More than 4,300 joyful graduates celebrated Commencement on June 14 and 15, including Jennifer L. Zapata, above. She received the Thomas More Storke Award — the university’s top student honor — from Chancellor Henry T. Yang, who shook the hand of each graduate. The ceremonies on Saturday and Sunday brought more than 40,000 visitors to campus.

The sun shone brightly on Commencement Weekend for the more than 4,300 graduates who participated in ceremonies on June 14 and 15 — and for the hundreds of staff and faculty members who helped make Commencement 2009 a success.

Chancellor Henry T. Yang shook the hand of each student who graduated from the College of Engineering, the College of Letters and Science, and the Graduate Division. He praised the students for their determination, intelligence, curiosity, and — sometimes wild — imagination.

Among the guest speakers at the six ceremonies — three on Saturday and three on Sunday — were Bob Duggan, chairman and chief executive officer of the biotech company Pharmacylics, and a UCSB alumnus; journalist and author Paul Roberts; Benjamin J. Cohen, the Louis Lancaster Professor of International Political Economy in the Department of Political Science; Mark Juergensmeyer, director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies and professor of global and international studies and of sociology; Alan F. Horn, president and chief operating officer of Warner Bros.; and The Reverend Anne Howard, the executive director of The Beatitudes Society, and a UCSB alumna.

Ceremonies for the College of Creative Studies and the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management took place on Sunday, June 7, and Friday, June 12.