Commencement ’05-SU’s 151st Commencement exercises May 15

Commencement ’05-SU’s 151st Commencement exercises May 15May 11, 2005Sara Millersemortim@syr.edu

In its 151st Commencement, Syracuse University will celebrate the graduation of 2,692 bachelor’s, 1,695 master’s and 203 doctoral degree candidates. In addition, 106 certificates of advanced study and 12 associate’s degrees will be awarded. ESF will confer 235 bachelor’s degrees, 40 master’s degrees and 10 doctoral degrees.

The College of Law will hold a separate commencement ceremony, May 22 at 1 p.m. at the Oncenter in Syracuse, celebrating the conferral of 279 JD degrees. Dan Abrams, MSNBC anchor and chief legal correspondent for NBC News, will deliver the College of Law’s Commencement address.

On May 15, SU and ESF Commencement exercises will begin at 9:30 a.m., with class, school and college marshals leading degree candidates into the Carrier Dome.

The academic procession will follow at 10 a.m. Nancy Weatherly Sharp, professor of newspaper journalism in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, will head the procession that includes University Marshal Sandra N. Hurd, professor of law and public policy in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management; Associate University Marshal Shiu-Kai Chin, professor in the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science; the newly named emeriti faculty; current faculty; administrators; academic deans; members of the Board of Trustees; and the ROTC Color Guard.

The Chancellor’s party will include SU Chancellor and President Nancy Cantor; ESF President Cornelius B. Murphy Jr.; Commencement speaker Dr. Jane Goodall; the honorary degree recipients and their sponsors; Board of Trustees Chair John A. Couri; ESF Board of Trustees Chair Daniel T. Fitts; and Joanne Fogel Alper, president of the SU Alumni Association.

SU Vice Chancellor and Provost Deborah A. Freund will preside. The Rev. Thomas V. Wolfe, dean of Hendricks Chapel, will deliver the invocation and Rachel Roy, a graduating senior in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, will sing the national anthem. Murphy will offer remarks.

Cantor and Alper will offer greetings. Cantor will confer honorary degrees upon Goodall, P. Ole Fanger and Robert P. Moses. A University Scholar will speak on behalf of the group, and Goodall’s address will follow.

Cantor and Murphy will then confer doctoral degrees upon SU and ESF candidates, followed by the conferral of master’s degrees and certificates of advanced study.

Freund will recognize SU Class of 2005 Marshals Jessica L. Cordova and Paul E. Dimoh, 12 University Scholars and three ESF Scholars.

Sarabeth L. Wager, a graduating senior from the College of Visual and Performing Arts, will conclude the ceremony with the singing of the alma mater. The SU Brass Ensemble, under the direction of James T. Spencer, professor of chemistry in The College of Arts and Sciences, will provide processional music.

Class marshals

Seniors Cordova and Dimoh will lead the procession of graduates. To be selected a class marshal is among the most prestigious honors at SU, awarded on the basis of academic achievement, involvement in student organizations and campus and community service.

Cordova will graduate with a bachelor of arts degree in history from The College of Arts and Sciences. Dimoh will graduate with dual bachelor of science degrees in information management technology from the School of Information Studies and in entrepreneurship and emerging enterprise from the Martin J. Whitman School of Management.

Marshals for each of the University’s schools and colleges have also been selected to lead the procession of graduates from each school or college into the Commencement ceremony. They are:

Graduate School

• Yan Dong, a doctoral candidate from The College of Arts and Sciences

School of Architecture

• Robert L. Cummins of Martville, N.Y.; and Katherine Mercedes Hogan of Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.

The College of Arts and Sciences

• Oluwatosin O. Akande of Baltimore, Md., a political science and policy studies major; Jaime L. Benson of Susquehanna, Pa., a psychology and sociology major; and Tendai Machingaidze of Harare, Zimbabwe, a biochemistry major.

School of Education

• Jessica L. Bedard of Warwick, R.I., an inclusive elementary and special education and Spanish major; and Rebecca A. Reilly of Allentown, Pa., an inclusive elementary and special education and Spanish major.

L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science

• Elizabeth M. Keegan of Mount Sinai, N.Y., an electrical engineering major; and Linsey C. Phillips of Hanover, Pa., a bioengineering major.

College of Human Services and Health Professions

• Rebeccah J. Allen of Scotia, N.Y., a dietetics major; and Kimberly A. Simpson of Geneva, Ohio, a child and family studies and policy studies major.

School of Information Studies

• Anthony P. Bartocci of Scranton, Pa., an information management and technology major; and Ryan P. Russell of Tewksbury, Mass., an information management and technology major.

College of Law

• Jesse M. Endler of Shillington, Pa.

Martin J. Whitman School of Management

• Chad Bender of West Nyack, N.Y., a finance and television, radio and film major; and Lara Jeremko of Apalachin, N.Y., an accounting and finance major.

Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs

• Alejandro Santos Amezcua of Santa Ana, Calif., a graduate student majoring in social and cultural anthropology.

S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications

• Michelle L. Polansky of Cherry Hill, N.J., an advertising management major; and Stephen T. Wilson of Williamsville, N.Y., a magazine journalism and political philosophy major.

University College

• Robin Jo Goettel of Syracuse, N.Y., an organizational leadership major.

College of Visual and Performing Arts

• Emily J. Moeller of Clinton, N.Y., a music industry major; and Melissa Shakun of Bloomfield, Conn., an art education major.

SUNY ESF

• Elizabeth J. Reif of East Meadow, N.Y., an environmental biology major; and Jamie C. Schofield of Marcellus, N.Y., an environmental science and earth and atmospheric systems science major.

Honorary degree recipients Goodall, Fanger and Moses will be honored as the newest recipients of honorary degrees.

Jane Goodall-Doctor of Science

Goodall, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and a United Nations Messenger of Peace, is globally recognized for her pioneering research into chimpanzee behavior, which has transformed scientific perceptions of the relationship between humans and animals.

In 1960, Goodall began a venture into the Gombe Stream region of East Africa to study chimpanzees-a highly unorthodox activity for a woman at that time. In her first year, she observed the chimps’ ability to make and use tools, thus forcing science to rethink the definition that separated man from other animals: “man the toolmaker.” Through continued research and interaction, Goodall discovered that chimps had distinct personalities, minds, emotions and family bonds. Her research continues today through the Gombe Stream Research Center, which, under the stewardship of Tanzanian field staff and other researchers, is one of the longest uninterrupted wildlife studies in existence. Founded in 1977, the Jane Goodall Institute continues Goodall’s pioneering research.

P. Ole Fanger-Doctor of Science

P. Ole Fanger is professor and director at the International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy at the Technical University of Denmark. For more than three decades, he has produced interdisciplinary research work that has contributed to identifying the prime importance of the indoor environment for the quality of human comfort, health and productivity.

In 1998 he received a 10-year Danish government grant to establish the Centre and became its first director, recruiting several world-class researchers to investigate classic engineering disciplines along with research in medicine, chemistry and psychology.

Fanger developed a comfort model for indoor quality, predicting perceived air quality in the indoor environment and required ventilation in buildings. He and his associates showed for the first time that electronic devices, in particular personal computers, can be strong pollution sources, and demonstrated how improved indoor air quality can be achieved by a reduction of superfluous pollution sources. They also established that the humidity and temperature of air has a strong and often ignored impact on perceived air quality and ventilation requirements in buildings. They identified for the first time a significant impact of indoor air quality on human productivity and on Sick Building Syndrome symptoms.

Robert P. Moses-Doctor of Humane Letters

Robert Moses is founder and president of the Cambridge, Mass.-based Algebra Project, Inc., which helps students in inner-city and rural areas to achieve mathematics literacy.

He began teaching mathematics at the Horace Mann School in New York City in 1958, and in 1961 left to join the civil rights movement in Mississippi. He became a pivotal civil rights organizer as a field secretary for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. He was instrumental in establishing the Freedom Summer Project, which created “Freedom Schools” across Mississippi in the 1960s to help register African American voters. He was attacked by law enforcement officials for his efforts. Moses’ work on voter registration contributed to the passage by Congress of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Moses later pursued doctoral work in philosophy at Harvard University, and was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1982. He worked full time teaching algebra to seventh- and eighth-grade students. Moses is the author of the “Algebra Project-Transition Curriculum,” which uses experiential learning and a five-step curricular process Moses innovated to help middle-school students be ready for a college preparatory math sequence in high school. These materials formed the backbone of Algebra Project trainer training and implementation throughout the U.S. during the 1990s.

Currently, Moses and a coalition of educators, students and community leaders are organizing an effort to create a constitutional amendment that would guarantee a quality public school education for every child in the United States.