Honorary Degrees Archive - News Headlines

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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May 4,2007

2 years, 6 months, 2 days ago

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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April 12,2007

2 years, 6 months, 24 days ago

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.

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.

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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April 7,2006

3 years, 6 months, 29 days ago

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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April 8,2004

5 years, 6 months, 28 days ago

Willamette University Names Honorary Degree Recipients

Willamette University will recognize four prominent individuals with honorary degrees at the Sunday, May 16 commencement ceremony.

LeVar Burton, who will also serve as commencement speaker, has won 18 Emmy Awards for Reading Rainbow, a PBS children’s literacy program he has hosted since 1983. 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 has a long and distinguished philanthropic history.

In addition to his Emmy Awards, LeVar Burton has received four Fred Rogers Awards for excellence in children’s educational media presented by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Reading Rainbow is among the most watched children’s television series in American schools.

Reading Rainbow is also the cornerstone of local Ready to Learn services now carried by 148 local PBS member stations with a signal coverage serving more than 95 percent of the country. Ready to Learn provides educational children’s television programs and ancillary materials for use by children, parents and educators.

As a literacy advocate, Burton also serves as national chairman of the PBS Kids Share a Story, a national literacy campaign that inspires adults to help millions of children develop language and literacy skills through storytelling, singing, reading and rhyming.

For older audiences, Burton is known for his role as sightless Lt. Geordi LaForge from the Star Trek series and for his 1977 role as Kunta Kinte in the television mini-series Roots. Burton studied drama at the University of Southern California. Burton will receive an honorary doctor of fine arts degree.

Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the most prominent academics in the country today, will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters. As chairman of the Afro-American Studies program at Harvard University, he has broadened the study of African-American literature with such works as “Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the Racial Self,” and “The Signifying Monkey: Towards a Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism.”

Tomas Jaehn, curator for American and British history at Stanford University, says of Gates, “His work has widened the acceptance of African American Studies and has given it more recognition and respectability as a serious field of study. It should not come as a surprise that along with Gates’ visibility, national interest in African American Studies has increased noticeably.”

In addition to his current duties as department chair at Harvard, he also serves as director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Studies also at Harvard. In 1998, the Institute, under the direction of Gates, Kwame Appiah and Wole Soyinka and with funding from Microsoft, created “Encarta Africana,” an interactive CD-ROM encyclopedia that captures Du Bois’ dream of an encyclopedia that “would encompass the people, history and cultures of blacks throughout the world.”

Gates fulfilled another dream in 1999 with the completion of a six-hour PBS documentary Wonders of the African World with Henry Louis Gates Jr. The series studies the ancient civilizations of 12 African countries.

Gates, educated at Yale and Cambridge University, is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Time and The New Republic. He has held appointments at Yale, Cornell and Duke.

Ann Rule was born in Michigan and was raised in a family with deep ties to the criminal justice system. She attended Willamette for two years before earning her bachelor’s degree in creative writing from the University of Washington. After graduation, she became the youngest policewoman ever hired by the Seattle Police Department.

Twenty of Rule’s books have been New York Times bestsellers, with “Every Breath You Take” and “Last Dance, Last Chance” listed simultaneously. Four books have been made into television movies and five more are in progress. She won the coveted Peabody Award for her miniseries, Small Sacrifices, and has two Anthony Awards from Bouchercon, the mystery fans’ organization. She has been nominated three times for Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America. She was also awarded the Washington State Governor's Award.

As a lecturer, she has addressed such prestigious organizations as the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., the American Academy of Forensic Psychiatrists and the National Academy of Medical Examiners.

She is on the U.S. Justice Department Task Force that set up the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, a computer tracking system now in place at FBI headquarters in Quantico that helps identify and trap serial killers.

Rule is active in support groups for victims of violent crimes and their families, in the YWCA program to help battered and abused women, and in Childhelp and Childhaven, support groups for children. She will receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters.

Trustee and early Tektronix vice president William Webber will receive an honorary doctorate of public service degree.

Named vice president of Tektronix in 1954, he helped start and served as trustee and administrator of the Tektronix Foundation which, in 1953, was one of the first corporate giving foundations in the country. His history with the Foundation was the beginning of a lifetime of philanthropy.

Among his Willamette University philanthropic interests are the Webber scholars program, which provides scholarships for women majoring in biology, chemistry, environmental science and physics. He is also a long-term supporter of technology innovation, music, the Willamette Academy and athletics, specifically Willamette crew.

Three of his four children are Willamette graduates; two sons earned their degree from the College of Liberal Arts and a third son graduated from the Willamette University College of Law. Webber, who earned an engineering degree from Virginia Tech in 1934, has been a Willamette trustee since 1963.

Now retired, the Tigard resident has been active in such diverse groups as the Oregon Council of Economic Education, National Conference of Christians & Jews, Portland Junior Symphony, Willamette United Way and the Oregon Foundation of Medical Excellence.

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March 26,2002

7 years, 7 months, 11 days ago

Willamette University Announces Honorary Degree Recipients

James Cuno, director of the Harvard University Art Museum, Robert Hirshon, president of the American Bar Association, and Martha Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago Law School, will receive honorary degrees from Willamette University at the May 12 commencement ceremony.

Cuno will receive an honorary doctor of fine arts degree; Hirshon, who will also deliver the commencement address at the College of Law earlier in the day, will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree; and Nussbaum will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree and will deliver the commencement address to the graduating class of the College of Liberal Arts and the School of Education.

The Atkinson Graduate School of Management will hold commencement at 10 a.m.; the College of Law at noon; and the College of Liberal Arts and the School of Education at 3 p.m. on the quad in front of Smith Auditorium.

James Cuno has been the director of the Harvard Art Museum and a professor of art history and architecture at the school since 1991. He has written and lectured extensively on topics ranging from French art of the 18th and 19th centuries to contemporary American art, as well as on the role of art museums in contemporary American cultural policy.

He serves as a trustee of the Association of Art Museum Directors; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the J. Paul Getty Museum; and on advisory committees to the museums at a number of colleges and universities. He has also served on the Board of the College Art Association and the National Committee for the History of Art. Cuno received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1985. Cuno is a Willamette alumnus from the class of 1973.

Robert Hirshon graduated from the University of Michigan and the UM School of Law in 1973. He is widely published and has lectured throughout the country on various insurance, banking and civil litigation issues. He was the regional counsel for an asbestos cloth manufacturer and continues to represent various defendants in the asbestos litigation.

Hirshon has represented both the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and was the RTC's lead counsel in Maine and New Hampshire in several major fraud cases brought by the federal government. He is the former president of the Maine State Bar Association (1986), a former president of the Maine Bar Foundation (1990), former chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Lawyers Public Service Responsibility (1990-93), and presently represents Maine's lawyers in the ABA's House of Delegates.

He has also taught courses on trial practices and negotiations at the University of Maine School of Law. He specializes in civil litigation, banking and insurance, and regulatory and legislative law.

Martha Nussbaum received her B.A. from NYU and her Ph.D. from Harvard. She has taught at Harvard, Brown and Oxford Universities. From 1986-93, Nussbaum was a research advisor at the World Institute for Development Economics Research, a part of the United Nations University, in Helsinki, Finland. She has chaired the Committee on International Cooperation and the Committee on the Status of Women of the American Philosophical Association.

Among her many accomplishments and literary works, she has received the Brandeis Creative Arts Award for Non-fiction in 1990; "Cultivating Humanity" won the Ness Book Award of the Association of American Colleges and Universities in 1998; and "Sex and Social Justice" won the book award of the North American Society for Social Philosophy in 2000. She has received numerous honorary degrees and a distinguished alumni award from NYU. In addition to her professorship at the University of Chicago Law School, Nussbaum is holding an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship for Research.

Her work over the years has bridged the disciplines of law, politics, literature, sexual and social politics, and philosophy. She is also seen as a moral philosopher and quintessential humanist.

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April 10,2001

8 years, 6 months, 26 days ago

Willamette University Announces Its Commencement Speaker and Honorary Degree Recipients

Willamette University announces its commencement speaker and honorary degree recipients for the commencement celebration on Sunday, May 13, 2001, at 3 p.m. in the Willamette University Quad.

This year's commencement speaker will be the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, former chaplain of Yale University. Willamette's two honorary degree recipients are Lillian Cingo, a highly recognized South African nurse, and Grace Paley, an award-winning author. Coffin will receive an honorary doctorate of divinity. Cingo will receive an honorary doctorate of public service, and Paley will receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters.

Coffin, an advocate for peace, civil rights and other social justice movements, has actively campaigned against racial segregation and America's military involvement in Vietnam. He was one of seven "freedom riders" arrested for protesting segregation laws in Montgomery, Ala. Coffin was also arrested for protesting the Vietnam War.

Coffin served as chaplain of Yale University for 18 years, as minister of Riverside Church in New York City and as president of SANE/FREEZE: Campaign for Global Security (Peace Action), the largest U.S. peace and justice organization. As president of SANE/FREEZE, he was widely acknowledged as a leading proponent of a new political thinking that recognizes the fundamental connections among peace, the environment and social justice. Coffin is also the author of four books, including a Passion for the Possible and his autobiography, Once to Every Man.

Cingo, a black South African who grew up on the Eastern Cape of South Africa, has won gold medals for being the best nurse in South Africa in 1956 and 1961. Cingo left South Africa 15 years after government sponsored apartheid regulations, a source of civil unrest, were imposed on its black citizens. She continued her nursing career in London where she was twice nominated as British Nurse of the Year in the 1970s and was presented to the queen as the best neurosurgical nurse in London. Upon Nelson Mandela's release from prison, Cingo returned to her homeland after 30 years living abroad. In 1994, she helped to begin the Phelophepa ("Good, Clean Health") Health Care Train in rural Africa. Today the train, which treats more than 40,000 patients annually, consists of 16 coaches with highly sophisticated health care equipment. Cingo transformed one of the coaches on the train into an apartment where she lives, manages the health care services and educates people on the importance of health care.

Willamette University Commencement Poetry and short fiction author, Paley has taught at Columbia and Syracuse Universities. She currently teaches at City College of New York, where she is writer-in-residence, and at Sarah Lawrence College, where she has taught creative writing and literature for 18 years. Paley has won several awards including the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit, a Guggenheim fellowship, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1987, Paley was awarded a Senior Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts, in recognition of her lifetime contribution to literature. In addition to Paley's numerous accolades, three of her short stories were made into a feature film released in the early 1980s titled "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute."

"Willamette's commencement speaker and honorary degree candidates embody a lifelong commitment to service, philanthropic leadership and distinguished reputations in international academics and education," said Willamette President M. Lee Pelton. "Our graduating students should be inspired with these exceptional leaders and their extraordinary accomplishments and contributions to the world."

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University Closure Information

April 26,2008

1 year, 6 months, 10 days ago

Willamette University Honors the Class of 2008

May 4,2007

2 years, 6 months, 2 days ago

Willamette University Sends Off Class of 2007

April 12,2007

2 years, 6 months, 24 days ago

Willamette University Sends Off Class of 2007

April 7,2006

3 years, 6 months, 29 days ago

Willamette University Bids Adieu to the Class of 2006

April 8,2004

5 years, 6 months, 28 days ago

Willamette University Names Honorary Degree Recipients

March 26,2002

7 years, 7 months, 11 days ago

Willamette University Announces Honorary Degree Recipients

April 10,2001

8 years, 6 months, 26 days ago

Willamette University Announces Its Commencement Speaker and Honorary Degree Recipients