Every year a prestigious figure offers Penn's graduating seniors words of wisdom, guidance and advice.
And according to Director of Trustee Affairs Molly Roth, these carefully chosen, prominent leaders give their words away free of charge.
"We do not pay commencement speakers," said Roth, who who has been in charge of staffing Penn's honorary degree recipient selection committees for the past three years.
"They come for the honor of receiving an honorary degree from an Ivy League university. I was surprised to read that other colleges do occasionally pay people to try to attract big names."
Roth added that the opportunity to meet University President Judith Rodin has also provided additional incentive for many of the famous commencement speakers Penn has hosted over the years.
"A lot of people are really attracted to the idea of being celebrated by [Rodin] and the trustees of the University," Roth said.
Often, alumni connections help attract big name speakers as well.
"We have a large [University] Board of Trustees, and obviously a very large body of alumni ... so for us to have relationships with prominent people in different fields is not at all unusual," Roth said.
For example, U2 lead singer Bono -- who was selected as this year's speaker -- was actually a friend of "an alumnus and senior volunteer at the university [who] was asked to help by Dr. Rodin and was eager to pitch in," Roth said.
The speaker selection process begins as many as two years in advance, according to Roth, since most big-name speakers need to be booked at least a year prior to commencement.
Roth explained that three separate committees are in charge of selecting the group of honorary degree recipients -- one of whom also functions as the commencement speaker.
"There's a trustee committee on honorary degrees and awards that the [University] president sits on," Roth said, adding that this committee has the final say on all honorary degree recipients.
"There is also a University Council committee on honorary degree awards that's primarily composed of faculty, though it also has graduate and undergraduate students," Roth said.
The third committee is made up predominantly of students, and was created to offer "an additional opportunity for students to have input into the choice of a commencement speaker," she said.
Roth added that, when choosing the commencement speaker, quality matters more than experience.
"It matters to us that they be good speakers" and offer a "commanding presence for a football stadium-sized group," she said.
And while Roth said that she and her coworkers were pleased by the enthusiastic student reaction when Bono was announced as this year's commencement speaker, she also stressed the importance of a potential speaker's message, in addition to his fame.
"We have to balance a series of considerations in choosing commencement speakers," she said.
"As much as the commencement speaker is kind of a feature of every graduating senior's experience, it's also a representation of the university," she said. The speaker "has to be somebody who's incredibly distinguished, and it's not always going to be a rock star."
