Radnor High School Commencement: What To Know

RADNOR TOWNSHIP, PA — The Radnor High School Class of 2019 is ready to graduate. Their commencement will be held at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, June 12 at the Finneran Pavilion at Villanova University.

Doors to the pavilion open at 3 p.m. with commencement beginning at 4 p.m. The ceremony is expected to last about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Seating will be available on a first-come, first-served basis as graduation is not ticketed. There is ADA seating for guests on the concourse level of the Finneran Pavilion.

Villanova has multiple locations to park, however, the most convenient lot to access the pavilion is the I-1 off Ithan Avenue. See here for a map of the campus that includes parking locations.

Families that need handicapped parking will be given direct access to the Finneran Pavilion lot.

There is ADA seating on the concourse level of the pavilion (immediately behind the general seating sections.) Tickets are not required for ADA seating access. See here to see the layout of the pavilion.

The Finneran Pavilion is located at 1530 County Line Road in Bryn Mawr.

Priya Ganesh and Alexandra "Sasha" He will address their classmates as valedictorian and salutatorian, respectively.

Ganesh is co-president of the Radnor High School Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) Club and, in this role, previously placed second in "Introduction to Financial Math" at the National Leadership Conference in 2017. She is also president of the Radnor Hi-Q team, which finished the 2019 season second in Delaware County, and plays clarinet in the RHS band. She has participated in the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association (PMEA) band festivals at the district, regional and state level.

Ganesh earned the Harvard University Book Award her junior year, presented to the outstanding student in the junior class who combines excellence in scholarship with achievement in other fields. She was also a recipient of a Middlebury College German Award and the Rensselaer Medal Award.

Ganesh is the president of the RHS math club, and enjoys competing in math competitions as a member of the Lehigh Valley Math Team. She has participated in competitions such as the American Regions Math League competition and the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament. Her proudest accomplishment is qualifying for the American Invitational Mathematics Exam (AIME) all four years of high school.

She is a four-year member of the varsity girls tennis team, a member of the National Honor Society, and she volunteers as a tutor outside of school.

Ganesh plans to study chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He is section leader and principal cellist in the Radnor High School orchestra and has represented the school in a variety of festivals, including the PMEA District 12, Region 6 and All-State Orchestra Festivals. She was also selected by audition to the National Association for Music Education's All-National Honors Ensemble in 2017 and 2018 and will travel to Berlin, Edinburg, London, Amsterdam and Hamburg as a member of the U.S. National Youth Orchestra this summer. In addition, she was a 2018 and 2019 YoungArts Foundation Award Winner in the Classical Music Category. She is also a member of the National Honor Society and the Annenberg Science Symposium.

She earned the Yale University Book Award her junior year, presented to a student with outstanding character and intellectual promise who is active in extracurricular activities. She also received a Middlebury College German Award.

During her sophomore year, He was one of just 44 students from the United States awarded an all‐expenses‐paid summer study trip to Germany after scoring in the 96th percentile on the Level 3 of the 2017 National German Exam for High School Students sponsored by the American Association of Teachers of German.

He hopes to pursue a career that combines her two passions: science and music. She plans to attend Columbia University and the Juilliard School through the Columbia-Juilliard Exchange.

Dr. Shadi Hamid will be this year's keynote speaker.

Hamid is a 2001 Radnor High School graduate and 2015 RHS Hall of Fame inductee.

A senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing editor at The Atlantic, Hamid is the author of Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World, which was shortlisted for the 2017 Lionel Gelber Prize for best book on foreign affairs, and co-editor of Rethinking Political Islam. His first book, Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East, was named a Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2014. An expert on Islam and politics, Hamid served as director of research at the Brookings Doha Center until January 2014.

Hamid has also written articles for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, among others, and has been a guest on "PBS NewsHour," CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer" and "The Lead with Jake Tapper," MSNBC’s "Morning Joe," and FOX News' "America’s Newsroom."

Hamid has conducted extensive fieldwork in Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia and Turkey. He was in Tahrir Square when long-time Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was overthrown. He was a Fulbright Fellow in Jordan, a David L. Boren Fellow in Egypt, and a resident fellow at the American Center for Oriental Research in Amman, during which Hamid spend hundreds of hours interviewing members and leaders of some of the world’s most controversial Islamist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood and ultra-conservative Salafi movements.

Prior to joining Brookings, Hamid was director of research at the Project on Middle East Democracy and a Hewlett Fellow at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. He also served as a program specialist on public diplomacy at the U.S. State Depart­ment and a legislative fellow at the Office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Hamid received his B.S. and M.A. from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and his Ph.D. in political science from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar.