Today@Sam Article
Fall 2024 Commencement Speakers Announced
Nov. 13, 2024
SHSU Media Contact: Mikah Boyd
Sam Houston State University’s Fall 2024 Commencement ceremonies will begin on the morning of Dec. 13 and continue through the evening of Dec. 14 at the Bernard G. Johnson Coliseum. Degree candidates attending the ceremonies on Friday will be addressed by Brian Starr, while those in the Saturday’s commencements will hear from Dr. Katelyn Bruno, PhD, FHFSA, FACC. Both Starr and Bruno are graduates of SHSU and have leveraged their education to achieve acclaim in their respective careers.
Starr is a certified public accountant who graduated magna cum laude with a B.B.A. in Accounting from SHSU in 2002. Starr put his education to great use and is now a partner and the Houston market leader with Whitley Penn, the 34th largest public accounting firm in the United States with nine locations and approximately 900 employees.
During his time at SHSU, Starr was part of the 2001 Southland Conference Champion Bearkat football team and remains connected to the athletic department by mentoring student-athletes and creating opportunities for them to engage with successful Sam Houston alumni.
As a proud Bearkat alum, Starr gives back by serving as president of the SHSU Alumni Association, trustee on the Sam Houston University Foundation Board of Trustees and member of the College of Business Administration Advisory Council. He is also passionate about serving the community through his active involvement in his church, All Saints Catholic Church of Houston, and serving on the board of directors of the Downtown Houston YMCA. Starr is even more passionate about his family. He and his wife, Shelley, have three children that keep them incredibly busy – Connor, Kaleigh and new baby, Charlie.
Saturday’s Speaker, Bruno, graduated magna cum laude from SHSU as a member of the Golden Key International Honor Society and the Elliot T. Bowers Honors College. Currently, she is a tenure-track assistant professor at the University of Florida (UF) whose research spans broad areas of the field of medicine.
She was a critical member of the U.S. COVID Convalescent Plasma Expanded Access Program (EAP), which enrolled 105,000 patients who were hospitalized with severe COVID-19 across the country utilizing FDA and BARDA funding. She built the database that housed information from patients enrolled in the EAP, ran the program’s data integrity team and was a member of the oversight committee.
Bruno received her Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice in 2010 and another Bachelor of Science in Chemistry in 2011 from SHSU before earning her PhD in Environmental Health Sciences from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2016. She then pursued a post-doctoral fellowship at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. She was recruited to UF in 2022, where she runs a research laboratory and mentors and teaches students of all levels. When she is not working at UF, Bruno spends time with her husband, Stephen (’19), and their two children.
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