Lawrence University Recognizes Accomplishments of Molecular Biologist, Orthodox Bishop With Honorary Doctorates at 152nd Commencement

APPLETON, WIS. -- One of the country's leading researchers on cell biology and the first Englishman ever ordained a Greek Orthodox bishop will receive honorary degrees Sunday, June 17 from Lawrence University, highlighting the college's 152nd commencement.

Dr. Theodore Steck, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Chicago, will receive an honorary Doctor of Science degree and His Grace Bishop Kallistos Ware will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. Lawrence also awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters to Harvard University sociologist William Julius Wilson last month at its annual Honors Convocation.

Lawrence will confer 225 bachelor's degrees during commencement exercises, which begin at 10:30 a.m. in the Main Hall Green. A baccalaureate service, led by retiring Professor of Education Kenneth Sager, will be held Saturday, June 16 at 11 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel.

Steck and Bishop Ware, along with Lawrence President Richard Warch, Lawrence Board of Trustees Chair Harold Jordan and student representative Michael O'Brien, a senior from Oregon, Wis., will each address the graduates during commencement.

In addition to the two honorary doctorates, Lawrence will award honorary Master of Arts, *ad eundem,* degrees to four retiring members of the faculty and recognize two Wisconsin high school teachers as exceptional educators.

Steck returns to Appleton, where he earned a bachelor of science degree summa cum laude in chemistry from Lawrence in 1960. He went on to earn his M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School. From 1965-70, he conducted medical research at Harvard Medical School and the National Cancer Institute.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Steck began conducting pioneer research on the structure and organization of cell membranes. Through physical, chemical and biological methodologies, Steck led landmark studies that provided detailed descriptions of the molecular architecture of cell membranes.

Steck's most recent research has contributed to science's fundamental understanding of several basic membrane-related processes, including the mechanisms that control levels and locations of cholesterol and related steroids within cells. He is the author or co-author of more than 120 published articles on cell-related research.

He joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1970 and was named chairman of the biochemistry department in 1979. In addition to his research, Steck founded Chicago's undergraduate environmental studies program in 1993 and has served as the program's chair since its inception.

Like Steck, Ware, a resident of Oxford, England, also is making a return trip to the Lawrence campus. He was a guest speaker in the Marguerite Schumann Memorial Lectureship in October, 1998. A British native who left the Anglican Church and converted to Greek Orthodoxy in 1958, Ware was ordained to the priesthood at age 32 and took monastic vows at the Monastery of St. John the Theologian on the Greek island of Patmos. The titular Bishop of Diokleia, Ware has been hailed as "perhaps the 20th century's foremost authority on Orthodoxy" by the Russian Orthodox press.

Since 1966, Ware has taught as the Spalding Lecturer in Eastern Orthodox Studies at the University of Oxford, where he completed his own studies in Greek and Latin, as well as a fellow of Pembroke College at Oxford.

Active in work for Christian unity, Ware was a member of the Anglican Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Discussions from 1973-84 and spent five years in the mid 1990s as co-chairman of the Preparatory Commission for the Orthodox Methodist Theological Dialogue. He has written three books, including "The Orthodox Church," and has translated three major Greek liturgical works. The first of an eight-volume set of his own collected works, entitled "The Inner Kingdom," was published last year.