View a slideshow of the 2007 International Institute Graduation Ceremony (Flash plug-in required). Speakers included retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark.

By the end of the summer, 275 undergraduate and 32 graduate degrees are expected to be conferred for the 2006–07 academic year in nine interdepartmental degree programs (IDPs) run by the UCLA International Institute. Each of the degree programs focuses on a world region or religion or on aspects of globalization and economic development. In addition, 150 students will have completed minor concentrations offered by six of these programs.

The students' achievements were marked at the end of the spring quarter on June 16, 2007, at the International Institute Graduation Ceremony. Commencement speaker Gen. Wesley K. Clark (ret.), a UCLA Burkle Center senior fellow whose career includes service as the supreme allied commander of NATO during the 1999 Kosovo conflict and a bid for the presidency in 2004, commended the students for taking a global perspective in their education.

"There are forces at work in human history that quietly are grinding away," Clark said. People who study the world, he said, are in a rare position to understand these forces.

IDPs at the International Institute range in size, from the language-intensive and intimate bachelor's degree program in European Studies to the larger program on East Asia, which graduated 40 students in its major program this year, to International Development Studies, with 175 graduates anticipated. Twenty undergraduates became the first class at UCLA to earn bachelor's degrees in Global Studies, which was inaugurated with its first course in 2005.

Eighty undergraduates completed programs focused on East Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa. Thirty-one students will receive master's degrees and one will receive a PhD in Islamic Studies.

For more information on interdepartmental programs at the International Institute, visit http://www.international.ucla.edu/idps/.