Willamette University Honors the Class of 2008

Willamette University will bid adieu to the Class of 2008 in four commencement ceremonies Sunday, May 11.

The College of Liberal Arts commencement begins at 3 p.m. on The Quad. The Atkinson Graduate School of Management ceremony is at 9:30 a.m. in Hudson Hall, and the College of Law commencement is at 11:30 a.m. on The Quad. The School of Education ceremony is at 11 a.m. in Smith Auditorium.

The College of Liberal Arts will honor 500 students with bachelor’s degrees. The College of Law will award 114 JD and LLM degrees, and the School of Education will award 101 MAT degrees. Atkinson will recognize 47 early career MBA graduates (18 professional MBA graduates were honored in January).

Helen Vendler, the A. Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard and a well-recognized poetry critic, will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters and deliver the CLA commencement address. The Honorable Wallace P. Carson Jr., former Chief Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court and a 1962 College of Law graduate, will receive an honorary doctor of laws.

Oregon Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul DeMuniz, a 1975 College of Law graduate, will deliver the law commencement address, and Jack McGowan, recently retired executive director of SOLV, will speak at the Atkinson ceremony.

For more information on Willamette’s commencement activities, go to www.willamette.edu/events/commencement/.

Update: Jonathan Kozol, a longtime educator and social justice advocate who was scheduled to receive an honorary degree and speak at the School of Education commencement, has canceled his appearance due to medical reasons. The School of Education speaker will be Dean Nakanishi '98, MAT'00, who teaches in a special education academy near Seattle and has researched and lectured on the history of Salem Japanese-American students sent to internment camps during World War II.

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Willamette University Sends Off Class of 2007

Libby Appel, longtime artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, will deliver the Willamette University College of Liberal Arts commencement address Sunday, May 13.

Appel also will be awarded an honorary doctor of fine arts degree. Other honorary degree recipients are Mercy Corps founder Dan O’Neill, honorary doctor of humane letters; physicist and Professor Carl E. Wieman, honorary doctor of science; and Cao Jianming, vice president of the People’s Supreme Court in China, honorary doctor of laws.

The College of Law commencement speaker is Steven T. Wax, federal public defender for the District of Oregon, and the Atkinson Graduate School of Management speaker is Tim Boyle, president and CEO of Columbia Sportswear Company.

The College of Liberal Arts will award 489 bachelor’s degrees, the College of Law 156 JD and LLM degrees, Atkinson 57 MBA degrees, and the School of Education 92 MAT degrees.

The College of Liberal Arts and School of Education will hold commencement at 3 p.m. on the Quad. The College of Law ceremony is at 11:30 a.m. on the Quad. Atkinson Graduate School of Management’s commencement is at 9 a.m. in Hudson Hall.

College of Liberal Arts
Commencement speaker Libby Appel is the first woman to hold the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s top artistic post. For 15 seasons, she has served as artistic director on numerous plays, including The Winter’s Tale, Bus Stop, Richard III, Richard II, Macbeth, The Trip to Bountiful, Three Sisters, King Lear and Henry VI Parts One, Two and Three, for which she also was co-director. She has directed more than 50 plays at more than 20 professional theatre companies, and has served as dean and artistic director at the School of Theatre at the California Institute of the Arts, and head of the acting program at California State University, Long Beach. Appel wrote Mask Characterization: An Acting Process, created and produced the video Inter/Face: The Actor and the Mask, and is co-author of two plays, Shakespeare’s Women and Shakespeare’s Lovers.

Honorary degree recipient Dan O’Neill founded Mercy Corps in 1981, and since then the agency has generated more than $1 billion in humanitarian aid in more than 81 countries, assisting children and families through emergency relief projects, self-help development programs and civil society initiatives. O’Neill has authored award-winning books and articles and his editorials have appeared in national and international publications.

Honorary degree recipient Carl E. Wieman, a 2001 Nobel Prize recipient, is a physicist at the University of British Columbia who in 1995 produced the first true Bose-Einstein condensate. In 1998 he was awarded the Lorentz Medal, which highlights important contributions to theoretical physics, and he also has received the National Science Foundation’s highest honor for excellence in both teaching and research.

Honorary degree recipient Cao Jianming is a well-known international trade and economic law scholar and serves as justice and executive vice president of the People’s Supreme Court in China. He has numerous honors in international law, and he spent most of his career at East China University of Politics and Law serving as professor, associate dean, dean of the international law department, vice president and president.

College of Law
Commencement speaker Steven T. Wax is the federal public defender for the District of Oregon. He is a frequent writer and speaker on federal criminal issues, and has been the attorney in a number of high-profile cases, including several involving Guantanamo Bay detainees. Wax is admitted to practice in the U.S. District Court for the Districts of Oregon, Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second and Ninth Circuits, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Atkinson Graduate School of Management
Commencement speaker Tim Boyle is the president and CEO of Columbia Sportswear Company, one of the largest outerwear brands in the world and the leading seller of skiwear in the U.S. Boyle oversees operations of the company from its Portland headquarters. In 1992, he and his mother, Columbia Chairwoman Gert Boyle, were co-recipients of Inc. Magazine’s Northwest Entrepreneur of the Year award. Boyle is a board member of Widmer Brothers Brewing Company, Northwest Natural and Oregon Trout.

For more information about Willamette University’s commencement, call (503) 370-6209 or go online to www.willamette.edu/events/commencement/schedules.

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Willamette University Sends Off Class of 2007

Libby Appel, longtime artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, will deliver the Willamette University College of Liberal Arts commencement address Sunday, May 13.

Appel also will be awarded an honorary doctor of fine arts degree. Other honorary degree recipients are Mercy Corps founder Dan O’Neill, honorary doctor of humane letters; physicist and Professor Carl E. Wieman, honorary doctor of science; and Cao Jianming, vice president of the People’s Supreme Court in China, honorary doctor of laws.

The College of Law commencement speaker is Steven T. Wax, federal public defender for the District of Oregon, and the Atkinson Graduate School of Management speaker is Tim Boyle, president and CEO of Columbia Sportswear Company.

The College of Liberal Arts will award 489 bachelor’s degrees, the College of Law 156 JD and LLM degrees, Atkinson 57 MBA degrees, and the School of Education 92 MAT degrees.

The College of Liberal Arts and School of Education will hold commencement at 3 p.m. on the Quad. The College of Law ceremony is at 11:30 a.m. on the Quad. Atkinson Graduate School of Management’s commencement is at 9 a.m. in Hudson Hall.

College of Liberal Arts
Commencement speaker Libby Appel is the first woman to hold the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s top artistic post. For 15 seasons, she has served as artistic director on numerous plays, including The Winter’s Tale, Bus Stop, Richard III, Richard II, Macbeth, The Trip to Bountiful, Three Sisters, King Lear and Henry VI Parts One, Two and Three, for which she also was co-director. She has directed more than 50 plays at more than 20 professional theatre companies, and has served as dean and artistic director at the School of Theatre at the California Institute of the Arts, and head of the acting program at California State University, Long Beach. Appel wrote Mask Characterization: An Acting Process, created and produced the video Inter/Face: The Actor and the Mask, and is co-author of two plays, Shakespeare’s Women and Shakespeare’s Lovers.

Honorary degree recipient Dan O’Neill founded Mercy Corps in 1981, and since then the agency has generated more than $1 billion in humanitarian aid in more than 81 countries, assisting children and families through emergency relief projects, self-help development programs and civil society initiatives. O’Neill has authored award-winning books and articles and his editorials have appeared in national and international publications.

Honorary degree recipient Carl E. Wieman, a 2001 Nobel Prize recipient, is a physicist at the University of British Columbia who in 1995 produced the first true Bose-Einstein condensate. In 1998 he was awarded the Lorentz Medal, which highlights important contributions to theoretical physics, and he also has received the National Science Foundation’s highest honor for excellence in both teaching and research.

Honorary degree recipient Cao Jianming is a well-known international trade and economic law scholar and serves as justice and executive vice president of the People’s Supreme Court in China. He has numerous honors in international law, and he spent most of his career at East China University of Politics and Law serving as professor, associate dean, dean of the international law department, vice president and president.

College of Law
Commencement speaker Steven T. Wax is the federal public defender for the District of Oregon. He is a frequent writer and speaker on federal criminal issues, and has been the attorney in a number of high-profile cases, including several involving Guantanamo Bay detainees. Wax is admitted to practice in the U.S. District Court for the Districts of Oregon, Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second and Ninth Circuits, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Atkinson Graduate School of Management
Commencement speaker Tim Boyle is the president and CEO of Columbia Sportswear Company, one of the largest outerwear brands in the world and the leading seller of skiwear in the U.S. Boyle oversees operations of the company from its Portland headquarters. In 1992, he and his mother, Columbia Chairwoman Gert Boyle, were co-recipients of Inc. Magazine’s Northwest Entrepreneur of the Year award. Boyle is a board member of Widmer Brothers Brewing Company, Northwest Natural and Oregon Trout.

For more information about Willamette University’s commencement, call (503) 370-6209 or go online to www.willamette.edu/events/commencement/schedules.

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Willamette University Bids Adieu to the Class of 2006

Professor S. Allen Counter, director of The Harvard Foundation of Harvard University and a neurophysiologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, will deliver the College of Liberal Arts commencement address at Willamette University Sunday, May 14.

An honorary Doctor of Science degree will be awarded to Counter and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree will be awarded to philanthropist Catherine B. Reynolds, Los Angeles schoolteacher Rafe Esquith, and Columbia Sportswear Company chairwoman Gert Boyle.

Willamette University College of Law alumnus, the Honorable Wallace P. Carson Jr., will deliver the law commencement address.

Honorary degree recipient Catherine B. Reynolds will give the commencement address for the Atkinson Graduate School of Management.

The College of Liberal Arts will award 334 degrees, the College of Law 146, Atkinson Graduate School of Management 60 and the School of Education 94 degrees.

The College of Liberal Arts and the School of Education will hold commencement at 3 p.m. on the Quad; Atkinson commencement is 9 a.m. in Hudson Hall, and the College of Law commencement is at 11:30 a.m. on the Quad.

CLA Commencement
For more than 20 years, commencement speaker Counter has engaged students at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School. As a neurophysiologist, he conducts both clinical and basic research studies on nerve and muscle physiology, auditory physiology, and neurophysiological diagnosis of brain-injured children and adults. His latest research focuses on toxic lead and mercury exposure in Ecuadorian children.

He is the first and only director of the Harvard Foundation for intercultural and race relations. The Foundation programs and mission have been replicated at universities across the country. His work through the Foundation earned him the distinguished NAACP Image Award in 1989. In 1994, the National Medical Association awarded Counter the Hall of Fame Award honoring his achievements in medicine.

He has published extensively in both cultural and scientific journals, including National Geographic and Scientific American. He has appeared on local and national television promoting scientific literacy of young people. He continues to work in the areas of ethics in science and technology, nature conservation, and human rights at the international level. He is presently co-host of EcoForum, a nationally televised program on earth conservation.

Law Commencement
Carson joined the Oregon Supreme Court in 1982 and was Chief Justice from 1991-05. Prior to joining the Supreme Court, he served as a judge for Marion County Circuit Court from 1977-82. He graduated from Stanford University in 1956 and Willamette University College of Law in 1962.

Atkinson Commencement
Reynolds created a new and affordable way for Americans to finance a college education. She developed a privately funded alternative to government student loan programs that has enabled hundreds of thousands of Americans to attend college. In only 10 years, this approach to private educational financing revolutionized student lending and spawned a multibillion-dollar industry of 65 lenders offering more than 200 financial products.

She is the creator and chairman of the Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation, one of the largest foundations in the nation. In 2004, Reynolds was selected by Business Week as one of the 50 most philanthropic living Americans and the first self-made woman ever to make their list. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University.

Honorary Degree Recipients
Rafe Esquith introduces Shakespeare’s masterpieces to inner city fifth graders at Hobart Boulevard Elementary School in central Los Angeles. He molds his students into latter-day Renaissance scholars and shows them a world outside their neglected neighborhoods. His students spend an entire year studying and rehearsing one play and then perform it at Shakespeare festivals across the county. By any measure, these student actors, many of whom speak English as their second language, have been wildly successful including opening for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

As a result of his commitment to his students both inside and outside the classroom, Esquith’s students consistently score in the top 5 to 10 percent nationally in standardized tests and many of his students have moved onto college and law school.

Esquith has received several accolades for this dedication including the Walt Disney American Teacher Award for National Teacher of the Year and Oprah Winfrey’s $100,000 Use Your Life Award. He used his award money to create a charitable fund at his school. He is currently working with the NEA to help put Shakespeare in 10,000 American classrooms.

Gertrude Boyle is the matriarch and chairwoman of the board of the international outdoor apparel and footwear manufacturer Columbia Sportswear Company. Hailed by Working Woman magazine as one of America’s Top 50 Women Business Owners – and named one of 1994’s “Best Managers” by Business Week – Boyle is the center of Columbia’s irreverent, award-winning advertising campaign. She portrays cantankerous “Mother Boyle,” the stern taskmaster who enforces Columbia’s demanding quality standards.

Since Boyle and her son Tim began managing the company, Columbia Sportswear has gone from near bankruptcy to become one of the world’s largest outerwear manufacturers and the leading seller of skiwear in the United States. Columbia’s sales have soared from $12.9 million in 1984 to $1.1 billion in 2004, and the company continues to forge ahead with product diversification and innovation.

Throughout her career, Boyle has been a leader in the Portland community. She has received many honors recognizing her business savvy and philanthropic endeavors. Most recently she received Oregon’s prestigious First Citizen Award in 2005.

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Willamette University Commencement 2005

Six exceptional leaders, representing six very diverse backgrounds, will participate in the May 15 commencement celebration at Willamette University in Salem.

The College of Liberal Arts will award degrees to 482 undergraduates who represent 31 states. Fifty-seven percent of the Class of 2005 are non-Oregon residents. In keeping with national trends, women students outnumber the men 56 to 44 percent, and the most popular degrees are politics, economics, Spanish, psychology and biology.

The Willamette College of Law will award 141 JD degrees and two LLM degrees to a class that represents 75 undergraduate colleges and universities, 24 states and two foreign countries. The law Class of 2005 is 45 percent women.

The Atkinson Graduate School of Management will award 65 degrees to a class that is 57 percent men and 43 percent women. They represent 12 states and four countries. Thirty-nine percent of the graduates are non-Oregon residents.

The School of Education will award 86 degrees to a class that is 69 percent women and 78 percent Oregon residents.

For a full commencement schedule, go to www.willamette.edu/events/commencement.

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Commencement May 2005: Willamette University Honors Five Distinguished Leaders

Executive Director of Amnesty International Dr. William F. Schulz; former National Public Radio Morning Edition host Bob Edwards; former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma Wilma Mankiller; retired Washington Supreme Court Judge Justice Faith Ireland; and Oregon State Senator Frank Morse will all participate in commencement ceremonies Sunday, May 15, at Willamette University in Salem.

Schulz will serve as commencement speaker at the College of Liberal Arts/School of Education event. Senator Morse will speak at the Atkinson Graduate School of Management ceremony, and Justice Ireland will speak at the College of Law commencement. Honorary degrees will be awarded to Schulz, Edwards and Mankiller.

Schulz was appointed executive director of Amnesty International in 1994 and is recognized for his international and social justice causes. He has led fact-finding missions to Romania, the Middle East, Northern Ireland and Liberia.

Schulz is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Oberlin College, has a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Chicago and the Doctor of Ministry degree from Meadville /Lombard Theological School at the University of Chicago.

Bob Edwards, journalist and 30-year veteran of National Public Radio, is inextricably tied to NPR’s Morning Edition, which started each day for 13 million listeners. The program made Edwards’ voice one of the most recognized in America. Over the years, Edwards has conducted more than 20,000 interviews, with everyone from President Bill Clinton to Hans Blix to Johnny Cash.

A graduate of the University of Louisville and American University, Edwards and Morning Edition have earned dozens of awards, including a 1999 George Foster Peabody Award and the 1984 Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for “outstanding contributions to public radio.”

Wilma Mankiller was the first woman in modern history to lead a major Native American tribe. With a population of more than 140,000 and more than 1,200 employees spread over 7,000 square miles, Mankiller represented the Cherokee Nation, second largest tribe in the United States.

Prior to serving as chief from 1985 to 1995, she worked at the Urban Indian Resource Center and volunteered in the community. In 1981 she founded and then became director of the Cherokee Community Development Department, where she orchestrated a community-based renovation of the water system and was instrumental in lifting an entire town, Bell, Oklahoma, out of squalor and despair. In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Justice Faith Ireland was elected to the Supreme Court in 1998 after serving 15 years as a judge of the Superior Court. She began her legal career with the firm of McCune, Godfrey and Emerick in the University District of Seattle and in 1974 opened a sole practice in Pioneer Square. She handled family law cases, real estate matters and tried civil and criminal cases all over Washington State.

After receiving her B.A. from the University of Washington, Justice Ireland graduated one of two women in her class at Willamette University School of Law in Salem, Oregon in 1969. She returned to school while working full time and received her master’s degree in Taxation with honors from Golden Gate University. She was a founding member of Washington Women Lawyer’s and a board member of the Washington State Trial Lawyer’s Association.

State Senator Frank Morse Frank graduated from Oregon State University and Northwest Christian College. He entered the Morse Bros. family business in 1972. He has been the Albany division manager, vice president of operations, executive vice president, president and chairman. When Morse Bros. merged with MDU Resources Group, Morse continued as president until he retired in 2000. He was elected to the Oregon Senate in 2002.

In retirement, Morse focused his attention on a new business, Environ-Metal Inc. where he serves as chairman of the board. He now also serves as chairman of Samaritan Albany General Hospital Board, chairman of the Samaritan Health Services Board, chairman of Northwest Christian College Trustees, board member of Cockerline Foundation and board member of Albany Boys and Girls Club Foundation.

The full commencement schedule is available at www.willamette.edu/events/commencement.

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CLA Valedictory

Each year on this happy and remarkable occasion, I have sought to speak to the graduating classes on a subject that may hold some special meaning for them beyond their years at Willamette. I am fortunate this year, for history has provided me with my text – a topic so important that not to speak to it would represent a dereliction of duty, especially for someone whose life’s work is education.

Tomorrow, the nation will commemorate the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas – a U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared segregated public schools unlawful.

On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren, read from the bench the now famous words that constitutionally annihilated the separate but equal doctrine that had been the law of the land since Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896: [I]n the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

We are a better and a stronger nation because of Brown.

Brown represented the convergence of two compelling movements: one legal, the other social. It began the long process of legally unraveling a nation of separate parks, hospitals, public transportation, water fountains, public restrooms, libraries, hotels, restaurants, theaters, and cemeteries — not only in the South, but in the North as well.

It laid the legal foundation on which other forms of modern-day discrimination have been or are in the process of being eliminated.

The Court’s words are as true today as they were fifty years ago:

Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. It is required in the performance of our most basic public society. It is the foundation of good citizenship. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms."

These words sustain and give force to the moral imperative expressed by the court last summer in two cases involving the University of Michigan that educational institutions – private and public, secondary and post-secondary alike — have an obligation to ensure that "the path to leadership [is] open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity." (Grutter v. Bollinger).

At the time of Brown, I was a 4-year-old African-American kid from a working class family living in Wichita, Kansas - a long stone’s throw from Topeka. I would enter kindergarten the fall following the court’s ruling. My father and mother attended segregated public schools. After Brown, I had a choice that neither of them had growing up: rather than attend the segregated African-American school several miles to the south, I could attend the white school a short three blocks to the north.

Now, at a distance, this choice seems easier – more transparent – than the choices that similarly situated parents have to make today.

So it is, fifty years later, that our world seems topsy-turvy when one considers the growing numbers of ethnic minorities and families of color who resist court-ordered integration plans that bus their children several miles away in favor of revitalized neighborhood schools. It seems difficult to contest the reasonableness of such modern-day decisions, even though they compete with the integrationist vision of Brown.

And, in the year 2050 when there will be no majority “race” in America, one wonders whether if it will be still possible or even desirable to sustain the once compelling social vision that gave birth to Brown.

Yes, it was a very different world in 1954. The US explodes a hydrogen bomb in the mid-Pacific that is 600 times more powerful than the hydrogen bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The US Senate rejects President’s Eisenhower’s plan to extend voting rights to eighteen year olds. The President says that he can think of no greater tragedy than for the US to get involved in Indochina. The US Senate votes 67 to 20 to condemn Senator Joseph R. McCarthy for conduct unbecoming a Senator, bringing to a climax months of controversy over his unscrupulous tactics in the investigation of Communists in government. Two Lords are published this year: William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. Roger Bannister, an Oxford medical student, breaks the four-minute mile and a New York Giants baseball player by the name of Willie Mays is voted MVP.

Marilyn Monroe sues for divorce from Joe DiMaggio. Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye star in a movie called White Christmas. A $30 automatic coffee maker capable of brewing coffee in two minutes goes on sale for the first time. RCA begins mass production of color TV sets with 12” screen for under $1000. The Vatican reminds Catholics that watching mass on TV does not fulfill their religious requirements. Emmett Till is thirteen years old – an African-American boy living in Chicago. His brutal murder in Mississippi – a year and three months after Brown - would change the course of American history.
And, yes, all across the nation there is massive resistance by state governments and local school boards to the desegregation order.

Closer to home, Mark O. Hatfield, who was to become one of our nation’s most venerated US Senators, was dean of students at Willamette, his alma mater. He oversaw a class of students who swooned and swayed to the hit music of Doris Day singing Secret Love, Sh-Boom, Sh-Boom by the Crew Cuts, Shake, Rattle and Roll by Bill Haley and the Comets and Young at Heart by the youthful Frank Sinatra. The class of 1954 won Glee all four years, only one of two classes in the history of Willamette to do so. Willamette initiated a 3:2 engineering program with Columbia University, one of the earliest cooperative academic arrangements of its kind in America. Fifty years ago today, ground was broken on a new health center (Bishop), a women's dormitory (Doney) and a campus fine arts center (G. Herbert Smith Auditorium). The Collegian featured several editorials about the McCarthy hearings, the majority of them in support of Senator McCarthy. ROTC had a strong presence on campus, and undergraduates hosted an "Ugly Man" Contest.

We have come a long way. The classes before me will graduate with distinction. Two of you have won the prestigious Thomas J. Watson Fellowship that will permit one of you to study local barter networks in England, Thailand, Australia and South Africa and the other to travel to the Andes, China and Eastern Europe searching for a common thread in the music of mountain peoples. Willamette is the only university in the nation this year to receive two Watson and two Truman Fellowships. Others are headed to graduate school to study chemistry, physics, astronomy, law, medicine, theology, political science, history, film studies and economics, to name just a few. Some of you will be in Prague or Calcutta or Japan or Tanzania or London or Paris or Central America next year. Most of you will go directly to work.

Among these many talented students, I wish to acknowledge especially those who have chosen to teach in our public schools. To you we owe a special debt, for you have chosen a path whose financial rewards are few, but whose contributions to the future of this country are exceptional.

We need new leadership in education, and we need it now. Today too, too many young lives of bright hope and promise are darkened with the clouds of defeat. We need public school teachers prepared to teach effectively in increasingly multi-cultural and multi-racial communities. We need to provide incentives for our very best college students to seek teaching positions in areas where the poverty and achievement gaps are most prominent.

The very best education has the capacity to awaken young children to their individual destinies and nurture the promise that lies within each.

Great and powerful things happen when you put an eager student and a good teacher in a classroom. This is where knowledge begins. This is where great ideas are nurtured. This is where transformation and change begin. This is where our future begins.

As was once said, "the important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn." (John Lubbock.)

We gather today in tribute to the history of an uncommon university, to acknowledge the splendid contributions of our honorary degree recipients and, most important, to mark in this public setting the extraordinary promise of these educated young women and men.

Four short years ago, the undergraduates assembled on these green fields to recognize its matriculation into this community of learned folk. At that time, I said that root meaning of matriculate was derived from the Latin “mater” or mother. Today, you set sail from your “alma mater” – your nourishing mother - on a new journey of growth and discovery.

I bring you good news. You have been nourished, indeed. Your education has prepared you well, and your time here has been well spent.

In all that you do, remain faithful to the education you have earned and to the legacy that you have inherited. Share your talents and resources with those who have not had the good fortune to participate in the bounty of life as you have.

And when you depart from these halls of learning, may your life bring you some work of noble note, may you find meaning in your commitment to others and may your memories of Willamette be undying.

Good luck and good cheer.

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Willamette University Graduates Largest Class in School History

The largest class in the school’s 162-year history will graduate from Willamette University in Salem Sunday, May 16.

The College of Liberal Arts will award degrees to 434 undergraduates. Representing 27 states and four countries, more than half of the Class of 2004 are non-Oregon residents. In keeping with national trends, women students outnumber the men 60 to 40 percent, and the most popular degrees, also the case last year, are economics, biology and English.

The Willamette College of Law will award 116 JD and two LLM degrees to a class that represents 87 undergraduate colleges and universities and 19 states. The law Class of 2004 is 46 percent women.

The Atkinson Graduate School of Management will award 52 degrees to a class evenly divided between men and women and who represent 10 states and eight countries. Almost half the graduates are non-Oregon residents.

The School of Education will award 70 degrees to a class that is 74 percent women and 86 percent Oregon residents.

Willamette University will recognize four prominent individuals with honorary degrees.

LeVar Burton, who will also serve as commencement speaker at the College of Liberal Arts ceremony, has won 18 Emmy Awards for Reading Rainbow, a PBS children's literacy program he has hosted since 1983.

Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a prolific writer and educator whose focus is African- American literature.

Ann Rule, a former student at Willamette, is regarded by many as the foremost true crime writer in America.

Willamette Trustee William Webber, early Tektronix vice president, has a long and distinguished philanthropic history with the University.

Willamette University graduate school commencement speakers are:

• Greg Merten, long-time executive at Hewlett Packard, Atkinson Graduate School;
• U.S. House of Representative Jay Inslee JD'76, College of Law; and,
• Alumna Drea Ferguson, School of Education.

The main commencement activities are:

• Atkinson Graduate School of Management commencement, 9 a.m., Hudson Hall;
• College of Law commencement, 11:30 a.m., Quad; and
• College of Liberal Arts and School of Education commencement, 3:30 p.m., Quad

For more information, please visit our Commencement Web Site.

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Willamette University Names Graduate Schools Commencement Speakers

Willamette University's graduate schools will host speakers for the Atkinson Graduate School of Management graduation ceremony, the College of Law graduation ceremony and the School of Education hooding ceremony on Sunday, May 16.

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Willamette University Holds 145th Commencement

It is a day focused on saying goodbye for the 652 Willamette University graduates who will make their way through commencement ceremonies May 18 at the state’s oldest university.

The College of Liberal Arts welcomes 339 graduates to the Class of 2003. Of these 193 women and 146 men, 56 percent are non-Oregon residents and represent 23 states and five countries. The three most selected undergraduate degrees are economics, biology and politics.

The College of Law will award 140 degrees to a class that represents 88 U.S. colleges and universities and 29 states with 62 percent of graduates being non-Oregon residents.

The Atkinson Graduate School of Management will award 89 degrees to 59 men and 30 women who represent 13 countries. Approximately one-quarter of the graduates are Oregon residents.

The School of Education presents 84 degrees. Slightly more than 82 percent of this class of 56 women and 28 men are Oregon residents.

Distinguished Harvard University lecturer the Rev. Dr. Peter J. Gomes; dean of the White House press corps Helen Thomas; Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Richard Read; U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, and Oregon businessman and entrepreneur Thomas Neilsen will all be honored today by Willamette University for their professional achievements.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Willamette April 10 when he visited the campus as an Atkinson Lecturer.

Gomes will deliver the keynote address for the College of Liberal Arts and School of Education commencement and will receive an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree. Helen Thomas and Richard Read will each receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.

Senator Murkowski will deliver the keynote address for the College of Law, and Thomas Neilsen will speak at the Atkinson Graduate School of Management commencement.

Born in Boston, in 1942, the Rev. Peter J. Gomes is an American Baptist minister ordained by the First Baptist Church of Plymouth, Mass. Since 1970, he has served in the Memorial Church, Harvard University; and since 1974, as Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church.

A member of the arts and sciences faculty and divinity faculty of Harvard University, Gomes holds degrees from Bates College and from the Harvard Divinity School and 14 honorary degrees. In 2001, Harvard University presented him with the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award. He is an honorary fellow of Emmanuel College and the University of Cambridge, England, where the Gomes Lectureship was established in his name. Widely regarded as one of America’s most distinguished preachers, Gomes has lectured throughout this country and the British Isles. He has served as missioner to Oxford University, and in 2000, he delivered the University Sermon before the University of Cambridge, England. He gave the Millennial Sermon in Canterbury Cathedral, England.

Named Clergy of the Year in 1998 by Religion in American Life, Gomes participated in the presidential inaugurations of Ronald Reagan and of George Herbert Walker Bush. He has published seven volumes of sermons as well as numerous articles and papers in addition to his books, “The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart” and “Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living.”

Gomes is a trustee of Harvard University, Roxbury Latin School and Bates College. He is also the former acting director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, Harvard University; past president of the Signet Society, Harvard’s oldest literary society; and former trustee of Wellesley College and the Public Broadcasting Service. He is a past president and trustee of the Pilgrim Society of Plymouth, Mass.

For 40 years, journalist Helen Thomas, often called the dean of the White House press corps, sat front and center at the news conferences of eight U.S. presidents. As United Press International (UPI) White House correspondent and bureau chief, Thomas reigned over the Washington press and accompanied eight presidents on their travels around the globe.

She left UPI in 2000 after having worked for the news organization for 57 years and is now a Shapiro Fellow at the George Washington School of Media and Public Affairs in D.C. and reports on the White House as a columnist for Hearst Newspapers.

Born in Winchester, Ky., and raised in Detroit, she attended public schools and graduated from Wayne State University. Upon leaving college, Thomas served as a copy girl on the now-defunct Washington Daily News. She joined UPI in 1943 and began White House coverage in 1961.

Thomas overcame many barriers against women journalists throughout her career. In 1959, she and other female journalists forced the then all-male National Press Club to let them attend a speech given to members by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. When the club finally opened its membership doors to women in 1971, Thomas became its first female officer. In 1972, she was the only woman print journalist allowed to travel with then President Nixon on his historic breakthrough trip to China.

She has the distinction of having traveled around the world several times with Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush during the course of which she covered every economic summit. “The World Almanac” has cited her as one of the 25 Most Influential Women in America.

Thomas has written three books, including her latest, “Thanks for the Memories Mr. President: Wit and Wisdom from the Front Row at the White House.”

Richard Read, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, is The Oregonian’s senior writer for international affairs and special projects. He became the first foreign correspondent for a Pacific Northwest newspaper when he opened The Oregonian's Asia Bureau in Tokyo in 1989.

While in Japan, he reported on Japan’s economic rise, the war in Cambodia, conditions in Tibet, change in China and the economic opening of Vietnam and the Russian Far East. He is one of a handful of U.S. journalists to have reported inside North Korea.

In 2001, The Oregonian received journalism’s most prestigious award, the gold-medal Pulitzer Prize for public service, for stories that Read and three other reporters wrote exposing abuses by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalizations Service.

In 1999, he received the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting for a series of stories that explained Asia’s economic crisis and its effect on the United States. The four-part narrative series also received the Overseas Press Club’s award for best business reporting from abroad.

Read, 44, was born in St. Andrews, Scotland, and raised in Massachusetts. He graduated from Amherst College in 1980 with a B.A. in English literature. He joined The Oregonian the next year.

In 1986, he received a fellowship from the Henry Luce Foundation, which sent him to Bangkok, Thailand, to work for a year as a reporter for The Nation, a local newspaper. Read moved to Japan in 1987, where he freelanced for The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Euromoney and many other publications.

Read is also the recipient of a Nieman fellowship for journalists at Harvard University and was an Eisenhower Exchange Fellow in 1997. Currently, Read is a columnist for Northwest Airlines’ in-flight magazine. In 2000, he received the Oregon Governor’s Award for Achievement in International Business, and in 1999 and 2002 he was named the state’s International Citizen of the Year.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has spent much of his life fighting for justice and racial harmony in South Africa and throughout the world. He played a leading role in South Africa’s struggle against apartheid and in helping to oversee its demise. He was chosen by President Nelson Mandela to chair South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and investigate the crimes committed by all sides during the apartheid regime.

Born Oct. 7, 1931, in Klerksdorp, a town 70 miles west of Johannesburg, Archbishop Tutu grew up in a country ruled by segregation. Under these laws, he was educated at inadequate schools. Originally planning to become doctor, the young Tutu turned down a place at medical school due to lack of funds. He instead qualified as a teacher although he later resigned in protest at the introduction of the discriminatory Bantu Education Act. This early courageous stance was to set the pattern for the rest of his extraordinary career.

Following his resignation, Archbishop Tutu went to theological college and was ordained in 1961. He became the first black Anglican dean of Johannesburg in 1975, and in 1976, was named bishop of Lesotho.

He was appointed bishop of Johannesburg in 1985 and then became the first black Anglican archbishop of Cape Town in 1986. Yet even as archbishop, Tutu had to carry a pass and lived in his house illegally - in a whites-only suburb. Archbishop Tutu developed a reputation as a churchman-politician who was outspoken about the abuse of power and injustice in South Africa. The world recognized his quest for a non-violent end to apartheid in 1984 when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He has also received dozens of honorary doctorates and peace awards, including the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Distinguished Peace Leadership Award in 1990.

Archbishop Tutu is recognized throughout the world as a spiritual church leader, a distinguished peace activist, a compassionate man of the people, an individual highly respected by international political leaders and a passionate orator.

U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski began her term as Alaska’s sixth United States Senator Dec. 20, 2002. A third generation Alaskan, she was born and raised in Southeastern Alaska, attended high school in Fairbanks, and has lived in Anchorage for more than 25 years. She has spent a lifetime working throughout Alaska and on Alaskan issues. Murkowski, the first Alaskan-born senator to serve the state, is only the 33rd female to serve the United States Senate since its founding in 1789.

A member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Murkowski chairs its subcommittee on Water and Power, and serves on its subcommittees on Energy, and Public Lands and Forests. She also is a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, serving on the subcommittees of transportation and infrastructure, and fisheries, wildlife, and water. In addition, the senator serves on the Veterans Affairs Committee and the Indian Affairs Committee.

Prior to joining the U.S. Senate, Murkowski was elected to three terms in the Alaska State House of Representatives, beginning in 1998. She won subsequent re-elections in 2000 and 2002. Her State House colleagues selected her as House Majority Leader for the 2003-2004 term.

Murkowski graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in economics in 1980, and earned her law degree from the Willamette College of Law in 1985. She has been a member of the Alaska Bar Association since 1987, served as an Anchorage District Court attorney for two years, and worked in private practice with an Alaska commercial law firm for eight years prior to her work as a sole practitioner.

Tom Neilsen, chairman of Neilsen Manufacturing Inc. in Salem, Ore., graduated from Atkinson Graduate School of Management at Willamette University in 1986 with Beta Gamma Sigma and Pi Alpha Alpha honors. He serves as president of the board of directors of the Historic Elsinore Theatre and has been a member of the Willamette University board of trustees and executive committee since 1993.

He served as president of Salem Economic Development Corp. in 1987, president of Salem Chamber of Commerce in 1988 and mayor of the City of Salem from 1989-90. He has also served on the Salem Hospital board of directors and executive committee from 1993-99, the board of directors of Climax Machine Tools, Newberg, Ore., from 1995-20, and on the United Way board of directors and executive committee from 1996-99.

Neilsen was recognized as the Associated Oregon Industries Business Leader of the Year in 1989, as Salem First Citizen in 1991, Oregon Manufacturing Entrepreneur of the Year in 1996 and his business, Neilsen Manufacturing, was selected as the National Family Business of the Year in 2000.

Willamette University opened in 1842 and awarded its first degree in 1859.

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Willamette Announces Commencement Program

Distinguished lecturer the Rev. Dr. Peter J. Gomes; dean of the White House press corps Helen Thomas; Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Richard Read; U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, and Oregon businessman and entrepreneur Thomas Neilsen will all participate in commencement ceremonies Sunday, May 18, at Willamette University.

Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Willamette April 10 when he visited the campus as an Atkinson Lecturer.

Gomes will deliver the keynote address at the May 18 College of Liberal Arts and School of Education commencement at 3:30 p.m. on the Quad. He will also receive an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree. Thomas and Read will both be awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.

Murkowski will deliver the keynote address at the College of Law commencement at 11:30 a.m. on the Quad, and Neilsen will speak at the Atkinson Graduate School of Management commencement at 9 a.m. in Hudson Hall, Mary Stuart Rogers Music Hall.

Born in Boston, in 1942, the Rev. Peter J. Gomes is an American Baptist minister ordained by the First Baptist Church of Plymouth, Mass. Since 1970, he has served in the Memorial Church, Harvard University; and since 1974, as Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church.

A member of the arts and sciences faculty and divinity faculty of Harvard University, Gomes holds degrees from Bates College and from the Harvard Divinity School and 14 honorary degrees. In 2001, Harvard University presented him with the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award. He is an honorary fellow of Emmanuel College and the University of Cambridge, England, where the Gomes Lectureship was established in his name. Widely regarded as one of America’s most distinguished preachers, Gomes has lectured throughout this country and the British Isles. He has served as missioner to Oxford University, and in 2000, he delivered the University Sermon before the University of Cambridge, England. He gave the Millennial Sermon in Canterbury Cathedral, England.

Named Clergy of the Year in 1998 by Religion in American Life, Gomes participated in the presidential inaugurations of Ronald Reagan and of George Herbert Walker Bush. He has published seven volumes of sermons as well as numerous articles and papers in addition to his books, “The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart” and “Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living.”

Gomes is a trustee of Harvard University, Roxbury Latin School and Bates College. He is also the former acting director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, Harvard University; past president of the Signet Society, Harvard’s oldest literary society; and former trustee of Wellesley College and the Public Broadcasting Service. He is a past president and trustee of the Pilgrim Society of Plymouth, Mass.

For 40 years, journalist Helen Thomas, often called the dean of the White House press corps, sat front and center at the news conferences of eight U.S. presidents. As United Press International (UPI) White House correspondent and bureau chief, Thomas reigned over the Washington press and accompanied eight presidents on their travels around the globe.

She left UPI in 2000 after having worked for the news organization for 57 years and is now a Shapiro Fellow at the George Washington School of Media and Public Affairs in D.C. and reports on the White House as a columnist for Hearst Newspapers.

Born in Winchester, Ky., and raised in Detroit, she attended public schools and graduated from Wayne State University. Upon leaving college, Thomas served as a copy girl on the now-defunct Washington Daily News. She joined UPI in 1943 and began White House coverage in 1961.

Thomas overcame many barriers against women journalists throughout her career. In 1959, she and other female journalists forced the then all-male National Press Club to let them attend a speech given to members by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. When the club finally opened its membership doors to women in 1971, Thomas became its first female officer. In 1972, she was the only woman print journalist allowed to travel with then President Nixon on his historic breakthrough trip to China.

She has the distinction of having traveled around the world several times with Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush during the course of which she covered every economic summit. “The World Almanac” has cited her as one of the 25 Most Influential Women in America.

Thomas has written three books, including her latest, “Thanks for the Memories Mr. President: Wit and Wisdom from the Front Row at the White House.”

Richard Read, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, is The Oregonian’s senior writer for international affairs and special projects. He became the first foreign correspondent for a Pacific Northwest newspaper when he opened The Oregonian's Asia Bureau in Tokyo in 1989.

While in Japan, he reported on Japan’s economic rise, the war in Cambodia, conditions in Tibet, change in China and the economic opening of Vietnam and the Russian Far East. He is one of a handful of U.S. journalists to have reported inside North Korea.

In 2001, The Oregonian received journalism’s most prestigious award, the gold-medal Pulitzer Prize for public service, for stories that Read and three other reporters wrote exposing abuses by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalizations Service.

In 1999, he received the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting for a series of stories that explained Asia’s economic crisis and its effect on the United States. The four-part narrative series also received the Overseas Press Club’s award for best business reporting from abroad.

Read, 44, was born in St. Andrews, Scotland, and raised in Massachusetts. He graduated from Amherst College in 1980 with a B.A. in English literature. He joined The Oregonian the next year.

In 1986, he received a fellowship from the Henry Luce Foundation, which sent him to Bangkok, Thailand, to work for a year as a reporter for The Nation, a local newspaper. Read moved to Japan in 1987, where he freelanced for The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Euromoney and many other publications.

Read is also the recipient of a Nieman fellowship for journalists at Harvard University and was an Eisenhower Exchange Fellow in 1997. Currently, Read is a columnist for Northwest Airlines’ in-flight magazine. In 2000, he received the Oregon Governor’s Award for Achievement in International Business, and in 1999 and 2002 he was named the state’s International Citizen of the Year.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has spent much of his life fighting for justice and racial harmony in South Africa and throughout the world. He played a leading role in South Africa’s struggle against apartheid and in helping to oversee its demise. He was chosen by President Nelson Mandela to chair South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and investigate the crimes committed by all sides during the apartheid regime.

Born Oct. 7, 1931, in Klerksdorp, a town 70 miles west of Johannesburg, Archbishop Tutu grew up in a country ruled by segregation. Under these laws, he was educated at inadequate schools. Originally planning to become doctor, the young Tutu turned down a place at medical school due to lack of funds. He instead qualified as a teacher although he later resigned in protest at the introduction of the discriminatory Bantu Education Act. This early courageous stance was to set the pattern for the rest of his extraordinary career.

Following his resignation, Archbishop Tutu went to theological college and was ordained in 1961. He became the first black Anglican dean of Johannesburg in 1975, and in 1976, was named bishop of Lesotho.

He was appointed bishop of Johannesburg in 1985 and then became the first black Anglican archbishop of Cape Town in 1986. Yet even as archbishop, Tutu had to carry a pass and lived in his house illegally - in a whites-only suburb. Archbishop Tutu developed a reputation as a churchman-politician who was outspoken about the abuse of power and injustice in South Africa. The world recognized his quest for a non-violent end to apartheid in 1984 when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He has also received dozens of honorary doctorates and peace awards, including the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Distinguished Peace Leadership Award in 1990.

Archbishop Tutu is recognized throughout the world as a spiritual church leader, a distinguished peace activist, a compassionate man of the people, an individual highly respected by international political leaders and a passionate orator.

U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski began her term as Alaska’s sixth United States Senator Dec. 20, 2002. A third generation Alaskan, she was born and raised in Southeastern Alaska, attended high school in Fairbanks, and has lived in Anchorage for more than 25 years. She has spent a lifetime working throughout Alaska and on Alaskan issues. Murkowski, the first Alaskan-born senator to serve the state, is only the 33rd female to serve the United States Senate since its founding in 1789.

A member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Murkowski chairs its subcommittee on Water and Power, and serves on its subcommittees on Energy, and Public Lands and Forests. She also is a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, serving on the subcommittees of transportation and infrastructure, and fisheries, wildlife, and water. In addition, the senator serves on the Veterans Affairs Committee and the Indian Affairs Committee.

Prior to joining the U.S. Senate, Murkowski was elected to three terms in the Alaska State House of Representatives, beginning in 1998. She won subsequent re-elections in 2000 and 2002. Her State House colleagues selected her as House Majority Leader for the 2003-2004 term.

Murkowski graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in economics in 1980, and earned her law degree from the Willamette College of Law in 1985. She has been a member of the Alaska Bar Association since 1987, served as an Anchorage District Court attorney for two years, and worked in private practice with an Alaska commercial lawfirm for eight years prior to her work as a sole practitioner.

Tom Neilsen, chairman of Neilsen Manufacturing Inc. in Salem, Ore., graduated from Atkinson Graduate School of Management at Willamette University in 1986 with Beta Gamma Sigma and Pi Alpha Alpha honors. He serves as president of the board of directors of the Historic Elsinore Theatre and has been a member of the Willamette University board of trustees and executive committee since 1993.

He served as president of Salem Economic Development Corp. in 1987, president of Salem Chamber of Commerce in 1988 and mayor of the City of Salem from 1989-90. He has also served on the Salem Hospital board of directors and executive committee from 1993-99, the board of directors of Climax Machine Tools, Newberg, Ore., from 1995-20, and on the United Way board of directors and executive committee from 1996-99.

Neilsen was recognized as the Associated Oregon Industries Business Leader of the Year in 1989, as Salem First Citizen in 1991, Oregon Manufacturing Entrepreneur of the Year in 1996 and his business, Neilsen Manufacturing, was selected as the National Family Business of the Year in 2000.

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Willamette University to Award 668 Degrees May 12

The tent is going up, the robes are ironed and distinguished guests are making their way to Willamette University for commencement exercises Sunday, May 12.

The College of Liberal Arts will honor 364 graduates, the College of Law 132, Atkinson Graduate School of Management 88 and the School of Education 84. In all, 641 students will collect 668 degrees with 27 students receiving dual degrees.

The 641students represent 27 states and seven countries, and in keeping with national trends, the women outnumber the men 346 to 277. International students and students of color total 111.

The major events of the day begin at 10 a.m. with the Atkinson Graduate School of Management Commencement ceremony in Hudson Hall, Mary Stuart Rogers Music Center. The speaker is Dr. Vivian Bull, president of Linfield College.

At noon, the College of Law will honor its graduates at the Cone Field House, Sparks Center. Robert Hirshon, president of the American Bar Association and 2002 Willamette honorary degree recipient, will give the College of Law address.

At 3 p.m., the College of Liberal Arts and the School of Education will hold a joint commencement ceremony under the tent on the Quad. James Cuno, director of the Harvard University Art Museum, will receive on honorary degree. Also receiving an honorary degree and delivering the commencement address is Dr. Martha Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago Law School.

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Commencement Wrap

President Pelton answers questions about the graduating class of 2002, his plans for the next school year and his vision of Willamette University.

Q1: What are your top accomplishments at Willamette this 2001-02 school year?
Progress was made on implementing the five goals of the Long Range Plan which ask us to: strengthen academic excellence; improve student life; promote diversity; enhance technology integration; and increase visibility. We enrolled an outstanding freshmen class with the highest academic profile in the history of the University. We completed the Facilities Master Plan which suggests a facilities planning framework for the next 10 to 15 years, including the replacement or renovation of aging facilities and infrastructure, parking, housing and academic needs. We completed construction of the Montag Center in September and expanded the writing center. Willamette hired Dr. Tori Haring-Smith to head the College of Liberal Arts. The University made progress in its desire to increase our partnerships with the Salem Community We will raise close to $15 million this year, which is a record. Last year we raised $13.5 million, the most that we ever raised in a campaign year. We recently invested $1.7 million in technology infrastructure upgrades and hardware replacements. We received a $2 million gift as part of a two-to-one match that will allow us to put an additional $6 million in technology during the life of the campaign.

Q2: What are your top goals for the University for 2002-03?
Continue to attract the very best students to Willamette. Continue with our strategic objectives. Hire a new dean for the Atkinson Graduate School of Management and continue to partner with the Salem community.

Q3 & 4: Where do you see Willamette in five years?
In 2007, Willamette University will be a small private university of national distinction. We will be a place of intellectual vibrancy and academic innovation. Student life will be a meaningful and life changing learning experience. Our campus community will reflect the world and be richer for the diversity it engenders. Our technology innovation and leadership will be recognized, applauded and mimicked. A central theme that will distinguish Willamette will be the institution's commitment to service through the academic and co-curricular program in the College of Liberal Arts and the professional schools.

Q5: How would you describe this graduating class of 2002? How is it similar or different from past classes?
I don't believe there are any dramatic differences to report. This year, about 17 percent are people of color, which is about normal for Willamette compared to a low of 12 percent in 1999. The number of women graduates, about 57 percent, is similar to past years. The number of CLA graduates who came to us from Oregon high schools increased from 42 to 45 percent. The preferred majors show some shifts-there's an increase in chemistry, rhetoric, psychology and political science, and fewer graduates in biology and economics.

Q6: What advice would you give to this year's graduating class?
I would remind them that they are not at the end of their intellectual journey, but rather at its beginning. I would advise to never lose hope. Hope is the bright light that permits us to see that which we believe. I would ask these graduates to be open to the powerful lessons of human history and to use those lessons to become enlightened managers trained to shape and give order to human experience, teachers ready and equipped to educate our nation's youth and legal minds prepared to carry out those wise restraints that make us a free and just society. I would advise these young people to find meaningful work and to find meaning in their commitment to others.

Q7: Describe the challenges that graduates will encounter outside the Willamette bubble. How are they similar or different from those faced by past classes?
The word "bubble" doesn't really fit the Willamette student experience. Our students come to us with impressive track records in community service and continue giving large amounts of time and energy to area organizations throughout their years at the University. Our undergraduates alone contribute between 15,000 and 20,000 volunteer hours per year. All graduates face very individual challenges once they leave our campus. And those challenges are relative. What we hope is true for all graduates throughout the decades is that they leave Willamette prepared to thrive in a world that is never static.

Q8: Not since the Vietnam War and Civil Rights Movement has a graduating class been tested so much. The 2001-02 class has experienced a recession, an emerging multi-cultural society confirmed by Census results and a world changed by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. How did they respond?
Students are young, strong and resilient. With today's technology, they deal hourly with information that comes to them with blinding speed from around the globe. They sift through it, digest it and decide what they want to take on and what they choose to leave for others. I think that capacity is a healthy response. I don't believe today's recession and acts of terrorism are their greatest tests. Questions relating to moral leadership, ethics, and compassion for vulnerable populations are the long-term issues that will fully challenge these young people. I'm confident they are up to the task.

Q9: What kind of community involvement has Willamette participated in during the past school year?
Let's start with the proposed downtown hotel and convention center. If this important project comes to pass, Willamette will be a significant partner just as we have been a significant supporter. Willamette will bring a steady stream of special lecturers, guests, and visiting professors, as well as a wide variety of academic conferences to the center.

Willamette sponsors significant cultural events that are open to Salem citizens. Recent shared experiences include Danny Glover and the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Amy Tan, the Dance Theatre of Harlem, Wynton Marsalis, the Hallie Ford Art Museum and Willamette Academy, a new community outreach program that will partner with the Salem-Keizer school district and other community organizations.

At least once a year, more than two-thirds of all Willamette undergraduates choose to do some significant form of uncompensated, purely voluntary, and often quite demanding public service work in Salem, Keizer, and other local communities. A large number of our professional school students at the Atkinson Graduate School of Management and College of Law do at least as much. The Law School operates the innovative Center for Dispute Resolution, which is at the forefront of research and writing on conflict theory and problem solving. The Center works with the Oregon Department of Justice, the Marion County Family Court, local school districts and other agencies. Their work has impacted both local and national law.

The Atkinson Graduate School of Management facilitates the PaCE program where first-year students form enterprises with a community partner who is the recipient of the profits and volunteer labor of the students as they learn how to produce both financial and social capital. This year's partners, the YMCA, Habitat for Humanity, Salem Outreach Shelter and MedASSIST, will realize thousands of dollars and over a thousand hours of student projects.

More than 100 Willamette University Masters in Teaching (MAT) graduates are currently placed as teachers in the Salem-Keizer School District; and there are currently 84 MAT students student teaching at 14 elementary schools, four middle schools and five high schools in the Salem-Keizer School District.

The University is in the top ten of the area's largest private employers. We have about 570 permanent employees, about 80% of whom live in Salem or surrounding communities. These are talented people who contribute in many ways to the life of our community. Many spend their earnings and pay their taxes right here in Salem. Willamette's annual budget of nearly $40 million in salaries and compensation provides a substantial boost to the local economy.

The University receives about $35 million annually in tuition to fund its operations, 60 percent of which comes from households outside of the State of Oregon. In other words, we import significant capital in the form of tuition, grants, annual gifts, and student fees, among other things. And that money is spent here in Salem.

Q10& 11: Tuition is going up next fall at Willamette. Why is this necessary and why this amount of a rate hike?
Willamette University increased tuition for students in the College of Liberal Arts by 3.9 percent or $900 effective fall 2002. For those who are familiar with rates at comparable schools across the nation, the increase is considered modest.

For the last four budget cycles, Willamette has held tuition increases under 4 percent-well below many of our competitors. At the same time, the University has offered generous discounts on tuition. The discount for last fall's entering freshmen averaged $13,050 or 54 percent. Willamette is more economically diverse than most of its regional competitors. Less than 10 percent of students at this University pay full tuition. Like most colleges and universities across the country, Willamette faced a diminished yield in its endowment while experiencing increases in energy costs and faculty compensation.

Q12: How is Willamette doing with its fundraising efforts?
This year's goal was $14 million and we have exceeded that amount. During the last 18 months, Willamette received five gifts of $2 million or more. This is unprecedented. We are now in the planning stages of an ambitious $125 million comprehensive campaign with a primary focus on growing the endowment for the University. Willamette is blessed with alumni and friends who are eager to support the institution and who understand the role philanthropy plays in the mission and future of the University.

Q13: What were the big surprises, both good and bad, in the past year?
September 11th. Our campus community, our nation, and our world continue to struggle to understand the terrible attacks of September 11. In the days following the attacks, I said that while these events may have changed us, the days ahead would define us as a nation and as individuals. We responded to this New World of fear and apprehension by reaffirming our role as a community of teaching and of learning. I am proud of the fundamental context of those responses.

Q14 & 15: Tell us about your efforts in recruiting minority staff and students here? How successful have that work been?
Because reporting ethnicity on application forms is voluntary, firm numbers on staff ethnicity is always difficult to capture. But for those individuals who did share that information with us, we know that in 1998 people of color represented 6.8 percent of the campus workforce and in 2000-01 that number was 9.5 percent. Numbers for 2001-02 are not yet available. The proportion of students of color in the College of Liberal Arts has grown from 11.5 percent in 1998 to 16.5 percent for this year. The Atkinson Graduate School of Management is the most diverse program at the University with international students representing 32 percent of the student body. Historically, minority student enrollment at the College of Law has always hovered between 10 and 12 percent, which is in line with Oregon's population of people of color.

Q16: What is the makeup of this graduating class and how does that differ from past classes?
(See question 5)

Q17: What are you doing to increase the profile and visibility of the University?
Last fall we hired a public relations director and already we have seen this appointment bear fruit in terms of media coverage, both locally and regionally. This person is also responsible for developing and combining public relations and marketing efforts that will assist us with student recruitment and fund raising. Having one person on board who helps us coordinate these efforts is very advantageous.

Q18: How has Willamette improved or changed under your leadership?
I'll leave this question for the students, faculty and staff and the citizens of Salem to answer once I have moved on.

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Willamette University Commencement Speech: Reverend Dr. William Sloane Coffin

Rev. Dr. William Sloane Coffin Preparatory remarks: A year and a half ago when I had a stroke, I tried to console myself with Mark Twain's observation about Richard Wagner's music: “It's better than it sounds.” But I have no illusions, my words hardly skip like a stone on water, so I beg your indulgence.

This honorary degree reminds me of another remark, this time by the former Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir. She was at a dinner where an aide of hers was smothered with praise. As he rose to respond, Golda Meir tugged his sleeve and said, “Don't pretend to be humble. You're not that great.” So, I will not pretend to be humble, Mr. President, just deeply grateful for the honor of being at Willamette today.

Finally like Lillian, I am very aware of it being Mothers' Day. There's a Jewish proverb that says, “God could not be everywhere so God made mothers.” May I invite all mothers to stand for a moment and we will show them our profound gratitude.

Now a few words to their daughters and sons. If the rest of you want to listen in feel free. Lev Tolstoy once said certain questions are put to us not that we should answer them but that we should spend a lifetime wrestling with them. Well, I have a question worthy of a lifetime of wrestling, namely, who tells you who you are? Let me illustrate. You've heard that I was for many years chaplain at Yale and it was natural that the seniors, going on to graduate school (not knowing that education kills by degrees) should come to the chaplain for recommendations. Immodestly, let me report that I wrote brilliant letters of recommendation. To such highfalutin' institutions of higher education as the Columbia Medical School or the Harvard Law School, I would often say, “Dear Dean of Admission: This candidate will undoubtedly be in the bottom quarter of your class. But surely you will agree with me that the bottom quarter should be as carefully selected as the top quarter. And for what would you be looking for in the bottom quarter if not the sterling extracurricular characteristics so eminently embodied in this candidate.” And I would list them conscientious, will seek the common good not private gain, etc.

I would then show the letter to the student. You're not going to believe this but invariably their feelings were hurt.

“How do you know I'm going to be in the bottom quarter?”

“Well, all the evidence is in isn't it?”

“Well, you didn't have to tell them.”

You see what's going on? Just to get into a place like Yale, probably like Willamette, you have to be in the 95th percentile and to graduate in the 96th percentile. To get into Columbia Medical School or the Harvard Law School, you have to be in the 97th percentile, to graduate in the 98th, and just because I didn't say they would be in the 99th percentile, and never mind that I said that they would be conscientious, seek not private gain but serve the common good, they clearly felt inferior. Such is the power of institutions of higher education to tell you who you are.

Some people need money to tell them who they are. There are, of course, two ways of being rich ñ one is to have a lot of money, the other to have few needs. In today's society, where the prevailing ethos is “enrich thyself,” the second option is not often entertained. But let me remind you what the great British philosopher John Ruskin said, “The primary reward for human toil is not what you get for it, it's what you become by it.” Human development is a matter of being more, not having more.

Some people need power to tell them who they are. Politicians too often seek power, gain power and hang on to power, for all they're worth. Not Senator Hatfield and certainly not Abraham Lincoln, who in 1847, in the Congress of the United States, declared the war against Mexico “unconstitutional and unnecessary.” For that he lost his seat in Congress. But it is wonderful to recall a politician whose ethical instincts were higher than his political ones.

Some people need enemies to tell them who they are. In South Africa and in our country too, whites needed blacks, and blacks needed whites, and gays and lesbians are often enemies to heterosexuals. And I remember how, when the Berlin Wall came down, millions of anti-Communists in America lost their identity ñ until they elevated liberals to the moral status of communists.

Actually it works on both sides. In March 1968, President Johnson in the middle of the war against Vietnam announced that he would not stand for re-election. Half a million people in the American anti-war movement lost their identity. “Who are we without LBJ?” Well, fortunately Mr. Nixon came along and restored their identity.

Finally, take it from a pastor, some people need their mistakes to tell them who they are. The way some people treasure their sins you'd think they were the holiest things in their lives.

So, it's a good question isn't it. “Who tells you who you are?” Well, it being Sunday and my being a Reverend, I'll have to take a couple of minutes to suggest what it might mean if you read the Prophet Isaiah, 43rd Chapter, and then believe what you read. “I have called you by name, You are mine, saith the Lord.” What does that mean? It means for one thing that you never have to prove yourself, and that for two reasons: God's love is poured out universally on everyone from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet; and God's love doesn't seek value, it creates it. It's not because we have value that we are loved, but because we're loved that we have value. For short, our value is a gift, not an achievement. So, you never have to prove yourself.

What you do have to do is to express yourself, and what a world of difference there is between proving yourself and expressing yourself. Expressing yourself means basically returning God's devotion with our own devotion to God and to our fellow human beings. It means you don't have to be successful; you have to be valuable. You don't have to make money; you have to make a difference, and primarily in the lives of those society counts least and puts last.

Let me tell you a story. In 16th Century Paris, a beggar, desperately ill, was brought to the operating table of a group of doctors who said in Latin they were sure he would not understand, “Faciamus experimentum in anima vile.” (“Let us experiment on this vile fellow.”)

The beggar was in fact an impoverished student, later to become a world renowned scholar, Marc Antoine Muret. From the slab on which they had laid him out, he replied, “Animam vile pro qua Christas non cledignatus moriest?” (“Will you call vile one for whom Christ did not disdain to die?”)

From a Christian point of view, if Christ didn't disdain to die for anyone who are we not to live for everyone? The higher our education is, the greater are our responsibilities for a humane world. And I want to underscore that because, to quote Tolstoy again, “Indifference to evil is violence,” such indifference is quite characteristic of institutions of higher education. The world is in peril and the dangers threatening it come not from the poor and the ignorant for whom education is the answer, but from the well-educated for whom self-interest is the problem. The higher our education is, the greater are our responsibilities are for a humane world.

So, dear graduating students, wrestle well with the question “who tells you who you are?” Don't let money tell you who you are. Don't let power tell you who you are. Don't let enemies and for God sake don't let your sins tell you who you are when there's more mercy in God than sin in us. I leave you with a benediction left all of us by the great Spanish writer Unamuno. “Que Dios no te de paz, asi gloria.” (“May God deny you peace but give you glory.”)

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