The state's senior U.S. senator will address Mississippi State graduates during the university's Dec. 13 commencement program.
Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., is featured speaker for the semester-concluding exercise that begins at 10 a.m. in Humphrey Coliseum. Since first elected to the Senate in 1978, the Pontotoc native and former Byram resident has enjoyed four landslide re-elections to the office.
Nearly 1,300 MSU students will be candidates for degrees at the conclusion of the 2003 fall semester--the final academic period of the land-grant institution's 125th anniversary year.
Family members and friends of the graduates unable to attend may watch the campus program in its entirety via the MSU Web site, http://www.msstate.edu.
Cochran is chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee and also a member of the Appropriations and Rules committees. Prior to his Senate service, he won election to the United States House of Representatives in 1972.
The United States Navy veteran holds bachelor's and law degrees from the University of Mississippi and studied for a year as a Rotary Foundation Fellow at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. He also has been awarded four honorary degrees from other colleges and universities.
A longtime supporter of research and development programs, Cochran has led in obtaining congressional funding for a variety of MSU projects and facilities in agriculture, aquaculture, forestry, technology, and engineering.
A major federal research facility in the state already carries his name and a second soon will. The Cochran National Warm Water Aquaculture Research Center in Stoneville opened in the 1980s, while congressional legislation is nearing passage for the Cochran Southern Horticultural Laboratory in Poplarville. Both U.S. Agriculture Department units are located on the campuses of MSU-administered Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Stations.
In addition to agriculture, Cochran has led in introducing legislation for teacher training, vocational education and libraries, among other areas.
