Chef Ann Cooper is a renegade lunch lady. She works to transform cafeterias into culinary classrooms for students—one school lunch at a time. Cooper is at the forefront of the movement to transform the National School Lunch Program into one that places greater emphasis on the health of students than the financial health of a select few agribusiness corporations. Her lunch menus emphasize regional, organic, fresh foods, and nutritional education, helping students build a connection between their personal health and where their food comes from. The title of her presentation was "Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children."

Robert Morris, founder and artistic director of the St. Paul based Leigh Morris Chorale, and Anthony Leach, founder and director of the Penn State University choir, Essence of Joy, presented "The Relationship Between Song and Singing in the African American Sacred Music Traditions." This lecture-demonstration of concepts, performance practices and styles, and musical genres featured vocal solo artists from throughout the United States with members of the Leigh Morris Chorale and the Carleton College Choir. This convocation was part of "Spirituals, Hymns & Gospel Music," a week-long celebration of African-American sacred music.

Thomas Schelling is an economist and distinguished professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy. His expertise is in the areas of foreign affairs, national security, nuclear strategy, and arms control. He won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics "for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis." His book, The Strategy of Conflict, pioneered the study of bargaining and strategic behavior and is considered one of the hundred books that have been most influential in the West since 1945. His economic theories about war were extended in "Arms and Influence." The title of his presentation was "Can We Manage the Greenhouse Problem?"

Dr. Vijay Prashad, a professor in South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, is committed to intellectual extremism: nothing is forbidden to think about, everything is open to investigation. He is the author of twelve books, including two chosen by the Village Voice as books of the year: Karma of Brown Folk and Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting. His most recent books are The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World and Dispatches from Latin America: Experiments Against Neoliberalism. Dr. Prashad serves on the board of the Center for Third World Organizing, United For a Fair Economy, and the National Priorities Project. His convocation address examined Asian Americans, the Iraq War, and the upcoming election. With reference to Hawaii-born First Lieutenant Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse deployment to Iraq, the title of Dr. Prashad's presentation was "Watada's Election: Asian Americans and These Asian Wars."

“This, you see, is how it is in the culture at large now: the drool of a baby who has been on TV is more compelling than a writer of smutty thrillers,” said novelist Jane Hamilton in her humorous and thought-provoking convocation address, titled “Slouching Toward Television: A Novelist's Foray into the Realm of TV.” In reflecting on her early inspiration for writing novels, Hamilton says she overheard a professor say she would write a novel one day. Although she had only written two short stories for the professor's class, overhearing the conversation gave her a measure of confidence. Her first novel, The Book of Ruth, won the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award for best first novel and was a selection of the Oprah Book Club. Her second novel, A Map of the World, was an international bestseller, adapted for film, and was also an Oprah's Book Club selection. Her third novel, The Short History of a Prince, received the Publishers Weekly Best Book award. Hamilton lives, works, and writes in an orchard farmhouse in Wisconsin.