FARMINGTON – Approximately 410 members of the graduating class of the University of Maine at Farmington will take part in the university’s 151st commencement ceremony starting at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, May 15.

The ceremony will be held outdoors behind UMF’s Olsen Student Center. In case of inclement weather, the ceremony will be held at the UMF Health and Fitness Center. Rain or shine, the ceremony will be broadcast live on Mount Blue Community Access Television on Channel 11 in Farmington and Wilton.

Delivering the keynote address will be author Rhea Cote Robbins, founder and director of the Franco-American Women’s Institute in Brewer.

Robbins will receive an honorary degree, doctor of humane letters, as will director of the Maine Humanities Council Dorothy Schwartz. Delivering the student speech will be graduating senior Shannon Lee Staples, a resident of Farmington and a graduate of Mount Blue High School.

Robbins was raised bilingual in a Franco-American neighborhood in Waterville. She spent years researching her family tree and visited the hometowns of her ancestors in Canada and France.

The Franco-American Women’s Institute is an organization that promotes awareness about the contributions of the Franco-American women to the culture, their families and the communities they live in. She has also worked in the Maine prison system with women prisoners and created a writing group with the women. She teaches creative nonfiction, literature and Franco-American women’s experiences at the University of Maine.

Schwartz has been executive director of the Maine Humanities Council since 1985, working for nearly 20 years to build community through integrating the humanities into the everyday lives of Maine people.

The Maine Humanities Council makes more than 100 grants annually, providing opportunities in teacher enrichment, cultural heritage, philanthropy seminars, literacy and reading programs for incarcerated juveniles and functionally illiterate adults and economic and environmental issues that affect Maine’s prosperity.

Student speaker Staples is an anthropology/sociology major. She transferred to UMF from Syracuse University in New York and plans to travel this summer to the West Coast and to Mexico and Central America and hopes to pursue a master’s degree. Staples is a graduate of Mount Blue High School in Farmington.

Following the ceremonies, UMF will honor the new graduates with a reception in the University’s South Dining Hall at UMF’s Olsen Student Center. Videotapes of the ceremony will be available from UMF’s Ferro Alumni Center at 778-7090.