The sun will swallow the earth in 5 billion years, but that is a greater…

The sun will swallow the earth in 5 billion years, but that is a greater challenge than we have to deal with today, Pitt’s commencement speaker said this afternoon. The real challenges, he said, come with each person’s life.

The speaker and namesake of the engineering school, John Swanson, a Pitt graduate and distinguished alumnus, took the podium in the Petersen Events Center after an introduction from Chancellor Mark Nordenberg.

Swanson, who started as an engineer working on rockets, talked about a bevy of topics from nuclear annihilation, aliens and the energy crisis, to philosophy and the nature of life. The audience took most of the speech in silence, but Swanson worked in an occasional joke.

While talking about aliens, he said, “Now, you might ask, ‘How about intelligent life?’ And there is some question as to whether there is even intelligent life here,” Swanson said. Sounds of laughter could be heard scattered throughout the audience.

As tradition for the commencement speaker, Nordenberg presented an honorary degree to Swanson. In what he called a step away from Pitt tradition, Nordenberg presented a second degree to outgoing Provost James Maher.

The degree for Maher wasn’t in the program. Pitt spokesman John Fedele said the University wanted to surprise Maher, so administrators didn’t tell him about the degree before the ceremony.

Maher became Pitt’s provost in 1994 and announced last November that he planned to retire and return to teaching. At his last commencement as provost, he helped to confer the degrees of more than 3,000 graduates.

It took about 20 minutes for those graduates to file into the floor level of the Petersen Events Center, a space that more frequently houses basketball teams and concerts. The ceremony, which honored graduates of all levels from all of Pitt’s schools, began at 2 p.m. and ended just before 5 p.m.

Swanson spoke after a speech and short introduction by Nordenberg, at about 2:30 p.m. Swanson alluded to former President Ronald Reagan saying, “The most terrifying phrase in the English language is ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you,'” and also to the Bible by saying, “This too will pass.”

He jumped from subject to subject, talking about nuclear war, philosophy, religion, government, life, aliens, cell phones, the environment and the polio vaccine to name a few.

Swanson had a list of subjects that the next generation would need to change

Leeana Myers, who graduated with a degree in communication, said, “For a while there, he sounded like he was running for president.”

Caitlin Weber, who studied environmental studies before graduating Sunday, thought the speech was good, even if the subject matter was “a little depressing.

Some graduates, about one in 20, had designs or decorations on the tops of their graduation caps. Some had Greek letters representing fraternities and sororities, and one man had two lines of script in elvish, a language invented by J.R.R. Tolkien for “The Lord Of The Rings”.

Three women who sat side by side spelled out “We did it” on their caps.

The deans of each school read aloud the names of the doctoral students. The deans, rather than reading aloud more than 3,000 names, had the rest of the students stand by school and conferred their degrees in groups.

Many more undergraduate students attended the ceremony than graduate students. When the dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, N. John Cooper, asked his school’s graduates to stand, most of the attendees took to their feet, and when the dean of the law school, Mary Crossley, asked the law school to stand, one man stood. The law school will hold an additional ceremony for its graduates later this month.

Most of the other graduate schools had less than 10 attendees as well.

The pharmacy school was an exception. About fifty students threw confetti in the air and let off air horns when their dean called their school. Most of the other graduates stood quietly or occasionally cheered when the deans asked them to stand.

Sparking a quieter moment, Nordenberg introduced Ed McCord, the director of programming and special projects at the University Honors College, to present degrees to the students of the University Honors College.

McCord replaced G. Alexander Stewart, who died this past April and was the founding dean of the Honors College. Each commencement meant a great deal to the Stewart, Nordenberg said. Pitt has yet to name a replacement for Stewart as dean of the Honors College.

The graduates of the Honors College, scattered throughout the audience, remained mostly silent while McCord talked about the benefits of the Honors College and the achievements of its graduates.

After all of the schools finished conferring the degrees, graduating senior and former Student Government Board member Lance Bonner spoke, as did F. James McCarl III, the president of the Pitt Alumni Association. Nordenberg took the podium a final time to congratulate the new Pitt alumni.

Streamers and showers of confetti signaled the end of the ceremony, and the roar of cheers and recorded fireworks made the floor vibrate as the Class of 2010 celebrated graduation.