Colleges and universities across the state held commencement exercises Saturday.

At the University of Maine at Presque Isle, more than 1,200 people flocked to Wieden Hall Gymnasium to see 275 graduates get their degrees.

UMPI President Dr. Donald Zillman said the 99th graduating class represented a “wonderfully international gathering” of students, many of whom spoke more than one language.

Commencement speaker Dr. Glenn Gabbard, associate director of the New England Resource Center for Higher Education and the director of Project Compass, lauded the graduates for their accomplishments and commended the faculty and those who supported the graduates with helping them achieve their goals.

“It is an incredible thing that you have accomplished,” Gabbard told graduates, crediting them for their tenacity and persistence.

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees were presented to Chief Justice Leigh Saufley, head of Maine’s court system, and to Donald and Mary Sanipass, preservers of American Indian culture. Donald Sanipass was awarded the degree posthumously.

At the University of Maine at Fort Kent, 297 students received degrees at the 126th commencement exercises on Saturday, with 267 bachelor’s and 31 associate degrees conferred. Graduates in the Class of 2008 included 147 students, or 49 percent, from Canada.

Virginia S. Pinkham of Ashland was presented an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree, which was conferred by UMFK President Dr. Richard Cost. Pinkham and Heather Hartman, senior class president, addressed the graduates and guests.

Also at the commencement ceremony, Rita Cannan from Eagle Lake was honored with the Distinguished Service Award.

At Unity College, Tedd Benson, author and owner of Benson Woodworking Co. Inc., challenged this year’s graduates to make the world a better, more sustainable place and gave them pointers he called Tedd’s Rules on how to do that.

Rule 1: Be happy. Rule 2: Buck convention. Rule 3: Save your world.

“Love what you do,” he said. “Sustainability begins in you. It is critical that you find work that satisfies you in that very deepest part of your soul. You can’t be useful and effective if the thing you do every day is at cross-purposes with your heart.”

Benson warned that conventional wisdom is often unwise and unsustainable and reminded them it is easier to think outside the box when you are not in it. He urged them to confront whatever “big, thick walls of conventional wisdom” stand in their way and to build a sustainable world for humans by developing sustainable beliefs and aspirations.

The best way to save the world, Benson said, is to save your world.

“It’s actually a simple thing to define wealth and progress more maturely, more humanely and with more sustainable ambitions,” he said. “It just needs to happen in the hearts and lives of people like you and I, one at a time.”

The mission is for each person to find meaning within their hearts and minds, their hands and their souls, he said.

“The work of our lives is simply to bring out all that which is within us, and doing that will not only save us, it will save the world.”

At the University of Maine at Augusta, approximately 600 graduates received degrees during Saturday’s commencement ceremonies. Maine Senate Majority Leader Libby Mitchell was the commencement speaker.

In Portland, Pulitzer Prize winner Roger Wilkins told University of Southern Maine graduates that the presidential candidacies of a woman and a black “would have been fodder for a fantasy movie” when he graduated from college 55 years ago.

“Today, whatever our problems are, we have a vastly different and better country than the one we lived in in 1953,” said Wilkins, a former editorial page staff member at The Washington Post and now a history professor at George Mason University.

BDN writers Jen Lynds in Houlton and Rich Hewitt in Ellsworth and The Associated Press contributed to this report.