Nicholls students get their diplomas Saturday

The Nicholls Spring 2023 Commencement Ceremonies are set for Saturday at Stopher Gymnasium. Each session will feature all degree program candidates from two of the six colleges and a keynote speaker. 

Session I begins at 9 a.m. and features the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences and the College of Nursing. The keynote speaker is Judge Blair Edwards, a judge in the 21st District Court serving the Tangipahoa, St. Helena and Livingston parishes. She works exclusively in juvenile courts, including drugs and truancy issues. 

Edwards is a member of several state legal groups, including the Louisiana Children and Family Court Judges Association, and has served on the Louisiana Sentencing Commission, examining whether prison time served is fair and given out equitably across the state. She attended Loyola University for law school and Nicholls for her Bachelor of Science in accounting. 

Session II at noon will feature the College of Liberal Arts and Chef John Folse Culinary Institute. The keynote speaker is Marcelle Bienvenu, former culinary professor, cookbook author and food writer who has prepared Cajun and Creole dishes since the 1960s. She owned and operated a restaurant, Chez Marcelle, near Lafayette in the early 1980s and has worked at several restaurants, including Commander’s Palace and K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen in New Orleans. 

She is the author of three books and wrote a weekly food column “Creole Cooking” for the Times Picayune of New Orleans for over 30 years. Sje has co-authored 12 books, including several books with renowned chef Emeril Lagasse and a cookbook published after Hurricane Katrina titled “Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from the Times-Picayune,” which was nominated for a prestigious James Beard Award. 

Session III begins at 3 p.m. and features the College of Business Administration and College of Sciences and Technology. The keynote speaker is state Rep. Joseph A. Orgeron, Ph.D., who is also executive director of Restore or Retreat. 

Orgeron’s family counts itself among the original Cajun mariners who helped develop the offshore oil and gas industry. In the 1960s, his father started a company called Montco that Orgeron and his brother eventually took over, building boats essential to the offshore oil business, including some of the first lift boats. 

Orgeron is working towards making Louisiana a leader in the renewable energy sector, building a pair of proprietary vessels dubbed “SuperFeeders” that would ferry enormous wind farm components from the dock to their offshore locations for installation. 

Orgeron has a variety of experience ranging from operation management, offshore energy and wind, data analytics, machine learning, neural network modeling, IT strategy and more.

He holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Physics from Nicholls, a Master’s in Experimental High Energy Physics from the University of Texas at Dallas and a Ph.D. from UT Dallas.