Rafael Campo is a Cuban-American medical doctor who teaches and practices general internal medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He has also received wide critical acclaim as an author and poet. This hybrid of physician and poet, referring to himself as a healer, is interested in the ways in which voice and narrative can explicate the experience of human suffering, which is reflected in his book "The Healing Art: A Doctor's Black Bag of Poetry." Poetry has the power to heal, and he argues for physicians to adopt a practice of integrative medicine, one in which the demands of the mind and soul are understood to play as important a part as those of the body. Rafael Campo delivered the Latino/a Heritage Convocation to help us celebrate and reflect on the legacies and the richness of Latino/Latina communities and individuals.

Joseph Melrose, who served three decades in the Foreign Service, is the former U.S. Ambassador to Sierra Leone, where he helped broker a peace treaty. After leaving Sierra Leone in 2001, he was Task Force Coordinator for the post-September 11 task force with the Department of State, and later was a Senior Consultant on Counterterrorism for the Office of the Secretary of State’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism. He has also served as a senior advisor to the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations General Assembly for the State Department. As the president of the National Model United Nations board of directors, he oversees programs for more than 3,400 student delegates. Examining the legacy of former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen, one of the signers of the United Nations charter, Melrose's presentation was titled "US Role in the UN: From Stassen to the 21st Century."

Paul Anderson has served as an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court since 1994, where he has earned respect for his hard work and superb legal decision-making. Previously, he was Chief Judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals (1992-1994). The author of many important decisions, including the leading case on bail, Justice Anderson has been a leader on improving racial fairness in Minnesota’s justice system. As a strong advocate for an impartial, nonpartisan judiciary, Justice Anderson believes it is critical that we keep partisan politics out of the courtroom. He reaches out to communities across the state, explaining our court system, inspiring public service, and promoting public confidence in our judicial system. Focusing on the freedoms that have permitted our nation to flourish and the judiciary’s role in protecting those freedoms, Anderson’s presentation was titled "Freedom is NOT Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose."

James Watson, professor of anthropology at Harvard University, is an ethnographer who has spent over 30 years working in south China, primarily in villages. His research has focused on Chinese emigrants to London, ancestor worship and popular religion, family life and village organization, food systems, and the emergence of a post-socialist culture in the People's Republic of China. In recent years Professor Watson has worked with graduate students in Harvard’s Department of Anthropology to investigate the impact of transnational food industries and genetically modified food in East Asia, Europe, and Russia. Focusing on changing patterns of food consumption and provisioning in south China and exploring transformations that have occurred in the Chinese family during the past century, Watson's presentation was titled "A Cultural Biography Of Meat (In South China): Globalization, Modernization, and Family Transformations."

Deborah Bial, president and founder of The Posse Foundation, was the featured speaker at Carleton’s opening convocation for the 2008-09 school year, with an address titled “Make It Happen: The Importance of Transformative Leadership.” The Posse Foundation is a youth leadership development and college access program that identifies, recruits, and trains youth leaders from urban public high schools and sends these groups as teams, or “posses,” to top colleges and universities around the country.

President Robert A. Oden's report at Alumni Convocation 2008

The Honors Convocation is held each year on the last Friday of spring term to recognize faculty and students for their accomplishments and their service to the community. This year's address will be delivered by Diethelm Prowe, Laird Bell Professor of History. The title of Professor Prowe's address is "Carls Born 1945-1989: Twentieth Century Perspectives."

In addition to the full program in audio and video, the audio version has also been broken out into the following parts:

• Part 1: Salutatory, President's welcome, and the announcement of the ACRL award with response
• Part 2: Announcments of the Endowed Chairs recipients
• Part 3: Recognition of Honor Students
• Part 4: The Convocation Address with introduction, plus the Alma Mater and Valedictory