Pitt to Hold 90th Annual Lantern Night Ceremony Aug. 29

PITTSBURGH—The University of Pittsburgh will bestow the symbolic “light of learning” on more than 400 incoming freshman and first-year transfer women during the 90th annual Lantern Night Ceremony at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 29 in Heinz Memorial Chapel, Fifth and Bellefield avenues, Oakland. 

The student participants will gather at 7 p.m. in the Cathedral of Learning Commons Room to receive a lantern and prepare for the 7:25 p.m. procession to the chapel. 

With unlit lanterns, the women will process on the parallel sidewalks located between the cathedral’s Bellefield Avenue entrance and the chapel to the 7:30 p.m. ceremony. During the event, Pitt alumni “flame-bearers,” including several mothers and grandmothers—who are also alumnae of the University—of incoming students, will light the lanterns, which will remain lit for the remainder of the program. Carrying the burning lanterns, the new students will process back to the Commons Room for a reception. 

Loren Jefferies-Pulliam (NURS ’92G), founder and president of LJP Enterprises, Inc., will give the Lantern Night Address. Other program participants include Kristi Riccio Festa (GSPH ’02), Pitt Alumni Association Alumnae Council president who will offer a greeting and history of Lantern Night, and Pitt students Nicole Cioffi, president of Pitt’s Panhellenic Association, and Chanell Turlington, president of the National Panhellenic Association, who will provide the student welcome. Patricia E. Beeson, Pitt provost and senior vice chancellor, will deliver the University welcome, and Riccio Festa will provide the closing. Following the remarks, Lantern Night Chair Juliana Shayne (NURS ’73) will lead “flame-bearers” in lighting the lanterns. 

Jefferies-Pulliam’s company provides anesthesia services, educational-based training, and mentoring to health care professionals. During her 24 years of nursing, she has served clients in a diversity of settings, including teaching nursing in South Africa’s townships during a missionary excursion prior to apartheid being abolished. Jefferies-Pulliam, who earned a MSN from Pitt, also has mentored undergraduate and graduate level students through professional and service organizations and volunteered as an adjunct faculty member in Pitt’s School of Nursing. Jefferies-Pulliam received her BSN from Duquesne University in 1986. 

Lantern Night is one of the University’s oldest traditions. The Alumnae Council of the Pitt Alumni Association and Pitt’s Division of Student Affairs cosponsor the ceremony. 

For more information, call 412-624-8215. 

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8/23/10/tmw/lks