Contact: Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 920/832-6590
FOR RELEASE JUNE 11, 1999
Lawrence University Celebrates Sesquicentennial Commencement June 13
APPLETON, WIS. -- Appleton native and award-winning author Barbara
Dafoe Whitehead will be among three honorary degree recipients Sunday, June
13 at Lawrence University's 150th commencement.
Two hundred thirty-five seniors, including 25 from the Fox Cities, are
expected to receive bachelor degrees during the graduation ceremonies, which
begin at 10:30 a.m. on the Main Hall Green. In the event of rain,
commencement ceremonies will be held in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel.
Outdoors commencement activities are open to the public, but are restricted
to family members of degree recipients if moved inside.
A baccalaureate service, led by retiring Professor of History William
Chaney, will be held Saturday, June 12, at 11 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial
Chapel.
Each of the three honorary degree recipients -- Whitehead, Librarian of
Congress James Billington and composer Alfred Lerdahl -- along with Lawrence
President Richard Warch, Harold Jordan, chair of the Lawrence Board of
Trustees and student representative Ann Dude, a senior from New Berlin, will
address the graduates during the commencement ceremony. Award-winning
novelist, poet and literary critic Joyce Carol Oates was awarded an honorary
Doctor of Literature degree in May at Lawrence's Honors Convocation.
Three retiring members of the Lawrence faculty -- Chaney, Ted Ross and
John Stanley, will be awarded honorary Master of Arts, ad eundem, degrees.
Lawrence also will recognize Sharon Nelson of Waunakee and Teresa
Schroepfer of Ashwaubenon for education excellence with its annual
Outstanding Teaching in Wisconsin Award.
Whitehead, who will receive an honorary Doctor of Literature degree, is
a 1962 graduate of Appleton High School. She has written widely on family
and child well-being issues, including the 1998 award-winning book, "The
Divorce Culture: Rethinking Our Commitments to Marriage and Family." She
won an Exceptional Merit in Media Award in 1993 from the National Women's
Political Caucus and Radcliffe College for her article, "Dan Quayle Was
Right," which appeared in Atlantic Monthly.
Now living in Amherst, Mass., Whitehead serves on the Massachusetts'
Governor's Commission on Responsible Fatherhood and Family Support and the
Religion and Public Values Task Force of the National Campaign to Prevent
Teen Pregnancy. In addition, she serves as co-director of the National
Marriage Project, a public education program based at Rutgers University.
She earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin,
studied at Columbia University as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and earned her
master's and doctorate degree in American social history from the University
of Chicago.
Billington has served as the Librarian of Congress since 1987,
overseeing all aspects of the world's largest library. He is the 13th
person to be appointed to the position since the library was established in
1800. He will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
He began his career as a history professor at Harvard University in
1957 and later spent 10 years as a member of the history department at
Princeton University. Before his appointment as Librarian of Congress, he
served 14 years as the director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center
for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
Billington has written six books, including his most recent release,
"The Face of Russia," which explored the history and promise of Russian
people through their art and culture. It served as a companion book to the
three-part television series of the same name that he wrote and narrated for
PBS and which aired last summer.
Born in Bryn Mawr, Pa., Billington earned his bachelor's degree at
Princeton, where he was valedictorian of the Class of 1950, and his
doctorate from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
Lerdahl returns to Lawrence, where he earned a bachelor of music degree
in 1965, to receive an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts.
Noted for his writings on musical theory as well as his award-winning
compositions, Lerdahl teaches at Columbia University, where was named the
Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition in 1995.
His first book, "A Generative Theory of Tonal Music," which he
co-authored with linguist Ray Jackendoff, was published in 1983 and models
musical understanding from the perspective of cognitive science. He
recently completed a second book, "Tonal Pitch Space," which further
explores the theories of rhythm and pitch reduction.
A native of Madison, Lerdahl has been widely honored for his work as a
composer, including two awards from the American Academy and Institute of
Arts and Letters, the Naumburg and Martha Baird Rockefeller Recording awards
and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Prominent among his 20 published compositions
are "Eros" for mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble, "Waltzes" for violin,
viola, cello and bass, "Fantasy Etudes" for chamber ensemble and "Marches"
for clarinet, violin, cello and piano.
After graduating from Lawrence, Lerdahl earned a master's degree at
Princeton and studied at the prestigious Tanglewood Music Center in
Massachusetts. In addition to Columbia, Lerdahl also has taught at the
University of Michigan, Harvard and the University of California-Berkeley.