More than 700 students are eligible to participate in Coastal Carolina University's fall commencement ceremony at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 12 in the Myrtle Beach Convention Center. Fall candidates for graduation as well as August 2009 graduates will be recognized in the ceremony.

Jonathan Green, noted painter and printmaker, will be the commencement speaker. He will also receive the honorary degree, Doctor of Fine Arts.

Born in Gardens Corner, S.C., Green earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1982. Green’s work, known for its vibrant color and dramatic depiction of rural Gullah scenes, is prized by collectors and critics throughout the world. His paintings are displayed in major museum collections in California, Florida, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont, Japan, Germany and Sierra Leone.

Twenty-one works of art by Green will hang in the newly-dedicated Grace Martin Matlock Educational Galleries at the Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum until Thursday, Dec. 31.

Green has received numerous awards recognizing his achievement, including the Order of the Palmetto Award for the Arts from the state of South Carolina. In 2009, he received the NAACP’s Key of Life Award for his contributions to the visual fine arts. Green has also been named the 2010 recipient of the Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Governor’s Award for the Arts Lifetime Achievement, the state’s highest art award.

The ceremony will also recognize three Coastal Carolina University professors who have received the designation Distinguished Professor Emeritus: Linda Hollandsworth, the late Peter Lecouras and the late Don Millus.