The Class of 2004 reaches the end of the beginning
Lawrence Today magazine, Fall 2004
Winston
Churchill said of Allied success in North Africa that, while it might not
represent the beginning of the end [of World War II], it most likely
marked the end of the beginning. A college Commencement is something like
that. The word itself means beginning, yet it also is an ending — and
a time of strong, if somewhat mixed, emotions.
Commencement is not a single
event, of course. This year’s observance began on Friday evening, June
11, with the annual concert performed by graduating students of the Conservatory
of Music. Saturday morning was the occasion for a service of Baccalaureate,
at which Daniel Taylor, ’63, the Hiram A. Jones Professor of Classics,
spoke at the invitation of the seniors, the third time in his tenure at Lawrence
that he has been asked to fill that role.
On Sunday, June 13, Lawrence held its 155th Exercises of Commencement,
conferring bachelor’s degrees on some 301 students, the largest graduating class
since 1977. Four distinguished guests, recipients of honorary degrees (see
below), delivered short “charges” to the graduates, as did one
of their own, Andrea Jeanne Hendrickson, ’04.
Honorary degrees
In addition to degrees, recognitions, and awards presented to individual
graduates, Commencement is also a time when the college takes the opportunity
to honor — and adopt into the Lawrence community — other distinguished
individuals.
Honorary degrees were awarded to John Carroll, editor of the Los Angeles
Times; Jonathan Fanton, president of the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation; Stanley Fish, dean of the College of Liberal Arts
and Sciences
at the University of Illinois-Chicago; and Samantha Power, lecturer in
public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Professor
of Music Robert Levy, retiring after 25 years as
director of bands at Lawrence received professor emeritus status and,
as is
customary for retiring faculty members, was awarded an honorary Master
of Arts degree, ad eundem.
Margot
Warch, wife of retiring president Richard Warch, also received
an honorary M.A. ad eundem, in a surprise presentation by Chairman
of the Board of Trustees Jeffrey Riester, ’70. In the citation accompanying
the degree, Riester said: “A compassionate
and caring neighbor, you are sought out for your good judgment, warm smile,
and listening ear. You have cared for and about many others in sickness
and distress. Teacher, spouse, parent, neighbor, and counselor, you have
welcomed
many to your table, and it is therefore only fitting that at this Commencement
Lawrence welcome you as the colleague you have always been in all but name.”
At the annual Honors Convocation in May, the honorary degree Doctor of
Humane Letters was conferred upon William
Cronon, the Frederick Jackson Turner Professor
of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies
at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a historian who studies American
environmental history and the history of the American West.
John Carroll, whose distinguished journalism career spans more than 40
years and includes seven Pulitzer Prizes, received the honorary degree
Doctor of
Laws. Named editor of the Los Angeles Times in 2001, he helped the paper
earn five Pulitzers earlier this year, the second most ever won by a newspaper
in a single year.
After beginning his career as a reporter for the Providence Journal, Carroll
was drafted into the Army and served in Alaska, writing for a base newspaper.
He joined the Baltimore Sun as a reporter in the late 1960s, covering the
Vietnam War and the Nixon administration. He became the subject of a front-page
story in The New York Times after having his press credentials
suspended for writing a story detailing U.S. plans to abandon Khe Sanh.
Following protests from media colleagues and a congressional investigation,
the Army
restored the credentials.
He spent seven years as a city editor and metropolitan editor at the Philadelphia
Inquirer before being named editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Carroll
returned to the
Baltimore Sun as its editor in 1991, guiding it to Pulitzer Prizes in 1997
and ’98
before taking editorial leadership of the Los Angeles Times.
Jonathan Fanton, who received the honorary degree Doctor of Laws, has
served as president of the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation since 1999.
With
assets of nearly $4.3 billion, MacArthur is one of the nation’s 15 largest
foundations, annually awards grants domestically and internationally of more
than $180 million, and is perhaps best known for supporting exceptionally
creative individuals through its “genius grant” Fellows program.
Fanton served as president of New York City’s New School University
(formerly known as the New School for Social Research) from 1982-99,
where he led the integration and enhancement of the seven divisions of
the university, the expansion of the Greenwich Village campus, and development
campaigns that increased the university’s endowment from $8 million
to more than $80 million.
He began his career teaching American history at his alma mater, Yale
University, and served as a special assistant to Yale President Kingman
Brewster from 1970-73 and as associate provost from 1976-78. He then
moved to the
University of Chicago, where he spent the next four years as vice president
for planning and also taught American history.
Fanton is the author of The University and Civil Society, Volumes I and
II and co-edited the books John Brown: Great Lives Observed and The Manhattan
Project: A Documentary
Introduction
to the Atomic Age.
Stanley Fish, recipient of the honorary degree Doctor
of Humane Letters, is considered one of America’s
most distinguished scholars of English literature, law, and literary
theory, particularly the subjectivity of textual interpretation. He has
served as a dean and distinguished professor of English, criminal justice,
and
political
science at UIC since 1999.
During an academic career spanning more than 40 years, Fish has held
numerous major positions, including the Kenan Professor of English at
Johns Hopkins
University (1974-85) and the Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor
of English and Law at Duke University (1985-98). A USA Today article
described him as “an erudite scholar who capably makes difficult
subjects understandable ... a brilliant original critic of the culture
at large.”
He has written nearly a dozen books, among them John Skelton’s
Poetry; Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost, the second edition
of which received the Hanford Book Award in 1998; Self-Consuming Artifacts, which
was nominated for the National Book Award in 1972; and There’s
No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too, which
earned the 1994 PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award. In the past 30 years,
more than 200 articles, books,
dissertations and review articles have been devoted to his work.
Samantha Power, a human-rights activist, lawyer, scholar,
and award-winning author, received the honorary degree Doctor of Humane
Letters. In 1998,
she founded Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, which
trains future leaders for careers in public service with a focus on the
most dangerous
human rights challenges, including genocide, mass atrocity, state failure,
and the ethics and politics of military intervention. She served as the
Carr Center’s
executive director until 2002.
Her recent book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, which
examines U.S. responses to genocide in the 20th century, was awarded the
2003 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction, the 2003 National Book Critics
Circle Award for general non-fiction, and the Council on Foreign Relations’ Arthur
Ross Prize for the best book in U.S. foreign policy. She also co-edited
the 2000 book, Realizing Human Rights: Moving from Inspiration to
Impact, a collection
of essays by leading activists, policymakers, and critics who reflect
upon 50 years of attempts to improve respect for human rights.
A native of Ireland who moved to the United States when she was nine,
Power covered the war in the former Yugoslavia from 1993-96 as a reporter
for
U.S. News & World Report, The Boston Globe, and The
Economist. She
is working on a book on the causes and consequences of historical amnesia
in American
foreign policy.
Awards for teaching excellence at Lawrence
Art historian Carol Lawton was cited with an unprecedented third teaching
award, and chemist Karen Nordell was recognized for her teaching prowess
among junior faculty when the college’s annual teaching awards
were presented at Commencement.
Lawton, professor of art history, received Lawrence’s Award
for Excellence in Teaching, given annually to a faculty member for outstanding
performance
in the teaching process. Nordell, assistant professor of chemistry, was
presented the Young
Teacher Award in recognition of demonstrated excellence
in the
classroom and the promise of continued growth.
Recipient
of the college’s Young Teacher Award in 1982 and the Freshman
Studies Teaching Award in 1998, Carol Lawton is Lawrence’s only
faculty member ever recognized with all three teaching honors.
A specialist in ancient Greek sculpture, Lawton joined the Lawrence art
department in 1980. She has made numerous research trips to Greece to work
with the
American School of Classical Studies in Athens, where she is pursuing study
on Greek and Roman votive reliefs excavated from the Athenian Agora.
She is the author of the book, Attic Document Reliefs of the Classical
and Hellenistic Periods and has received research fellowships from the
National
Endowment for the Humanities and the J. Paul Getty Trust. She serves
as curator of Lawrence’s Ottilia Buerger Collection of Ancient
and Byzantine Coins.
In presenting the award, President Warch quoted Lawton’s faculty colleagues,
who describe her teaching as “solid,” “demanding,” “tough-minded,” and “characterized
by an unremitting emphasis on precision and consistently high standards.”
"Art history majors credit you with igniting their passion for the subject,
and non-majors relish the ways in which your courses broaden their educational
horizons,” Warch said. “Your love of stone and
how beautiful it can become in the hands of a Greek sculptor led you
to carve
out a niche for yourself in ancient art history. Your research with Greek
and Roman votive reliefs emphasizes not only the beauty of the objects
themselves but what the objects tell us about the culture, religion,
and politics of
their period.”
Karen
Nordell, who joined the Lawrence chemistry department in 2000, is a specialist
in materials chemistry, specifically nanoscale science, which focuses
on the manipulation of matter at the smallest level, literally atom-by-atom.
In 2002, with the help of a grant from the Women’s Fund of the Community
Foundation of the Fox Valley Region, Nordell co-founded, with Eugénia
Hunsicker, assistant professor of mathematics, the outreach program Partners
Reaching Youth in Science and Math (PRYSM), which matches women students
at Lawrence who are majoring in one of the sciences or mathematics with
eighth-grade girls from Appleton’s Roosevelt Middle School. The
Lawrence students serve as mentors and role models
to their
younger counterparts, providing tutoring assistance, conducting experiments,
and
leading occasional field trips of scientific interest.
Warch cited Nordell’s “infectious enthusiasm” and her “genuine
interest in her students.”
"They admire and appreciate the
limitless energy and passion for teaching you bring to all you do, praise
expressed not only by chemistry majors
but by the scientifically challenged as well,” Warch said.
Awards for outstanding teaching in Wisconsin
Victor Akemann, an advanced biology teacher at Stevens Point
Area Senior High (SPASH), and Karen Johnson-Zak, who teaches
French at Gibraltar High School, are the 41st and 42nd recipients of Lawrence’s Outstanding
Teaching in Wisconsin Award.
Established in 1985, the award recognizes Wisconsin secondary school teachers
for education excellence. Recipients are nominated by Lawrence seniors
who attended high school in Wisconsin.
A former marine-mammal scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration who studied Dall’s porpoise in the north Pacific
Ocean near Seattle, Akemann has taught advanced biology at SPASH since
1990.
In 1994, he co-founded Wisconsin’s first charter school — the
Education for Sustainable Development Charter School (ESDCS) — a school-within-a-school
at SPASH focusing on the interplay between the environment, the economy,
and social equality. Since the fall of 2002, he also has served as ESDCS’s
program director.
Lawrence senior Allison Dietsche praised Akemann’s unbridled enthusiasm
for his subject matter and commitment to working with individual students
in nominating him for the teaching award.
"You always knew he was genuinely excited,” Dietsche said in her
nomination letter. “He was animated in the classroom when he taught
and always had awesome class projects planned. He made himself available
early in
the morning or after school and always made time for his students.”
Johnson-Zak, a graduate of Gibraltar High School herself, began her 33-year
teaching career at Farnsworth Junior High School in Sheboygan before
returning to her alma mater, where she has served as a one-person
French department since 1973.
Shortly after returning to Gibraltar, she began organizing “immersion” field
trips to France, leading as many as 50 students on excursions to Paris
and other locales, where students would spend a week or more living with
French
host families.
“Karen Johnson-Zak is the epitome of what I consider an excellent teacher
to be,” wrote Lawrence senior and 1999 Gibraltar graduate Nate
Jacobs in nominating his former teacher for the award. “Her abilities
in effectively teaching French balance serious study and fun, making
the often tedious process
of learning complicated verb conjugations and pronunciation pass without
extreme difficulty.”