Approximately 300 students are eligible to participate in Coastal Carolina University's summer graduation ceremony on Saturday, Aug. 9, at 8:30 a.m. at the HTC Center. Arne Flaten, Ph.D., professor of art history and chair of CCU's Department of Visual Arts, will deliver the address.

Doors open at 7:30 a.m., and the commencement will be streamed live at CCU's website at coastal.edu.

"Carpe Diem: Of Dead Poets and Epistemology" is the title of Flaten's speech.

Flaten joined CCU's faculty in 2003. He earned a bachelor's degree in art studio and English literature from St. Olaf College in Minnesota, where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa. After teaching in Israel and Rwanda, he earned his master's and doctoral degrees in art history from Indiana University at Bloomington. His research has been supported by the Fulbright Commission, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the J. Paul Getty Research Institute and the Renaissance Society of America.

Flaten was the HTC Distinguished Teacher-Scholar Lecturer at Coastal Carolina University in 2013, and in 2014 he was elected to the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (EASA).

For more details and ticket information, visit the website at coastal.edu/commencement.