Spencer LeDoux

LeDoux to speak at Commencement May 15

Spencer LeDoux, the Outstanding Undergraduate Student in Liberal Arts for 2008-2009, will give the Student Commencement Address at Spring 2009 graduation ceremonies May 15.  The ceremonies will begin at 7 p.m. in Strahan Coliseum.  More information about the ceremonies is available from the Commencement Web Site.

LeDooux is graduating with a major in Anthropology and a minor in Honors Studies. His Honors thesis, Visualizing the Sacred: the artifacts and symbols of the other world, is a study of the elite graves of moundbuilders in the southeastern United States.

LeDoux has a 4.00 GPA and he is pursuing his second Bachelor of Arts degree. He earned his first from Berry College, Mt. Berry Georgia, in 2000, where he was a member of two honor societies, Pi Delta Phi for French majors and Sigma Delta Pi for Spanish majors. Highlights of his Berry College years were two study abroad programs—at universities in Dijon, France, and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where he spent two summers.

In 2004, LeDoux’s fascination with other cultures led him to a three-year position with the Nova Group in Sakai, Japan, where he taught English as a Second Language to people of all ages. He supervised and trained new instructors and assumed responsibility for curriculum consistency in children’s classes at 10 schools.

LeDoux entered Texas State in fall 2007, where he’s established an extraordinary record in the Anthropology Department and with its Centers. Since August 2008, he has been an analyst for the Center for Archaeological Studies; for two semesters he participated in two graduate-level archaeology courses, and last summer, he attended Texas State’s Archaeology Field School in the Texas Panhandle. From January through August 2008, he served as a volunteer in the Center for Archaeological Studies, and that same year he volunteered as an assistant in two workshops sponsored by the Center for the Arts and Symbolism in Ancient America—the Mississippian Iconographic Workshop and the Hopewell Culture Workshop.

This year his academic awards include the Jerry Stanton Adult Scholarship, as well as a scholarship from the University Honors Program, and another from Associated Student Government. He has also been inducted into two honor societies at Texas State: Alpha Lambda Delta (for freshman with a 3.5+ GPA) and Lambda Alpha, the Anthropology Honor Society. He also achieved an impressive honor in his youth, the rank of Eagle Scout.

In a nomination letter, Professor Kent Reilly writes that LeDoux “repeatedly demonstrates intelligence and motivation,” adding that “his Honors Student status, combined with his excellent computer skills, put [him] in the forefront of those scholars who are interpreting the iconography of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex in particular and the Archaeology of the Eastern Woodlands in general.”

LeDoux has been accepted by both Oxford and Cambridge Universities to pursue a graduate degree in Anthropology.