior in the UM radio-television department, is one of five students who are finalists for the Hearst Journalism Awards Program’s radio news competition.

The program, funded by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, is college journalism’s most prestigious awards competition.

Pillman, who is from Chicago, took first place in the preliminary round of the journalism awards competition in radio news. He earned $2,000 and was invited to compete in the semifinals. In April, he learned that he has advanced to the competition finals, which will be held in June in San Francisco.

Pillman will compete against students from Brigham Young University, the University of North Carolina and Western Kentucky University for prizes ranging from $1,500 to $5,000.

Roman Stubbs, editor of the Great Falls High School newspaper, Iniwa, has been named Montana’s 2006 High School Journalist of the Year.

The annual Montana Journalism Education Association contest, sponsored by MJEA, UM and the Montana Newspaper Association, offers competition in writing, photography and design. Judges are Montana newspaper professionals and UM journalism faculty members.

Stubbs was selected from seven high school seniors nominated for the honor by their journalism advisers. The award carries a $1,000 scholarship from MNA.

Ashley Makowski of the Jefferson High School Panther Press in Boulder received the competition’s Student Free Press Award for her stories and editorials reminding readers of the rights and responsibilities of a free press.

Top Pacesetter honors for best overall high school newspapers went to the Iniwa, Miles City High School’s Signal Butte, Florence-Carlton High School’s Falcon Flyer and Hysham High School’s Cutlass.

An institute featuring leading scholars in environmental thought will be held July 10-28 at UM.

Presented by UM’s Center for Ethics, “Exploring the Landscapes of Environmental Thought” will offer short courses, evening lectures, panel discussions and field trips.

Institute courses may be taken for college credit or for Montana Office of Public Instruction renewal credits. The registration deadline is June 1.

Lecturers and instructors at the institute will include Holmes Rolston III, Andrew Light, William Chaloupka, Ned Hettinger, Yuriko Saito, Robin Saha and Albert Borgmann.

Registration forms and a full schedule of events and course descriptions are online.

The UM College of Technology offers hands-on and online courses this summer that cover subjects from alternative energy to cooking Mediterranean cuisine to preparing for college placement tests and more.

“Energy Systems,” taught fully online, is a comprehensive and technical look at the history of energy production and consumption. It runs May 22 through July 28.

COT’s Culinary Arts Program will offer a course on Fridays from May 26 to July 14 about cooking Mediterranean cuisine. The hands-on class, taught by a professional chef, includes 40 hours of instruction and is open to students and the public.

Students can prepare for the SAT/ACT, GRE and LSAT this summer through Ed2Go online instruction. Ed2Go offers more than 300 online personal enrichment classes.

For more information about all of COT’s summer offerings, call (406) 243-7812 or visit the Web site.

A new blog called “Switchbacks” provides a bird’s-eye view of news and events at UM.

The blog was named in honor of the 13 switchbacks on Mount Sentinel’s M Trail. It features timely and interesting news from across campus and beyond, as well as weekly event highlights, important campus information and personal insights from University employees.

Readers are invited to join the conversation in the comments section under each post.

The blog was developed by University Relations.

UM athletic director Jim O'Day announced last week that Jerry Wagner has accepted an offer to become the Grizzlies’ new volleyball coach.

Wagner, currently an assistant coach at Gonzaga University, was selected over two other finalists: Chris Riley, the coach at Towson University, and Allison Weston, UM's current interim coach.

Wagner's duties will begin immediately. Weston has accepted an offer to remain with the Montana volleyball program and will serve on Wagner’s staff as an assistant coach.

A 1986 graduate of MSU-Northern, Wagner recently finished his first season as an assistant coach at Gonzaga. He has nine years of Big Sky Conference coaching experience, serving as an assistant coach at Montana for three seasons ('88-'90), an assistant coach at Montana State for four years ('99-'02) and associate head coach for the Bobcats for two seasons ('03-'04).

As a three-year assistant with the Grizzlies under Dick Scott, Wagner helped UM to two 20-win seasons and the program's first NCAA tournament appearance in 1990.

The UM golf team took a No. 21 seed into the NCAA West Regional tournament, being held through Saturday at Auburn, Wash.

The University of Washington is hosting the 21-team field during the three-day, 54-hole tournament at the Washington National Golf Club.

For the West Regional, the course will play as a par-72 at 6,289 yards. The tournament features 18 holes of play on each date starting at 9:30 a.m. The final group tees off at 3:20 p.m.

The top eight teams advance to the NCAA National Championships May 23-26 at Columbus, Ohio.

UM’s outdoor track and field teams are competing at the 2006 Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships this week at Eastern Washington University in Cheney.

The women's heptathlon and men's decathlon took place Wednesday and Thursday, with the remainder of the meet running today and tomorrow.