Honorary Degrees Conferred

David W. C. MacMillan shares the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Benjamin List for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in July 2022. He received his undergraduate degree in chemistry at the University of Glasgow. In 1990, he began his doctoral studies at the University of California, Irvine, before taking a postdoctoral position at Harvard University in 1996. 

Dave began his independent career at the University of California, Berkeley, in July of 1998 before moving to Caltech in 2000 as the Earle C. Anthony Chair of Organic Chemistry. In 2006, he moved to Princeton University as the A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Chemistry. He served as Department Chair from 2010–2015 and is currently the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry. His research interests encompass a wide range of organic chemistry, including the development of new areas in organocatalysis and photoredox catalysis.

Jim Owens is a business leader, philanthropist and NC State alumnus. During his 38-year career with Caterpillar Inc., which included a six-year tenure as chairman and chief executive officer, Jim served on the executive committee of the Business Roundtable and was chairman of the Business Council and an advisor to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. 

Jim served on President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board as well as boards of IBM Corp., Morgan Stanley and Alcoa Inc. He was chairman of the executive committee for the Peterson Institute for International Economics and served on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. He also is a former chair of the board of trustees for NC State and served on the board of trustees for the university’s endowment fund. 

NC State awarded Jim the Menscer Cup in 2017, the Watauga Medal in 2006 and the Poole College of Management’s Outstanding Alumni of the Year award in 1999. He supports endowments for numerous scholarships and fellowships, including the Nellie Maude Matthews Owens Scholarships, the Owens Graduate Fellowship Fund, the Owens Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management, the James W. Owens/Caterpillar Faculty Fellowship, the James W. Owens Distinguished Chair in International Economics, and the Owens-Shelton Distinguished Professor in Leadership with a Global Perspective. 

Owens is a native of Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and graduated from NC State with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in textile technology and a Ph.D. in economics.

Raj Chetty is the William A. Ackman Professor of public economics at Harvard University. Chetty’s research combines empirical evidence and economic theory to help design more effective government policies. He is also one of the founding directors of Opportunity Insights, which uses big data to study the science of economic opportunity. In particular, Chetty and his team research how to give children from disadvantaged backgrounds better chances of succeeding. His work on tax policy, unemployment insurance and education is widely cited in academia, media outlets and congressional testimony.

Early on during the COVID-19 pandemic, Chetty and his team created the first and only real-time
economic tracker documenting the pandemic’s lopsided effects on the population. He also created
the groundbreaking Opportunity Atlas, which helps map the roots of affluence and poverty back to the neighborhood level — demonstrating which areas of the country offer children the best opportunities to succeed.

Chetty received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in 2000 and his Ph.D. in 2003. He was a professor at the University of California at Berkeley until 2009 and returned to Harvard as one
of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard’s history. He has received numerous awards for
his research, including a MacArthur Fellowship and the American Economic Association’s John
Bates Clark Medal, given to the economist under 40 whose work is judged to have made the most
significant contribution to the field. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Robert L. Santos is the 26th director of the U.S. Census Bureau. Prior to his appointment, he served
as vice president and chief methodologist at the Urban Institute, where he directed its Statistical
Methods Group. Santos’ career spans over 40 years in survey research, statistical design and
analysis, and executive-level management. He has held leadership positions in the nation’s top survey research organizations, including the National Opinion Research Center at the University of
Chicago, the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, and Temple University’s
Institute for Survey Research.

His research interests and experiences include quantitative and qualitative research design, such as
program evaluation, needs assessments, and survey methodology and operations. In addition, he has expertise in demographic and administrative data, decennial censuses, social policy research and equity issues in research. Santos is a fellow and former president of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and has served as an elected member of the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Center for Health Statistics.

He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the ASA Founders Award; the American Association for Public Opinion Research Award for Exceptionally Distinguished Achievement; and the Ohtli Award from the Mexican government, which recognizes individuals who assist the country’s citizens or promote its culture. He is also a recipient of the Excellence in Community Service Award from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Trinity University in San Antonio and a master’s degree in statistics from the University of Michigan.

Dr. Amadou A. Sall is a virologist and the CEO of the Institut Pasteur de Dakar, a non-profit foundation of public utility dedicated to promoting public health and well-being in West Africa. In his 28-year career, he has become an expert in epidemics and global health security. He serves as the director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center for Arboviruses and Viral Hemorrhagic Fever.

Dr. Sall’s research focuses primarily on the diagnosis, ecology and evolution of viral hemorrhagic fever arboviruses and viruses. In 2011, he was awarded Senegal’s highest scientific distinction, the Grand Prix of the President of the Republic of Senegal for the Sciences. He also received the UNESCO Prize for the Life Sciences in 2015 and was admitted to the National Academy of Sciences and Techniques in Senegal in 2012.

Dr. Sall is the president of the Pasteur Network, which has 32 institutes in 26 countries, and sits on the scientific boards of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s global health program, the Foundation for Innovative and New Diagnostics in Geneva, the Medical Research Unit of Gambia, the African Society of Medical Laboratories, the Canadian NGO GUARD, and Particles for Humanity. He also served on the Coalition for Epidemics Preparedness and Innovation from the Franco-Senegalese campus in Senegal.

He acquired his scientific training at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, the Institute of Virology and Microbiology of the Environment at Oxford, the Tropical Diseases Research Center at the University of Texas Medical Branch and the Albert Einstein School of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York. Dr. Sall is currently an adjunct international member of the University of Texas Medical Branch Center in tropical diseases and an adjunct professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine at NC State.

Brian attended NC State University and studied electrical and computer engineering from 1984 to 1988.  After college, Brian joined a startup, DaVinci Systems, to help build one of the first electronic mail systems for personal computers.  After 3 years, Brian and a couple of friends left Davinci and founded One Tree Software to create tools to help teams of software developers.  One Tree was immensely successful and, in 1994, was acquired by Microsoft and the product become Microsoft Visual SourceSafe.  Brian joined Microsoft and continued to work on SourceSafe for a couple of years.  After which, Brian helped found the Common Language runtime team which, eventually, grew into the Microsoft .NET Framework.  In 2002, Brian and his family returned to North Carolina from Redmond and Brian created a new Microsoft development center in RTP and began a new effort at Microsoft to create tools to help teams of software developers.  That effort eventually grew into Team Foundation Server and Azure DevOps.  In 2018, Brian took an 18 month leave of absence to pursue some non-tech passions: farming and baking (along with some much-needed family time).  In 2019, Brian returned to Microsoft and now works in Azure, helping lead Azure’s artificial intelligence hardware and software efforts.

Mohamed L. Mansour is an internationally distinguished business leader, entrepreneur and philanthropist. While in Egypt, he served as the chairman of the Egypt-U.S. Business Council, President of the American Chamber of Commerce and as the Secretary General of the Egyptian Centre for Economic Studies. In his role as the Minister of Transport, Mansour oversaw one of the largest government ministries, employing more than 250,000 people. In 2013, he went on to establish the Lead Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides funding to small enterprises operated by underprivileged women in Egypt. Under his leadership, Lead has granted more than 3.5 million loans supporting women entrepreneurs.

Internationally, Monsour has been appointed to advise the UK’s national investments, Italy’s SDA Bocconi School of Management, and – by presidential decree – Egypt’s Grand Egyptian Museum. In the United States, Mansour previously served on the advisory board for the George Washington School of Business and Coca-Cola’s International Board. He is a member of the Harvard Kennedy School Dean’s Council and sits on the Advisory Board for the Centre for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University.

Mansour serves as the chairman of Mansour Group, a global conglomerate that operates across many sectors and markets, and ManCapital LLP, a London-based, family office investment firm. He holds a bachelor’s of science in textile engineering from NC State and a master’s in business administration from Auburn University.

Award-winning Chef and Restaurateur

The NC State alumna began cooking while in college, throwing dinner parties for her friends and family. These intimate gatherings helped her recognize her passion for cooking and sharing food, and ultimately led to her first professional cooking job at the age of 21. Upon taking the position, she knew she had found her life’s work.

After working in some of the Triangle’s top kitchens, Christensen opened Poole’s Diner in 2007, which takes its name and décor from the building’s original tenant – one of downtown Raleigh’s first restaurants. The space offers an evolving menu of comfort-food classics, re-imagined through a philosophy of local, seasonal ingredients and French-influenced technique.

In 2011, Christensen opened her next projects, all housed in a corner building once occupied by a Piggly Wiggly. Beasley’s Chicken + Honey is an ode to fried chicken and classic Southern sides. Fox Liquor Bar, housed in the building’s basement, features a menu of more than 50 craft cocktails, as well as beer, wine and bar snacks.

In the spring of 2015, AC Restaurants introduced Death & Taxes, a restaurant celebrating wood-fire cooking with Southern ingredients, and Bridge Club, a private events loft and cooking classroom. Death & Taxes was a 2016 James Beard Award finalist for Best New Restaurant, and Food & Wine listed it as one the Best New Restaurants of the Year. And most recently, in the fall of 2019, Poole’side Pies opened next door to Poole’s Diner, featuring Christensen’s take on Neapolitan-style pizza.

In 2014, Christensen was awarded the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southeast, and in 2019 she was awarded the James Beard Award in the Outstanding Chef category. She was named Chef of the Year by Eater.com in 2017. She is the author of two cookbooks, “Poole’s: Recipes and Stories from a Modern Diner,” published in 2016, and “It’s Always Freezer Season,” published this year.

Her work has gained national attention from such publications including Bon Appétit, Gourmet, The New York Times, Southern Living, and more. She has appeared on Food Network’s popular series “Iron Chef America” and MSNBC’s “Your Business.”

When she’s not in the kitchen, Christensen focuses her time on a number of local and regional charities. She has served as a board member of the Frankie Lemmon foundation and is a co-chair of its annual fundraising event, Triangle Wine Experience. She is currently on the board for the Dix Park Conservancy, and Shepherd’s Table Soup Kitchen, which serves 200 to 300 meals daily to downtown Raleigh’s food-insecure population. She is an active member of the Southern Foodways Alliance and founded the biannual event Stir the Pot, in which she hosts visiting chefs in Raleigh to raise funds for the alliance’s documentary initiatives.

Chief Operating Officer, Apple

Jeff Williams is Apple’s chief operating officer. He oversees Apple’s entire worldwide operations, as well as customer service and support. He leads Apple’s renowned design team and the software and hardware engineering for Apple Watch.

Williams also drives the company’s health initiatives, pioneering new technologies and advancing medical research to empower people to better understand and manage their health and fitness.

Williams played a key role in Apple’s entry into the mobile phone market with the launch of iPhone, and since 2010 has led worldwide operations for all products. He also led the engineering development of Apple Watch. He joined Apple in 1998 as head of Worldwide Procurement. Prior to Apple, Williams worked for the IBM Corporation from 1985 to 1998 in a number of operations and engineering roles. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from NC State and an MBA from Duke University.

Williams and his wife Melissa run the Williams Family Private Foundation focused on education and food insecurities. They have three daughters and two grandchildren.

Founder and CEO, The Pink Ceiling

Cindy Eckert is the founder and CEO of The Pink Ceiling, an organization committed to investing in and supporting companies made by and for women. Through The Pink Ceiling and The Pinkubator, Eckert has supported female entrepreneurs and health technology companies at various levels of development, each with products aimed at tangible improvements for real people.

Eckert began her career in the pharmaceutical industry. With a distinguished 25-year career in healthcare, Eckert in only the last ten years has built two pharmaceutical businesses from the ground up, which she then sold for over $1.5 billion. One of these, Sprout Pharmaceuticals, broke new ground with the release of the first ever FDA-approved drug to improve low libido in females. Eckert reacquired the rights to the drug after selling in efforts to ensure its ethical launch and marketing.

At the center of her pursuits, Eckert remains committed to the mission of advocacy for women, working with creativity, and sharing her expertise in order to help others achieve their goals. So far, The Pinkubator and The Pink Ceiling have invested over $37 million in woman-led companies that, “put power in women’s hands.” Eckert was called, “a tireless force of nature,” by Fortune, and has been featured in Entrepreneur, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Forbes, TEDx, and other national media outlets and publications.

Eckert holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Marymount University.

NASA Astronaut

Commencement Speaker

When Christina Hammock Koch returned to Earth earlier this year after completing three expeditions on the International Space Station, she made history.

The NC State alumna and NASA astronaut set the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman – with a total of 328 days in space. Along with fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, she participated in the first all-woman spacewalk.

In total during her time in space, she completed six spacewalks that added up to 42 hours and 15 minutes. The crews she served on contributed to hundreds of scientific experiments, according to NASA. Some of the highlights from her missions include improvements to a scientific instrument called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which can detect dark matter, and growing protein crystals for pharmaceutical research.

A native of Michigan who grew up in Jacksonville, N.C., Koch is a three-time graduate of NC State. She graduated in 2001 with a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering, and earned a Bachelor of Science in physics and a Master of Science in electrical engineering in 2002.

Koch was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 2013, and completed astronaut candidate training in 2015. She served as a flight engineer on the International Space Station for three expeditions.

Prior to becoming an astronaut, she held roles in remote scientific field engineering, which took her to American Samoa, Antarctica, Alaska and Greenland, and in space science instrument development. Her roles included work as an electrical engineer at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics and as a research associate for the U.S. Antarctic Program.

Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, IBM

Virginia M. (Ginni) Rometty is chairman, president and chief executive officer of IBM. Since becoming CEO in January 2012, Ginni has led IBM through the most significant transformation in its history, reinventing the company to lead in the new era of AI, blockchain, cybersecurity and quantum technologies, all delivered on IBM’s enterprise-strength cloud platform.  Today, IBM is the world leader in AI and cloud computing for business, underpinned with trust and security.

Throughout IBM’s reinvention, Ginni has worked to ensure that new technologies are developed and deployed in a way that is ethical and enduring.  IBM was the first, for example, to publish long-held principles of trust for AI, data responsibility and data transparency.

IBM’s commitment to diversity and inclusion also has advanced under Ginni’s leadership. This includes extending parental leave and making it easier for women to return to the workforce through a “returnships” program with hands-on work experience in emerging technologies.  This pioneering work was recognized in 2018 by the prestigious Catalyst Award for advancing diversity and women’s initiatives. IBM is the only tech company to have earned this recognition in the last 20 years and the only company ever to be honored four times.

IBM under Ginni’s leadership also has led the way on ensuring society is prepared for this new era of data.  This includes equipping workers for “new collar” job roles in emerging technology fields that do not always require a bachelor’s degree.  The IBM-created Pathways in Technology (P-TECH) education model is a six-year program that prepares students for career success by combining high-school with a community college degree, mentoring and internships – all within existing local education budgets.  Today, there are more than 120 schools worldwide, bringing technology employment opportunities to more than 100,000 students.

Beginning her career with IBM in 1981, Ginni held a series of leadership positions across the company and led the successful integration of PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, creating a global team of more than 100,000 business consultants and services experts. Ginni has a Bachelor of Science degree with high honors in computer science and electrical engineering from Northwestern University, where she later was awarded an honorary degree. She also has an honorary degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She serves on the Council on Foreign Relations, the board of trustees of Northwestern University and the boards of overseers and managers of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.  She is co-chair of the Aspen Institute’s Cyber Group and is a member of the advisory board of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management.

Founding Partner, Snøhetta

Craig Dykers is a founding partner of Snøhetta, an international architecture, landscape, interiors, and brand and graphic design company with offices in New York City and Oslo, Norway. He and his colleagues established Snøhetta in 1989 after winning the international competition for the Alexandria Library in Egypt, shortly after leaving architecture school. Dykers and his partners now manage the international practice with studios in seven cities. He works together with his partner and wife, Elaine Molinar, and resides in New York City.

Dykers has led many of Snøhetta’s prominent international projects, including the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo, the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion in New York City, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art expansion in California, and the Ryerson University Student Learning Centre in Toronto, Canada. He was the partner in charge for Snøhetta’s award-winning architectural design for NC State’s James B. Hunt Jr. Library. The American Institute of Architects (AIA), American Library Association and many others have recognized the Hunt Library’s design for its beauty, effective incorporation of technology and inviting spaces for collaboration.

Recently Dykers has led the design of new pedestrian plazas in Times Square; The French Laundry kitchen expansion and garden renovation in Yountville, California; and the Central Library in Calgary, Canada. He has a strong interest in design as a promoter of social and physical well-being. His work has led to numerous international awards, including the Mies van der Rohe European Union Prize of Architecture, two World Architecture Awards and the Aga Kahn Award for Architecture. He is a recipient of the Texas Medal of Arts Award for Architecture, the Grosch Medal in Norway and the AIA Gold Medal for the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion.

Dykers has lived equal parts of his life in Europe and the U.S. He was born in Germany, where his father served in the U.S. Army. His mother is from London. He earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a fellow of the American AIA, an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Manufacturers and previous member of the Norwegian Association of Architects. He has been a resident at the American Academy in Rome and serves on several professional boards in the U.S.

Architect

Curtis Worth Fentress is a world-renowned designer of iconic public architecture for civic and government buildings, airports, museums and convention centers. In 1972, Fentress graduated with honors from NC State with a Bachelor of Architecture degree and won the Alpha Rho Chi Medal, the highest honor an architectural school bestows on a designer. He received a Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2010.

Fentress is a fellow with the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and member of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He received the AIA Thomas Jefferson Award and the AIA Western Mountain Region Silver Medal in 2010. AIA Colorado named him Architect of the Year in 2012, and he is one of only two architects in the Colorado Business Hall of Fame. He is the 2020 chair for AIA’s national Committee on Design.

Fentress began his career working with I.M. Pei, then joined the newly formed firm of Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) to continue his pursuit of large-scale public projects. In the late 1970s, KPF led him to Denver, Colorado, as project designer for the 36-story Amoco Building. He was soon named “Young Professional of the Year” by Building Design and Construction magazine. In 1980 he founded his own firm in Denver. By 1989 he had designed the Colorado Convention Center and was chosen to design the Jeppesen Terminal at Denver International Airport after submitting a design recognized around the world today and lauded as the best airport in North America. His design led to many other airport terminal projects worldwide.

Fentress has won 45 major design competitions, including the award-winning National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia; Wildlife Art Museum in Jackson, Wyoming; Clark County Government Center in Las Vegas, Nevada; Incheon International Airport in Seoul, South Korea; and San Diego Convention Center in California.

As an adjunct professor in the School of Architecture at NC State’s College of Design for six years, Fentress has mentored the next generation of aviation architects. He conducts an annual Airport of the Future Global Challenge for architecture students. In 2012, Fentress led a Think Tank called “Airport of the Future,” leading to an international exhibition. He co-founded the nonprofit Aerial Futures which has convened global symposia on transportation design.

Commencement Speaker

Marian Wright Edelman is founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund. She has been an advocate for disadvantaged Americans for her entire professional life. A graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School, Edelman was the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar. She directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson, Mississippi. Her many awards include the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize; the Heinz Award; a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship; and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. She received the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award for her writings. Her books include “Families in Peril: An Agenda for Social Change,” “The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours,” “I’m Your Child, God: Prayers for Our Children,” and “The Sea Is So Wide and My Boat Is So Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation.” She is married to Peter Edelman, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. They have three sons and four grandchildren.

Temple Grandin, an animal science professor at Colorado State University, is a pioneer in improving the handling and welfare of farm animals. At age 2 she had all the signs of severe autism. Intensive speech therapy and teaching enabled her to learn to speak. Mentoring by a high school teacher and aunt motivated Grandin to become a scientist. She earned a doctorate from the University of Illinois. Her book “Animals in Translation” was a New York Times best seller and her livestock handling textbook is in its fourth edition. Half the cattle in the U.S. and Canada are handled in equipment she designed. Her other books include “Thinking in Pictures,” “Animals Make Us Human” and “The Autistic Brain.” An HBO film about her won seven Emmy awards and a Golden Globe. Grandin served on the Autism Society of America’s board and speaks to parents and teachers across the country. In 2010 Time Magazine named her one of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World.” She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016 and the Women’s Hall of Fame in 2017.

NASA engineer and executive

Commencement Speaker

North Carolina native Dr. Christine Mann Darden is an internationally recognized expert in high-speed aerodynamics and sonic-boom research. Over her nearly 40-year career with NASA, she won dozens of honors, including two NASA medals: one for her work and leadership of the sonic boom program and one for her active involvement in encouraging students to pursue careers in math and science. She received the Black Engineer of the Year Outstanding Achievement in Government Award, and the Women in Science and Engineering Lifetime Achievement Award.

Darden is mentioned in the 2016 book “Hidden Figures” as a person who stood on the shoulders of African American women who contributed to the space program in the early 1960s as members of NASA’s segregated West Computers unit. A native of Monroe, North Carolina, Darden graduated from Allen High School, a boarding school in Asheville. She attended Hampton Institute (now University) on scholarship, earning an undergraduate degree in mathematics education. She made a career switch from high school math teacher to engineer after earning a master’s degree in applied mathematics from Virginia State and a doctorate in mechanical engineering from George Washington University.

Darden was hired in 1967 as a computer/data analyst in the re-entry physics branch of NASA’s Langley Research Center. She was later promoted into an engineering position, spending 30 years spearheading research on ways to minimize sonic booms, a barrier to supersonic air travel, which could significantly reduce flight times. Just this year, NASA signed a contract with Lockheed Martin Palmdale to build a full-size supersonic low-boom X-plane to demonstrate low-boom performance and supersonic efficiency – a continuation of work Darden led and performed. She authored 57 technical articles, focusing on sonic-boom prediction and minimization, and supersonic wing design.

Darden became the first African American woman at NASA’s Langley Research Center to be promoted into the Senior Executive Service, the top rank of the federal civil service. She held a number of high-profile leadership roles with NASA, serving as a senior program manager in the High Speed Research Program Office, director of the Aero Performing Center Program Management Office, and as Langley’s assistant director for planning. She retired from her final position as director of Langley’s Office of Strategic Communication and Education in 2007.

Darden and her husband of 55 years, Walter, are the parents of three adult daughters, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Big History Institute Director and Distinguished Professor in History, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

David Christian directs Macquarie University’s Big History Institute, which manages teaching and research to tell the story of the universe from the Big Bang to complex modern societies. After training as a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, he began teaching big history courses in 1989, drawing on multiple disciplines. He led development of Macquarie University’s specialization in big history and a related massive open online course or MOOC. He was founding president of the International Big History Association and co-founder with Bill Gates of the Big History Project, which created a free online high school syllabus now being used by more than a thousand high schools, mostly in the U.S. and Australia. Christian has written books on Russian and inner Eurasian history, as well as authoring the first college-level textbook on big history. He holds a Ph.D. from Oxford.

Fellow of the American Institute of Architects

Phil Freelon served as lead architect for the acclaimed National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. He is the design architect for award-winning museum and cultural projects including the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, the Harvey B. Gantt Center in Charlotte, Emancipation Park in Houston, and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum in Baltimore. Freelon serves as managing and design director of the North Carolina practice of Perkins+Will. Prior to joining that firm, he was founder and CEO of The Freelon Group. Freelon completed a bachelor’s degree in architecture at NC State, a master’s at M-I-T and a graduate fellowship at Harvard. He has served as a faculty member and lecturer at major universities. A native of Philadelphia, Freelon is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

Dr. Martine Rothblatt’s titles include lawyer, biotech company founder, satellite radio innovator and author. Rothblatt serves as chairman and chief executive officer of United Therapeutics, a biotech company focused on treating rare lung diseases. She started United Therapeutics to save the life of one of her daughters, and after coming out as transgender. Her management focus is making and marketing drug-device combination products, proving and promoting proprietary pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing transplantable organs. She designed and set dual-pilot speed, altitude, and endurance records in the world’s first electric helicopter, now being optimized for autonomous organ delivery.

Before founding United Therapeutics in 1996, Rothblatt created and led Sirius Satellite Radio, now Sirius XM, as its chairman and CEO. She also launched other satellite systems for navigation and international television broadcasting. Her patented inventions cover aspects of satellite radio, prostacyclin biochemistry and cognitive software.

Rothblatt earned law and M.B.A. degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. in medical ethics from the Royal London School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Rothblatt serves on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Science, Technology and Law. She represented the radio astronomy community before the Federal Communications Commission in efforts to secure quiet frequency bands for astrophysics research as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Radio Frequencies. She also spearheaded the International Bar Association’s efforts to present a draft Human Genome Treaty to the United Nations.

Her recent books are on organ transplantation (Your Life or Mine), gender identity (Transgender to Transhuman) and cyberethics (Virtually Human).

Masahiro Shima is the founder and chairman of the board of directors of Shima Seiki Manufacturing Limited, known for its innovations in flat knitting machines. Shima, nicknamed the “Edison of Wakayama,” his hometown in Japan, holds numerous patents.

He founded the Shima Seiki in 1962, based on development of the world’s first fully automated glove knitting machine. The company’s advances in seamless knitting led to development of the Wholegarment computerized knitting technology the company is known for around the world. The technology allows garment makers to create seamless clothing, from pleated skirts to running shoes, in minutes rather the hours or days once needed to manufacture them, reducing production time. Companies from casual wear manufacturer Uniqlo to designers such as Prada and Giorgio Armani use Wholegarment technology for their fashion lines. The Wholegarment method conserves resources and energy and reduces labor costs.

Shima Seiki has become a leader in computerized glove and flat knitting systems and in computerized graphic design, serving 90 countries worldwide. Now chairman of the board, Shima served as president of the company for 55 years before his son succeeded him in that role in June.

Shima has served as director of the Japan Institute of Invention and Innovation, vice chairman of the Japan Textile Machinery Association, and as chairman of the Wakayama Machinery and Metal Industrial Cooperative, Wakayama Institute of Invention and Innovation, and Wakayama Industry Promotion Foundation.

He has received numerous awards for textile engineering, green development and service. Recent honors include the Italian government’s Commander of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity in 2010 and induction into the American Textile Hall of Fame in 2012. He received the grand prize in the Kigyoka Prize competition in 2015 and a Japanese Prime Minister’s Award for his contribution to greening efforts in 2016.

Admiral Michelle Howard serves as vice chief of naval operations, the second most senior officer in the U.S. Navy. She took on the role in July 2014 following presidential appointment and Senate confirmation.

Howard has served at sea since 1982. Her initial tours were aboard the USS Hunley and USS Lexington. While serving on board Lexington, she received the Secretary of the Navy/Navy League Captain Winifred Collins Award, presented annually to a female officer who demonstrates outstanding leadership.

She reported to USS Mount Hood as chief engineer in 1990 and served in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. She assumed duties as first lieutenant of the USS Flint in 1992. In 1996 she became executive officer of USS Tortuga and deployed to the Adriatic in support of Operation Joint Endeavor, a peacekeeping effort in the former Republic of Yugoslavia. Following that, Tortuga departed on a West African training mission in which sailors, U.S. Marines and Coast Guard personnel operated with naval services of seven African nations.

In 1999 Howard became the first African American woman to command a U.S. Navy ship, USS Rushmore, a Whidbey Island-class dock landing ship. She commanded Amphibious Squadron Seven from May 2004 to September 2005. Deployments included Indonesia tsunami relief efforts and maritime security operations in the North Arabian Gulf. She led Expeditionary Strike Group Two from April 2009 to July 2010 and commanded a multinational counter-piracy task force in 2009.

In July 2014, Howard became the first woman to earn the rank of four-star admiral in the U.S. Navy, as well as the first African American woman to attain four-star rank in any service. She was promoted to that rank when she became 38th vice chief of naval operations.

Howard was named the 2011 USO Military Woman of the Year, the 2013 NAACP Chairman’s Image Award recipient and the 2014 Thurgood Marshall College Fund National Hero Award recipient.

Originally from Aurora, Colorado, Howard is a 1982 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. She earned a master’s degree in military arts and sciences in 1998 from the Army’s Command and General Staff College in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Dr. Jean Schensul is founding director and senior scientist with the Institute for Community Research, an independent research organization funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Schensul is an anthropologist with interdisciplinary research and teaching experience in health problems and concerns from birth to older adulthood in the United States, Africa, Latin America and South Asia, including India, Sri Lanka and China.

Her primary professional commitments involve supporting community-based research organizations in the United States and around the world. She focuses on building community-university action research partnerships and promoting the collaborative and indigenous use of science-based approaches, especially with communities experiencing health inequities. Her main areas of funded U.S. and international research are structural factors contributing to substance use and prevention (tobacco, alcohol, marijuana and illicit drugs), especially in young adults; oral health disparities; and HIV in the U.S. and South Asia.

Schensul has received many NIH, federal and foundation grants. She is the senior editor and co-author of the Ethnographer’s Toolkit, a seven-book series on community-based, mixed methods research, now in its second edition. She has authored many articles, book chapters and curriculum manuals on topics related to health, community, and disparities across the developmental and cultural spectrum. She regularly teaches in community methods programs and university settings in the U.S. and South Asia. She is a regular reviewer for NIH and many peer-reviewed journals.

She received the Society for Applied Anthropology’s Malinowski Award for lifetime achievement in the application of anthropology to human problems and the American Anthropological Association’s Solon T. Kimball Award (with Stephen L. Schensul) for contributions of anthropology to policy.

In addition to her continuing role at the Institute for Community Research, based in Hartford, Connecticut, she is an adjunct research professor with the University of Connecticut’s School of Dental Medicine and an adjunct professor with UConn’s Department of Community Medicine. She has held various administrative roles in organizations associated with the discipline of anthropology, including presidency of the Society for Applied Anthropology, presidency of the Council on Anthropology and Education, and the executive board of the American Anthropological Association. She is the elected treasurer of the Association of Anthropology and Gerontology.

Since Lawrence J. Wheeler was named director in 1994, the North Carolina Museum of Art has become one of the leading art museums in the South. The NCMA’s major exhibitions, featuring the work of Rodin, Rembrandt and Monet, have attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors from across the nation and around the world.

Prior to joining the NCMA, Wheeler was director of development at the Cleveland Museum of Art from 1985 to 1994. From 1977 to 1985, he served as deputy secretary for the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, where he oversaw construction of the original NCMA building.

In 2006, under Wheeler’s leadership, the museum unveiled its design for an ambitious expansion. His vision for a spacious, light-filled structure to house the museum’s collection became a reality in 2010. Today the award-winning West Building, surrounded by sculpture gardens and reflecting pools, exhibits works from the institution’s outstanding permanent collection of more than 5,000 objects from ancient Egypt to the present day. The expansion also transformed the museum’s original building into a center for temporary exhibitions, collections management and education.

Wheeler secured a gift of 29 Rodin sculptures from the Cantor Foundation, making the NCMA the largest repository of Rodin’s work in the South. He has helped build the modern and contemporary collections substantially, including a gift of masters of mid- to late-20th century American art from the private collection of Jim and Mary Patton.

Wheeler’s awards include France’s Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters, the Medal of Arts from the City of Raleigh, the Leadership Award from Triangle Business Journal, the Design Guild Award from NC State’s College of Design, and the Thad Eure Memorial Award from the Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau. The News & Observer named Wheeler the 2000 Tar Heel of the Year by. In 2010, he received the inaugural Mary D.B.T. Semans Award for Distinguished Service from Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art.

Wheeler grew up in Lakeland, Florida. He holds bachelor’s degrees in history and French from Pfeiffer College. His master’s and doctorate in European history are from the University of Georgia

MIT Professor Mildred Dresselhaus is nicknamed the “queen of carbon.” Her groundbreaking research laid the foundation for carbon science and carbon nanostructures, as well as nanoscience and nanotechnology more generally. She’s also one of the scientists responsible for a resurgence in thermoelectrics research.

A native of the Bronx, Dresselhaus attended New York City public schools through junior high school before earning a scholarship to prestigious Hunter College High School, where she took a physics course and met lifelong mentor Rosalyn Yalow. Dresselhaus completed a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, where she studied with Enrico Fermi and became acquainted with his family. She completed postdoctoral work at Cornell University, where her experiments led to a fundamental understanding of the electronic structure of semi-metals, especially graphite. She became an MIT faculty member and eventually an Institute Professor in the departments of physics and electrical engineering.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, Dresselhaus is the co-author of eight books and about 1,700 papers, primarily on carbon sciences. She is particularly well-known for her work on carbon nanomaterials and other nanostructural systems based on layered materials, like graphene, and more recently, transition metal dichalcogenides and phosphorene. Her research over the years has covered a wide range of problems in condensed matter and materials physics.

Dresselhaus has served as director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science and as an officer in national organizations for physics, engineering and related fields. Dresselhaus’ honors include the National Medal of Science, the Nicholson Medal for Humanitarian Service, the Compton Award, the Fermi Prize, the Kavli Prize and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Dresselhaus remains active in promoting women’s participation in science and engineering. She enjoys playing violin and viola in chamber music groups, along with spending time with her husband, four children and five grandchildren.

Honorary Doctor of Sciences

Every day, children gather around the “Window on Animal Health” at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences to watch veterinarians and NCSU vet-terns tend to creatures from rattlesnakes to rabbits. As the presentation ends, it’s not uncommon to hear a youngster declare, “I want to be an animal doctor.” That scene plays out throughout the museum, as tomorrow’s leaders dream of discovering dinosaur fossils or uncharted stars after taking in an exhibit, seeing a scientist’s dazzling display or doing a hands-on experiment.

This is Dr. Betsy Bennett’s vision fulfilled – a place for visitors of all ages to become actively involved in science and nature. Children get a jump start on the sometimes mystifying or intimidating subjects that will be essential to their future success, and they have a lot of fun doing it.

Bennett retired in 2012 after more than two decades as the museum’s director, transforming it from exhibit space in a cramped state office building into a pioneering institution now being replicated worldwide. She altered the Raleigh skyline – twice – and created a global destination that will inspire generations. To get there she snared dinosaurs, recruited world-class scientists, won over legislators and enlisted a platoon of CEOs. Former Gov. Jim Hunt dubbed her “a force of nature.”

Such accolades are a long way from the postwar Alabama schoolgirl who found a love of nature on butterfly walks with her mother. The only physics major at all-female Hollins University, she excelled in the male-dominated worlds of science and politics. She earned a doctorate in science education at the University of Virginia and was elected to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board in the 1970s, helping craft an integration and pupil assignment plan in a tense and divisive era.

Bennett, named Tar Heel of the Year in 2011 by the News & Observer, is a past president of the Association of Science Museum Directors. She was presented with the NC Award for Public Service in 2014 and currently serves on the boards of the Kenan Institute for Science & Engineering, the N.C. Botanical Garden, Triangle Land Conservancy and Kidzu Children’s Museum, among others. She works as strategic counsel at Capital Development Services.

Upon retirement from the museum, she shared her reflections: “With the help of the state of North Carolina, the public and private sector, a devoted staff and the support of so many generous individuals, we have built a world-renowned center for the study of our state and our world. What a tremendous gift for the people of North Carolina.”

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters

Brigadier General Clara L. Adams-Ender, US Army, retired, has a new mission: helping students of modest means complete college. She is executive director of the nonprofit Caring About People with Enthusiasm Legacy Fund. The foundation raises funds and partners with other nonprofits to ensure that college is within reach for as many needy students as possible.

Adams-Ender was born in Wake County, North Carolina, the fourth oldest of 10 children. She received a bachelor’s degree in nursing from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro and a master’s degree in nursing from the University of Minnesota. She earned a Master of Military Art and Science degree from the Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

She rose from Army staff nurse to become chief executive officer for 22,000 nurses, brigadier general and director of personnel for the Army Surgeon General. She was vice president for nursing at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the largest health-care facility in the Department of Defense. In 1967, she became the first female in the Army to be awarded the Expert Field Medical Badge. She commanded an Army base, a position equivalent to city manager, magistrate and mayor of a city. She was the first Army nurse in history to command as a general officer. In 2001, she published her memoir, My Rise to the Stars.

An inspiring educator, lecturer, consultant and leader, Adams-Ender has given more than 2,000 presentations to health-care professionals, community and business leaders, veterans groups and students, both at home and abroad.

Adams-Ender is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She served as chairman of the board for The Rocks Inc. and Andrews Federal Credit Union. She is a charter member of the Board of Visitors for the U.S. Marine Corps University and past member of the Board of Medicine for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Her honors include the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins Meritorious Service Award, National Bar Association’s Gertrude E. Rush Award for Leadership and Distinguished Service Medal with Oakleaf Cluster.

Working Woman magazine named her one of 350 women who changed the world from 1976 to 1996, and the Virginia Foundation for Women honored her as one of seven Outstanding Virginia Women in History in 2005. Her undergraduate alma mater named a nursing professorship for her in 2009. In 2013, she was honored by the American Academy of Nursing as a Living Legend and the United States Army War College named her its first female outstanding graduate.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry directs the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative and is the Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at Stanford University’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He is affiliated with the Center for International Security Cooperation, the Europe Center, and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

As ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2009 to July 2011, Eikenberry led the civilian surge directed by President Obama to reverse insurgent momentum and set the conditions for transition to full Afghan sovereignty. Before appointment as chief of mission in Kabul, he had a 35-year career in the U.S. Army, retiring with the rank of lieutenant general. His military operational posts included commander and staff officer with mechanized, light, airborne and ranger infantry units in the continental U.S., Hawaii, Korea, Italy and Afghanistan as the commander of the American-led coalition forces from 2005 to 2007.

Eikenberry has served in various policy and political-military positions, including deputy chairman of the NATO Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium; director for strategic planning and policy for the U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith, Hawaii; U.S. security coordinator and chief of the Office of Military Cooperation in Kabul, Afghanistan; Assistant Army and later defense attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, China; senior country director for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and deputy director for Strategy, Plans and Policy on the Army Staff.

Eikenberry is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy. He earned master’s degrees from Harvard University in East Asian studies and from Stanford University in political science, and was a national security fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He earned a British Foreign and Commonwealth Office interpreter’s certificate in Mandarin Chinese and an advanced degree in Chinese history from Nanjing University.

His military awards include the Defense Distinguished and Superior Service Medals, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Ranger Tab, Combat and Expert Infantryman badges, and master parachutist wings. He received many honors for his service from U.S. government agencies, along with the Canadian Meritorious Service Cross, French Legion of Honor, Afghanistan’s Ghazi Amir Amanullah Khan and Akbar Khan Medals, and the NATO Meritorious Service Medal.

Eikenberry is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His writing on U.S. and international security issues has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Washington Quarterly, The American Interest, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Dr. Pedro A. Sanchez is an internationally known expert on managing tropical soils for increased food production while conserving the environment. Sanchez is senior research scholar and director of the Agriculture and Food Security Center at Columbia University’s Earth Institute.

Sanchez is the 2002 World Food Prize laureate and a 2004 MacArthur Fellow. He attributes the roots of his life’s work in soil science to the fact that he always liked to “play with dirt.” That boyhood pastime was nurtured by the fact that his family owned a diversified farm, the distributorship of Chilean nitrates in Cuba and a fertilizer blending plant, and it eventually led Sanchez to become a world-renowned soil scientist. He earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in soil science from Cornell University.

After his undergraduate education at Cornell University, where he took particularly influential seminars on starvation in India, Sanchez headed to the Philippines as a graduate student in tropical soils, becoming what he calls “a foot soldier in the Green Revolution,” working on rice.

Sanchez is pleased that what he saw happen in the Green Revolution in Asia in the 1970s is beginning to happen in Africa. He served as director general of the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, from 1991 to 2001, as co-chair of the United Nations Millennium Project Hunger Task Force from 2002 to 2005 and as director of the Millennium Villages Project from 2004 to 2010. He is committed to making Africa “get out of hunger” in the next 10 to 20 years.

Sanchez is professor emeritus of soil science and forestry at NC State. A faculty member from 1968 to 1991, he served as the first professor of tropical soils and led the Tropical Soils Research Program. He has lived in the Philippines, Peru, Colombia and Kenya, and supervised research programs in more than 25 countries in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa. Sanchez has written groundbreaking books on tropical soil science and hunger. He has received honorary degrees and decorations from universities and governments. He was anointed chief by the Luo in western Kenya with the name of Odera Akang’o, and by the Ikaram of southern Nigeria with the name of Atunluse.

At Sanchez’s induction into the National Academy of Sciences in 2012, NAS president Ralph Cicerone summarized his contributions: “Sanchez has led path-breaking research on soil management for improved food production in the tropical world. His work has influenced research in agronomy, ecology, and changed the way technology is used to increase food production.”

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters

Mr. David S. Ferriero was sworn in as 10th Archivist of the United States on Nov. 13, 2009.

As the nation’s archivist, Ferriero heads the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which ensures ready access to essential evidence that documents the rights of U.S. citizens, the actions of federal officials and the national experience. In Washington, D.C. alone, this evidence includes approximately 12 billion pieces of paper and 40 million still pictures and graphics; 300,000 reels of motion picture film and 400,000 sound and video recordings; 12 million maps, charts, and architectural and engineering plans; 24 million aerial photographs; and many terabytes of electronic records.

Original documents held and preserved by NARA include the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

NARA also operates and maintains 13 presidential libraries, which preserve and make available to the public the papers and other historical materials of all presidents since 1925, and 22 regional records facilities which hold evidence describing the actions of the federal government – including items such as court records documenting farm foreclosures during the Depression.

To combat theft or mishandling of records, Ferriero instituted new security measures for NARA. In August 2012, NARA produced the Managing Government Records Directive to modernize and improve federal records management practices. In 2010, Ferriero committed NARA to the principles of open government – transparency, participation and collaboration. He also initiated an agency transformation shortly after taking the helm of the organization.

Previously, Ferriero served as the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries. In this position he was part of the leadership team responsible for integrating four research libraries and 87 branch libraries into one seamless service for users. He also headed collection strategy; conservation; digital experience and strategy; reference and research services; and education, programming and exhibitions.

Before joining the New York Public Libraries in 2004, Ferriero served in top positions at two of the nation’s major academic libraries, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Duke University.

Ferriero earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English literature from Northeastern University in Boston and a master’s degree from the Simmons College of Library and Information Science, also in Boston. He served in the Navy during the Vietnam War.

Ferriero will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.

Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts

Mr. Thomas Sayre is a noted and active sculptor, Thomas Sayre has designed and built public art projects all over the world, and has been a member of design teams for civic, educational, museum and transportation projects.

His 2007 project “Furrow” won the American for the Arts award from the Public Art Network. That project in Charlotte contains six “earthcastings” at the light-rail line’s Scaleybark Station. The sculptures were inspired by harrow disks, the agricultural tools used behind a plow to cultivate farmland. The name refers to the trench left in farmland by a plow or harrow and pays tribute to Scaleybark’s agricultural past.

Among numerous honors, Sayre received the North Carolina Award for Fine Arts in 2012 and the Sir Walter Raleigh Individual Award in 2008.

In 1981, Sayre and architect Steven D. Schuster formed Clearscapes, a multidisciplinary design firm in Raleigh. Clearscapes is involved with building design, product design, and large and small scale artwork. Combining the hands-on process of the sculpture studio with architectural skills, the firm is unique in its combination of talents. Clearscapes won the 2007 North Carolina Firm of the Year award from the American Institute of Architects.

Sayre grew up in Washington, D.C., in the shadow of the Washington National Cathedral. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a Morehead Scholarship and majored in English and studio art, graduating summa cum laude in 1973. He then moved to Ann Arbor, Mich., where he was a Michigan Fellow with a three-year grant from the Ford Foundation to create sculpture at the University of Michigan. In 1975, Sayre attended the Master of Fine Arts Program at the Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Sayre is married to Joan-Ellen Deck, whom he met while touring as a professional musician in a rock-and-roll band. They have two daughters.

Sayre will receive an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree.

Honorary Doctor of Sciences

Acclaimed chemist George M. Whitesides leads a research group at Harvard University dedicated to changing the paradigms of science through wide-ranging work in fields such as soft robotics, the origins of life and medical diagnostic tools for the developing world.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Whitesides is the world’s most-cited living chemist. He has co-founded a dozen companies and holds more than 100 patents. His research has led to breakthroughs in nanotechnology, creation of new classes of materials, and development of drugs to manage cholesterol, improve dialysis and fight drug-resistant pathogens. One of his current passions is creating a lab on a chip – a postage stamp-sized piece of paper that can be used to diagnose diseases. The paper changes color when it comes in contact with bodily fluids, providing a rapid, easy-to-read, inexpensive diagnostic tool that can be used in developing countries around the world.

Whitesides is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) and the National Academy of Engineering. His many honors include the U.S. National Medal of Science, Japan’s Kyoto Prize and an Honorary Fellow designation in the U.K.’s Royal Society of Chemistry. He received a Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry and the Priestley Medal, the American Chemical Society’s highest award.

Whitesides has a keen interest in increasing public understanding of science. He has co-authored two books with photographer Felice Frankel: On the Surface of Things: Images of the Extraordinary in Science (2008) and No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale (2009). He’s known for his engaging presentations, including TED talks on simplicity and surprise in science. He contributed to a National Academies’ report on U.S. competitiveness in science and technology, titled “Rising Above the Gathering Storm.” A longtime member of the National Research Council, he has served on advisory committees for NASA, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Whitesides learned about science in boyhood as the son of a chemical engineer. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Harvard and a doctorate from the California Institute of Technology. He joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963. In 1982, he moved his lab to Harvard. A former chemistry department chair and associate dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, he is the current Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor. He and his wife, Barbara, have two sons.

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters

Indra Nooyi is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo. In its global food and beverage portfolio, PepsiCo has 22 brands that generate more than $1 billion each in annual retail sales. PepsiCo’s main businesses include Quaker, Tropicana, Gatorade, Frito-Lay and Pepsi-Cola. With more than $65 billion in annual net revenue, PepsiCo makes hundreds of enjoyable foods and beverages that are loved throughout the world.

Mrs. Nooyi is the chief architect of Performance with Purpose, PepsiCo’s goal to deliver sustained financial performance by providing a wide range of foods and beverages from treats to healthy eats; finding innovative ways to minimize the company’s impact on the environment and lower costs through energy and water conservation and reduced use of packaging material; providing a safe and inclusive workplace for PepsiCo employees globally; and respecting, supporting and investing in the local communities in which the company operates.

Mrs. Nooyi was named President and CEO in 2006 and Chairman in 2007. She has directed the company’s global strategy for more than a decade and led its restructuring. This has included the divestiture of its restaurants into the successful YUM! Brands, Inc., the acquisition of Tropicana, and the merger with Quaker Oats that brought the vital Quaker and Gatorade businesses to PepsiCo. She also led the merger with PepsiCo’s anchor bottlers and the acquisition of Wimm-Bill-Dann, the largest international acquisition in PepsiCo’s history.

Prior to becoming CEO, Mrs. Nooyi served as President and Chief Financial Officer beginning in 2001, when she was also named to PepsiCo’s Board of Directors. In this position, she was responsible for PepsiCo’s corporate functions.

Before joining PepsiCo in 1994, Mrs. Nooyi spent time in strategy roles with Asea Brown Boveri, a Zurich-based industrials company, Motorola and The Boston Consulting Group.

In addition to being a member of the PepsiCo Board of Directors, Mrs. Nooyi serves as a member of the boards of U.S.-China Business Council, U.S.-India Business Council, The Consumer Goods Forum, Catalyst, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, The Peterson Institute for International Economics and Tsinghua University. She is also a member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Successor Fellow of Yale Corporation and was appointed to the U.S.-India CEO Forum by the Obama Administration.

She holds a B.S. from Madras Christian College, an M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta and a Master of Public and Private Management from Yale University. Mrs. Nooyi is married and has two daughters.

Honorary Doctor of Sciences

Professor Mike Wingfield, an internationally recognized expert on tree health, has conducted research on tree pests and pathogens for more than 30 years. Wingfield is the founding director of the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Wingfield’s work has contributed to a better understanding of insects and diseases that affect commercial tree plantations, leading to new management practices and solutions. He has been a long-term advisor for major forestry corporations in South Africa and around the world.

To minimize threats to commercial forestry in South Africa, in 1990 Wingfield established the Tree Protection Co-operative Programme (TPCP), which has become the single largest tree health project in the world. TPCP served as a catalyst for Wingfield to found the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute, which has established an international reputation for its research excellence and postgraduate programs for large numbers of students, many from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Wingfield’s research has allowed him to work with and provide mentorship for students from many parts of the world. He has served as an advisor to more than 60 doctoral students and an equal number of master’s students, many of whom now hold senior positions globally. He has been heavily involved in providing educational opportunities for students as part of his commitment to research and education, particularly in the developing world.

One of the most influential forest scientists in the world, Wingfield has published more than 600 research papers and five books about tree health. He has been an invited speaker for plenary addresses and other public lectures internationally. He has served on the boards of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa, the Centraalbureau voor Schimmelcultures in the Netherlands and the International Union for Forestry Research Organizations.

Because of his contributions, Wingfield has been elected as a fellow in a number of scientific societies, including the Royal Society of South Africa, the Academy of Sciences of South Africa, the Southern African Society for Plant Pathology and the American Phytopathological Society. He is one of the few honorary members of the Mycological Society of America.

Wingfield earned a doctorate in plant pathology and entomology from the University of Minnesota in 1983. He completed the advanced management program at Harvard Business School in 2008.

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters

Tony Badger is a historian, author and is the Paul Mellon Professor of American History at Cambridge University. Badger, a specialist in post-World War II political history in the South, was elected a Fellow of the Society of American Historians last year.

Badger has held the Mellon professorship at Cambridge since 1992 and has been Master of Clare College at Cambridge since 2003. He served as Fellow of Sidney Sussex College at Cambridge from 1992 to 2003. Badger previously taught at Newcastle University for 20 years. He was educated at Cambridge, North Carolina State and Hull universities.

Badger has written extensively about the New Deal and the post-1945 American South. His first two books had a North Carolina focus: Prosperity Road: The New Deal, Tobacco, and North Carolina and North Carolina and the New Deal. He subsequently wrote The New Deal: The Depression Years and New Deal/New South: The Anthony J Badger Reader. In 1997, he gave the Harrelson Lecture at North Carolina State. He has served as an editor for several books on American political history and the civil rights movement.

His latest book, FDR: The First Hundred Days, was chosen as then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s book of the year in 2008. The Observer, a leading British newspaper, described Badger’s book as “top of the political class’s reading list on both sides of the Atlantic at Christmas.” Badger is currently working on a biography of the late Albert Gore Sr., a U.S. senator from Tennessee and the father of former vice president Al Gore.

In 2009, Badger was appointed to chair the Kennedy Memorial Trust, which administers the memorial to President Kennedy at Runnymede and a scholarship program that sends British graduate students to Harvard and MIT. The memorial and the scholarships were funded by donations from the British public as a tribute to President Kennedy.

In 2011 the British foreign secretary appointed Badger to oversee the transfer of the migrated colonial archive from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to the National Archives. The existence of this archive of files sent to London by British colonial governments before independence had been kept secret for 50 years.

Badger, who has served multiple terms on the University Council at Cambridge, also led the university’s Colleges Committee and Cambridge Assessment. He chaired a search committee in 2002 that led to the nomination of Yale Provost Alison Richard as the first “outsider” to lead Cambridge.

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree: Hayden White is a literary critic and historical theorist whose name appears on a landmark California Supreme Court case as well as his many books. At age 85, he has only recently retired from teaching as a professor of comparative literature at Stanford University. He is professor emeritus of the history of consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

In works such as Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe, White has argued that literary and historical writing share a reliance on storytelling form, meaning that no history can be considered completely objective or scientific. However, he also holds that this reliance on the narrative structure allows history to be meaningful. His latest volume, titled The Practical Past, will be released in 2014.

Born in Tennessee, White grew up in Detroit during the Depression. He earned an undergraduate degree in history from Wayne State University and completed his doctorate at the University of Michigan. He spent two years in Italy in the 1950s on a Fulbright Fellowship completing his dissertation research on medieval church history.

White has also taught at Wayne State, the University of Rochester, UCLA and Wesleyan University. He has received grants, fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Guggenheim Foundation and many other prestigious organizations. He held residential fellowships at Cornell, Wesleyan, the Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies in Florence, Stanford, the American Academy in Berlin and the University of Bologna, Italy.

Perhaps his proudest accomplishment is having served as plaintiff in a class-action civil rights lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department during the Vietnam era. In 1973 while a history professor at UCLA, White brought suit against the chief of police, alleging covert intelligence gathering tactics that included having officers register as students, take notes on anti-Vietnam class discussions and make police reports based on the discussions. The California Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in White’s favor in 1975. The case, White versus Davis, established limits on police surveillance of political activity in California, barring it in the absence of reasonable suspicion of a crime.

White’s teaching philosophy holds that the aim of education should be to help young people think their own thoughts and speak in their own voices, rather than fit themselves into pre- established patterns of behavior and belief prescribed by society, the business world or the legal establishment. He is married to Margaret Brose, professor emerita of literature at the University of California at Santa Cru

Honorary Doctor of Sciences Degree

Robert B. Jordan III is a business and civic leader who has worked to improve education and economic opportunity throughout a career spanning more than half a century. Born and raised in Mount Gilead, he grew up in a family that valued community involvement and public service. For inspiration, he looked to his father, a founder of Jordan Lumber, the family business. In 1954 Jordan graduated with honors from North Carolina State University with a degree in forestry, and then served two years in the U.S. Army. A month after he returned home, Jordan joined the town council, beginning his record of public service that continues to this day. In 1958 he married Sarah Cole, a Raeford schoolteacher. Together, they immersed themselves in business, community and public life. In 1961 Jordan became one of the youngest members of the UNC Board of Trustees, where he was instrumental in expanding the system and forming the Board of Governors and the 16-campus system. As an original member of the Board of Governors, he chaired the committee that studied the establishment of a medical school at East Carolina University. In 1976 Jordan was elected to the North Carolina Senate, where he served four consecutive terms and promoted sound fiscal policy and championed children’s issues. He served as lieutenant governor from 1985 to 1989, using the strength of the office to lead efforts to improve access to education. He promoted the creation of the Recreational and Natural Heritage Trust Fund to purchase and preserve land for future generations. Jordan has served on the State Board of Education, State Board of Community Colleges, Southern Regional Education Board, board of directors of the North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center and member of the Board of Trustees for UNC-Charlotte. At NC State, his leadership has been tremendous, serving as a member of the Board of Trustees and chairing the 2004 and 2009 Chancellor Search Committees. He has received numerous awards and honors for his service to the state, including the North Carolina Farm Bureau Distinguished Service Award, Darrell Menscer Cup, North Carolina Award for Public Service, North Carolina Forestry Association Distinguished Service Award, Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Honorary Doctor of Humanities from the Methodist College, Beal Award and Watauga Medal, to name a few. Jordan and his wife are members of the Mt. Gilead First United Methodist Church. They have three children: Betsy, Robert and Janie.

Honorary Doctor of Sciences Degree

David H. Murdock is the chairman and major shareholder of Dole Food Company Inc., a Fortune 500 company and the world’s largest producer and marketer of high-quality fresh fruits and vegetables. He is also chairman, chief executive and owner of Castle & Cooke Inc., a private company. Murdock is an advocate of eating healthy to live a longer, more vital life. In 2010 he published The Dole Nutrition Handbook, What to Eat and How to Live For a Longer, Healthier Life, which featured information from leading scientific and nutrition experts on healthy lifestyle, diet and exercise regimens. He also organized the collaborative efforts of experts at the Mayo Clinic, University of California at Los Angeles and Dole Food Company to write The Encyclopedia of Foods, A Guide to Healthy Nutrition, a 500-page book on achieving a healthier lifestyle through nutrition, exercise and disease prevention. He developed a wellness center which houses the California Health & Longevity Institute, in Westlake Village, California. The 769,600-square-foot complex includes a healthy lifestyle teaching center combined with medical facilities able to perform complete diagnostic services, a Four Seasons Hotel and a television production studio. In North Carolina, Murdock is known and respected for his development of the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis, a high-tech life science research center dedicated to the betterment of the world’s health and nutrition. The campus corrals the research and programs of eight universities, including NC State, as well as leading biotech companies and private enterprise in superb facilities with unparalleled scientific equipment. He and Dole Food Company have provided two endowed professorships at the NC State Plants for Human Health Institute. The David H. Murdock Core Laboratory, which opened in 2008, anchors the campus with its 311,000 square feet of lab space. Murdock has been a Regent’s Professor of Creativity in Business at UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management. He is the recipient of an honorary Doctorate of Law degree from Pepperdine University and honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Hawaii Loa College. His hobbies include reading, the arts, poetry and horticulture. He is a breeder of prized Arabian horses and has an orchid collection consisting of more than 30,000 plants. He is also an avid art and antique furniture collector. Murdock resides in California with residences in New York, North Carolina and Hawaii. He has a son who is also active in the family business.

Honorary Doctor of Sciences Degree

James H. Woodward is a former Chancellor of North Carolina State University whose illustrious career in higher education has spanned nearly half a century. Dr. Woodward led NC State from June 2009 through March 2010, navigating a transitional period for the university with stability and transparency. His devotion to creating a supportive environment and growing the university’s reputation across the state, nation and world established a foundation for the transformational work NC State continues today. Before coming to NC State, Dr. Woodward served as the Chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte from 1989 to 2005, and currently serves as Chancellor-Emeritus. During his tenure at UNC Charlotte, he oversaw the significant expansion of the school to more than 19,000 students, the awarding of the school’s first doctoral degrees and the largest fundraising campaign in the school’s history. Prior to his tenure at UNC Charlotte, Dr. Woodward worked for twenty years at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in a number of roles. His roots in teaching, Dr. Woodward taught as a Professor of Engineering and Engineering Mechanics and was Dean of the School of Engineering at University of Alabama at Birmingham before moving to an administrative leadership role as Senior Vice President. His teaching career began at the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he was promoted from First Lieutenant to Captain in 1968 and taught Engineering Mechanics. From 1968 to 1969, Dr. Woodward worked as an Assistant Professor of Engineering at NC State, the university that he would lead as Chancellor four decades later. Dr. Woodward’s leadership and commitment to North Carolina extend well beyond the classroom. He has served as a member of the UNC Tomorrow Commission and the North Carolina Education Lottery Commission, as well as on the Board of Directors for MCNC, Inc. (Chair), Mecklenburg Citizens for Public Education (Chair) and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Community Foundation (Chair). He was also Chair of the Board of Visitors for the USAF Air University. Dr. Woodward has received numerous awards and honors for his dedication and generosity to the state and beyond, including the National Conference for Community and Justice Humanitarian Award, the Rodney D. Chipp Memorial Award from the Society of Women Engineers, the Charlotte Chamber and Business Journal Excellence in Management Award, an Honorary Doctor of Laws and Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, an Honorary Doctor of Public Service Degree from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and the Order of the Long Leaf Pine. He is also a member of the Georgia Institute of Technology Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni, where he received his undergraduate, masters and Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics. Dr. Woodward and his wife, Martha, have three adult children and six grandchildren.

Artistic Director and CEO of the Carolina Ballet

Robert Weiss has served as Carolina Ballet’s Artistic Director and CEO since its professional launch in 1997. Under his leadership, the company has become one of America’s premier professional ballet companies. Mr. Weiss has created 44 works for Carolina Ballet, including Romeo and Juliet, Messiah, Stravinsky’s Clowns, The Kreutzer Sonata, Swan Lake, Cinderella and Firebird, which was performed by the Washington Ballet at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. This past season, Mr. Weiss created four new works for Carolina Ballet: Stürmische Liebe, The Masque of the Red Death, A Dancerly Response and Grieg: Piano Concerto. He also created a number of other works with the company including Adagio for Strings, which featured the music of Samuel Barber, and Reflection, a homage to the 100th anniversary of the birth of his mentor George Balanchine. Carolina Ballet has staged four of Mr. Weiss’ works – Don Quixote, Salome, Picasso’s Harlequins and The Song of the Dead (Meditations on Mortality), to coincide with exhibits at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Carolina Ballet also presented two ballets, in collaboration with the North Carolina Museum of Art, on a program called Monet Impressions, which was choreographed by Robert Weiss and Lynne Taylor-Corbett. Mr. Weiss’ professional career began at age 17, when he joined the New York City Ballet as a professional dancer at the request of George Balanchine, the company’s co-founder and founding choreographer. He remained with the company for 17 years, rising to the rank of principal dancer. There, he performed principal roles in over 40 ballets, some of which were created for him by both Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, the company’s other founding choreographer. After he retired as a principal dancer from New York City Ballet, Mr. Weiss served as Pennsylvania Ballet’s Artistic Director for eight seasons. In addition to his choreography for Carolina Ballet, Robert Weiss has created work for Pennsylvania Ballet, American Ballet Theater (for Gelsey Kirkland and Mikhail Baryshnikov), New York City Ballet, Bejart’s Ballet of the 20th century, The Caramoor Festival, Philadanco and Stars of American Ballet, among others. He is the recipient of two National Endowment of the Arts Fellowships for choreography. In May 2005, Mr. Weiss received the Medal of the Arts from the City of Raleigh Arts Commission, and in the fall of 2009 he was honored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society of North Carolina. He is married to Melissa Podcasy, a principal ballerina and founding member of Carolina Ballet.

Commencement Speaker/Chairman of the Board, President and CEO of Duke Energy

James E. Rogers has been chairman of the board, president and CEO of Duke Energy since January 2007. He has more than 21 years of experience as a utility CEO. He was named president and CEO of Duke Energy following the merger of Duke Energy and Cinergy in April 2006. Before the merger, he served as Cinergy’s chairman and CEO for more than 11 years. Prior to the formation of Cinergy, he joined PSI Energy in 1988 as the company’s chairman, president and CEO. He served as executive vice president of interstate pipelines for the Enron Gas Pipeline Group before joining PSI. Before joining Enron Corp., Mr. Rogers was a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. Before that, he was deputy general counsel for litigation and enforcement for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). In the course of his career, Mr. Rogers has served more than 50 cumulative years on the boards of Fortune 500 companies. He is currently a director of Cigna Corp. and Applied Materials Inc. He is past chairman and ex officio member of the Executive Committee of the Edison Electric Institute; and current chairman of the Institute for Electric Efficiency. He serves as a member of the board of directors and the Executive Committee of the Nuclear Energy Institute, and is a board member of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations and the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO). Mr. Rogers also serves on the boards of the Business Roundtable, the National Coal Council, the National Petroleum Council and the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. Mr. Rogers is co-chair of the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency and a board member of the Alliance to Save Energy, having served as co-chair. He serves as a member of the board of directors and vice chairman of the Executive Committee of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. He is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Honorary Committee of the Joint U.S.-China Collaboration on Clean Energy (JUCCCE) and the Club of Madrid President’s Circle. Mr. Rogers also serves on an advisory board for the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program and is past chairman of the Edison Foundation. In 2007, he was named the energy industry’s CEO of the Year by Platts and Business Person of the Year by the Charlotte Business Journal. In 2009, he received EnergyBiz magazine’s CEO of the Year EnergyBiz KITE Award (Knowledge, Innovation, Technology, Excellence) and was also inducted into the inaugural Energy Efficiency Forum Hall of Fame by the U.S. Energy Association and Johnson Controls Inc. The January 5, 2009, edition of Newsweek named Mr. Rogers to The Global Elite list, “The 50 Most Powerful People in the World,” saying, “The CEO of Duke Energy could make dreams of renewable power a reality.”

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree

Ray A. Buchanan cofounded Stop Hunger Now in 1998, following an 18-year career as the founder and co-director of the Society of St. Andrew, a Virginia-based domestic food relief organization. He also served in the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam. An ordained United Methodist minister, Rev. Buchanan is fueled by the vision of ending hunger in his lifetime and, to that end, has dedicated himself to helping those in the greatest need. He created Stop Hunger Now as an entrepreneurial model for providing rapid, cost-effective responses to international crisis situations. Rev. Buchanan is the recipient of numerous awards in recognition of his humanitarian effort. His awards include the University of North Carolina at Wilmington Alumnus of the Year Award, the Caring Institute National Caring Award, the National Association of Christians and Jews Humanitarian Award, the Maxwell House “Real American Hero Award,” the North Carolina International Human Rights Award, the International Affairs Council’s Citizen of the World award and the News and Observer’s 2010 Tar Heel of the Year. Articles on Rev. Buchanan and his work have appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the San Francisco Examiner, the Houston Post, the Dallas Morning News, the Arizona Republic, the Raleigh News and Observer and the Los Angeles Times. He has appeared on the NBC Nightly News, the CBS Weekend News and the 700 Club. A native of Texas, Rev. Buchanan earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, a Master of Divinity from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Doctor of Divinity from Shenandoah University and Conservatory.

Commencement Speaker/Honorary Doctor of Sciences Degree

Rajendra K. Pachauri has been the Chief Executive of TERI, The Energy and Resources Institute, since 1982, designated initially as Director and since April 2001 as Director-General. He also serves as Chancellor of TERI University. Dr. Pachauri has been active in several international forums dealing with the subject of climate change and its policy dimensions. In April 2002, he was elected as Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme. In 2007, Dr. Pachauri and his IPCC colleagues, along with former Vice President Al Gore, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. His wide-ranging expertise has resulted in his membership on several international and national boards and committees, including the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India, the Advisory Board on Energy (ABE) which reported directly to the Prime Minister of India, the Advisory Board for the Clinton Climate Initiative, the International Advisory Board for Toyota Motor Corporation and several others. He has been President (1988) and Chairman (1989-90) of the International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE). Since 1992, he has been President of the Asian Energy Institute. In April 1999, he was appointed member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (Japan) and continues to hold this appointment. Dr. Pachauri was awarded the “Padma Bhushan” in 2001 by the President of India, and he also was bestowed the “Officier De La Légion D’Honneur” by the Government of France in 2006. He was conferred with the “Padma Vibhushan,” the second highest civilian award in India, for his services in the field of science and engineering by the President of India, and in 2009, he was appointed the first Director of the Yale Climate and Energy Institute. Dr. Pachauri has a M.S. and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering as well as Economics, all from NC State University.

Honorary Doctor of Sciences Degree

Robert G. Stanton is a Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior and the former Director of the National Park Service. He advises the Secretary on environmental, educational, organizational and management challenges and opportunities, working closely with the bureaus and offices in advancing departmental goals. Mr. Stanton represents the Secretary and the Department on Presidential Interagency Policy Review committees, boards and commissions. He also provides executive leadership and program direction for the Interior Museum at the Stewart Lee Udall Department of the Interior Building and the congressionally authorized Indian Arts and Crafts Board. Prior to assuming this position in 2010, Mr. Stanton served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Program Management in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget. Since beginning his career as a National Park Service ranger in 1962 at Grand Teton National Park, Mr. Stanton has dedicated his life to improving the conservation and management of treasured landscapes and heritage resources. He has served with the National Park Service in key management positions including Park Superintendent, Deputy Regional Director, Regional Director, Assistant Director and Associate Director. He has received numerous national awards for outstanding public service and leadership in conservation, historic preservation, youth programs and diversity in employment and public programs. Under his leadership, the National Park Service budget increased by 28 percent and major park preservation and visitor service programs were inaugurated. Several presidential and legislative initiatives were enacted in his tenure, including the authorization of 11 new park areas, six national heritage areas, study of 22 possible new areas and the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Since 2001, he has served as an executive professor at Texas A&M University, a visiting professor Howard and Yale Universities, board member, and consultant to a number of national conservation organizations. Mr. Stanton earned a B.S. degree from Huston-Tillotson University and did his graduate work at Boston University.

Former president, Gallaudet University

Dr. I. King Jordan is an international spokesperson for deaf and hard of hearing people, as well as an advocate for all persons with disabilities. He also is the former president of Gallaudet University, the world’s only university with all programs and services designed specifically for students who are deaf and hard of hearing. Throughout his career, he has worked to heighten public awareness of the important educational contributions Gallaudet makes to the nation and the world. As a popular public speaker, Dr. Jordan challenges the American public to examine their attitudes toward people with disabilities and to open their minds, hearts and workplaces to them. He earned a B.A. in psychology from Gallaudet and his M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Tennessee. Upon receiving his Doctorate, Dr. Jordan joined the faculty of Gallaudet’s Department of Psychology where he served as professor, department chair and dean, making numerous scholarly contributions to his field. In addition, he has been a research fellow at Donaldson’s School for the Deaf in Edinburgh, Scotland, an exchange scholar at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and a visiting scholar and lecturer at schools in Paris, Toulouse, and Marseille, France. Dr. Jordan holds 11 honorary degrees and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the U.S. Presidential Citizen’s Medal, the Washingtonian of the Year Award, the James L. Fisher Award from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), the Larry Stewart Award from the American Psychological Association and the Distinguished Leadership Award from the National Association for Community Leadership. He also served as Vice Chair of the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities under former presidents George Bush, Sr. and Bill Clinton. Dr. Jordan and his wife, Linda, have two grown children, I. King III, an associate professor of bioinformatics at Georgia Institutes of Technology, and Heidi, an assistant principal at the Florida School for the Deaf.

Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University and Director of the Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program at the Harvard Kennedy School

Dr. William Julius Wilson is one of only 20 University Professors, the highest professional distinction for a Harvard faculty member. Dr. Wilson has received 42 honorary degrees, including honorary doctorates from Princeton, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth and the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. A MacArthur Prize Fellow from 1987 to 1992, Dr. Wilson has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, the American Philosophical Society, the Institute of Medicine and the British Academy. In June 1996, he was selected by Time magazine as one of “America’s 25 Most Influential People.” He is a recipient of the 1998 National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor in the United States, and was awarded the Talcott Parsons Prize in the Social Sciences by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. His books include Power, Racism and Privilege (1973), The Declining Significance of Race (1978), The Truly Disadvantaged (1987), When Work Disappears (1996), The Bridge over the Racial Divide (1999), There Goes the Neighborhood (2006, co-author), Good Kids from Bad Neighborhoods (2006, co-author) and More than Just Race: Being Poor and Black in the Inner City (2009).

Associate Librarian for Library Services at the Library of Congress

Deanna Bowling Marcum was appointed Associate Librarian for Library Services at the Library of Congress on August 11, 2003. In this capacity, she manages 53 divisions and offices whose over 1,800 employees are responsible for acquisitions, cataloging, public service, and preservation activities, services to the blind and physically handicapped, and network and bibliographic standards for America’s national library. She is also responsible for integrating the emerging digital resources into the traditional artifactual library–the first step toward building a national digital library for the 21st century. In 1995, Dr. Marcum was appointed president of the Council on Library Resources and president of the Commission on Preservation and Access. She oversaw the merger of these two organizations into the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) in 1997 and served as president until August 2003. CLIR’s mission is to identify the critical issues that affect the welfare and prospects of libraries and archives and the constituencies they serve, convene individuals and organizations in the best position to engage these issues and respond to them, and encourage institutions to work collaboratively to achieve and manage change. Dr. Marcum served as Director of Public Service and Collection Management at the Library of Congress from 1993-95. Before that, she was the Dean of the School of Library and Information Science at The Catholic University of America. From 1980 to 1989, she was first a program officer and then vice president of the Council on Library Resources. Dr. Marcum holds a Ph.D. in American Studies, a master’s degree in Library Science and a bachelor’s degree in English.

Graduation Speaker/Commander, United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM)

General Raymond T. Odierno, United States Army, is a proud alumnus of North Carolina State University and commands United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM). Headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, USJFCOM provides mission-ready joint-capable forces and supports the development and integration of joint, interagency, and multinational capabilities to meet the present and future operational needs of the joint force.General Odierno most recently served as Commanding General, Multi- National Force – Iraq and subsequently United States Forces – Iraq, from September 2008 until September 2010. He oversaw the transition from the Surge to Stability Operations and directed the largest redeployment of forces and equipment in the last 40 years. During a previous assignment in Iraq, in command of the Army’s 4th Infantry Division during 2003 and 2004, Soldiers from the division captured former President Saddam Hussein. As the day-to-day commander of coalition forces, General Odierno was the operational architect of the Surge and was responsible for implementing the counterinsurgency strategy that led to the dramatic decrease in violence in Iraq in 2007 and 2008. A native of northern New Jersey, General Odierno attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1976 with a commission in Field Artillery. During more than 34 years of service, he has commanded units at every echelon, from platoon to theater, with duty in Germany, Albania, Kuwait, Iraq, and the United States. General Odierno holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from West Point and a master’s degree in Nuclear Effects Engineering from North Carolina State University. He holds a master’s degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College. He is also a graduate of the Army War College. Awards and decorations include three awards of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, two awards of the Army Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal, six awards of the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star Medal, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, four awards of the Meritorious Service Medal, the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, and the Combat Action Badge. He received the highest award in the State Department, the Secretary of State Distinguished Service Medal, and recently the Romanian President awarded him the Romanian Order of Military Merit. General Odierno is the 2009 recipient of the Naval War College Distinguished Graduate Leadership Award for his strategic leadership and insight.

Industrial Designer
Richard Sapper is a renowned German industrial designer. Born in 1932, he studied Economics at the University of Munich. By 1956, Sapper was working in the design division of Mercedes Benz. He then went to Milan, where he worked in the practice of Alberto Rosselli and Gio Ponti. He then became a designer in the design division of La Rinascente department stores. From 1958, Sapper worked in the practice of Marco Zanuso, with whom he developed several extremely innovative designs for furnishings, lamps and electrical appliances for Gavina, Kartell and Brionvega. These designs included the Lambda chair of die-cast aluminum, a stackable children’s chair of pressure-molded polyethylene, which is the first piece of seat furniture to have been made of this material, the TS502 cult radio, and the Doney, Algol, and Black Box portable televisions. They also created the Grillo telephone. In 1970, Sapper opened a design practice of his own in Stuttgart, and in 1972, he designed the high-tech Tizio work lamp for Artemide, an icon of twentieth century design. Sapper designed numerous objects for Alessi, including Bollitore, a whistling kettle. He also designed products for B&B Italia, Castelli, Tag Heuer, Italora, Knoll International, Telefunken and Unifor. In the 1970s, Sapper was a design consultant to Fiat and Pirelli and, from 1980 to present, to IBM. For IBM, Richard Sapper designed the Thinkpad laptop line. He has been a visiting lecturer at numerous institutions and, since 1986, a professor at Stuttgart Art Academy. Through the creation of the Tizio lamp, Richard Sapper has become a design icon and belongs in the ranks of the most important designers like Eileen Gray, Charles Eames, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Arne Jacobsen, Marcel Breuer und Wilhelm Wagenfeld. He has received numerous international design awards, including 10 prestigious Compasso d’Oro industrial design awards, and 15 of his products are in New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) collection.

John Seely Brown is a visiting scholar and advisor to the Provost at University of Southern California (USC) and the Independent Co-Chairman of the Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation. He also is the former Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and the former director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) for nearly two decades where he expanded the role of corporate research to include such topics as organizational learning, knowledge management, complex adaptive systems and nano/mems technologies. He also co-founded the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL). Dr. Brown is a member of the National Academy of Education, a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Trustee of the MacArthur Foundation. He serves on numerous private boards of directors and public boards, including Amazon, Corning, and Varian Medical Systems. He has published over 100 papers in scientific journals and was awarded the Harvard Business Review’s 1991 McKinsey Award for his article, “Research that Reinvents the Corporation” and again in 2002 for his article “Your Next IT Strategy.” In 2004, he was inducted in the Industry Hall of Fame. He co-authored the acclaimed book The Social Life of Information with Paul Duguid and co-authored the book The Only Sustainable Edge with John Hagel, which outlines new forms of collaborative innovation. He is currently working on a new book – The New Culture of Learning with Professor Doug Thomas at the University of Southern California. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science Degree from Brown University in May 2000, an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Claremont Graduate School in May 2004 and an honorary doctorate from the University of Michigan in 2005. He is an avid reader, traveler and motorcyclist. John’s views are distinguished by a broad view of the human contexts in which technology operates, bolstered by a healthy skepticism of whether or not change always represents genuine progress.

Sarita E. Brown is President of Excelencia in Education, which she founded in 2004. Excelencia in Education is a 501(c) 3 working to accelerate Latino success in higher education by linking research, policy and practice to serve Latino students. She has spent more than two decades at prominent national educational institutions and the highest levels of government, working to implement effective strategies to raise academic achievement and opportunity for low-income and minority students. She started her career at the University of Texas at Austin by building a national model promoting minority success in graduate education followed by appointments with educational associations in Washington, D.C. From 1997-2000, she served as Executive Director of the White House Initiative for Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans under President Clinton and U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley. Maintaining her commitment to improving the quality of education, Ms. Brown applied her talents and experience to the non-profit sector as Founding President of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund.

Wayne A. Fuller is Emeritus Distinguished Professor in Statistics and Economics at Iowa State University. He is author of the texts Introduction to Statistical Time Series, Measurement Error Models, and Sampling Statistics (forthcoming). He has published numerous articles in time series econometrics, measurement error, survey sampling and environmental statistics. He also has served as a consultant to Doane Market Research, A.C. Nielsen and Garst Seed Company, in addition to the Ford Foundation Mexico and to the Peruvian Department of Agriculture through the Iowa Mission. Dr. Fuller is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the Econometric Society and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. Dr. Fuller grew up on a farm and attended a one-room schoolhouse during his eight years of elementary education. He attended Iowa State University for three years before serving in the U.S. Army from 1952-1954. He received his B.S. in 1955 and a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics in 1959. He and his wife Evelyn have two sons, Douglas and Bret.

Consultant, Speaker, Writer

Dr. Jack Ward Thomas is a consultant, speaker and writer in the arena of conservation. His career as a wildlife biologist began in 1957 with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, where he was involved in both management and research activities. He joined the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service in 1966 and ended his career as a research scientist in 1993 as Chief of the Forest Service. During his 27-year career as a research scientist with the Forest Service, he received 18 Outstanding Performance Awards and became one of three Forest Service scientists ever to attain the most senior rank afforded to research scientists. In 1993, he was appointed Chief of the Forest Service and was designated Chief Emeritus of the Forest Service in 1997. He also joined the faculty of the University of Montana in 1997 as the Boone and Crockett Professor of Wildlife Conservation and was named Professor Emeritus after his retirement in 2006. He has received a number of awards, including USDA awards for Distinguished and Superior Service; 21 Forest Service Superior Performance Awards; the Federal Statesman Award; the Aldo Leopold Award of the Wildlife Society; the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society for Conservation Biology; Outstanding Professional of the Year Award from the National Wildlife Federation; and the Distinguished Service Award from Oregon State University. On the 100th Anniversary Celebration of the U.S. Forest Service, he was recognized as having made the most significant contributions to Forest Service research in the agency’s first century. Dr. Thomas is a member of the Wildlife Society (Texas Chapter President, Regional Representative, National Council Member, National President, Honorary Member); the Society of American Foresters (Elected Fellow); the American Ornithological Society (Elected Fellow); the Society for Range Management; the American Society of Mammalogists; the Wilson Ornithological Society; and the American Fisheries Society. He has also served on the Advisory Boards of the General Accounting Office, the National Academy of Sciences (Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources), the Forest Trust of Canada, Bear Trust International, Global Forest Science and the National Forest Museum. Dr. Thomas holds a B.S. in Wildlife Management from Texas A&M University, a M.S. in Wildlife Ecology from West Virginia University and a Ph.D. in Forestry from the University of Massachusetts. Each of those institutions have designated him a Distinguished Alumnus. Thomas has been awarded Honorary Doctorates by Lakehead University in Canada and Lewis and Clark College.

Chairman: York Properties, Inc., Prudential York Simpson Underwood and the McDonald York Building Company

G. Smedes York is a respected businessman and instrumental developer within the Triangle area. In the 1970’s and 80’s, Mr. York served the needs of the Raleigh community as a Raleigh City Councilman, representing District E. and, later, as Mayor of Raleigh for two terms. He spent his professional career in real estate and construction and is Chairman of York Properties, Inc. and related companies, Prudential York Simpson Underwood and the McDonald York Building Company. York Construction Company, his family’s business founded in 1910, built several buildings at North Carolina State University, including the first segment of the Bell Tower. In addition to his business, he has served as chairman of the North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry and the NC State University Board of Trustees. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Research Triangle Foundation, the YMCA of the Triangle and North Carolina Amateur Sports. He served as Chairman of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) from 1989 to 1991 and continues to serve as a trustee. As a member of the ULI, he has chaired many panel advisory service assignments, including in New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Mr. York’s work has been honored with the Chamber of Commerce A.E. Finley Award, the Boys Clubs of America Silver Medallion, the News and Observer’s Tar Heel of the Week award, Realtor of the Year, the Boy Scouts Distinguished Citizen Award and the Watauga Medal from NC State. Mr. York earned his B.S. with high honors in Civil Engineering from NC State and a M.B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 1964-66, he served as a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and received an Army Commendation Medal for his service in South Korea. He and his wife, Rosemary, have two children, George and William, and two grandchildren, Smedes and Bowen.

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree: Ms. Pat Mora is an award-winning Hispanic author of nonfiction, poetry and children’s books. She was born in El Paso, Texas and earned her Bachelor of Arts from Texas Western College in 1963 and Master’s from the University of Texas, El Paso in 1967. While Pat is known more for her literary works, she also has taught at the secondary and college levels, worked as a museum director and has been a consultant on U.S.-Mexico youth exchanges. She is the founder of the family literacy initiative, “El día de los niños/ El día de los libros, Children’s Day/ Children’s Book Day,” now housed at the American Library Association. Pat’s literacy initiative is committed to linking all children to books, languages and cultures. Her work is shaped by the U.S. – Mexico border where she was born and spent much of her life. “Ms. Mora’s poems are proudly bilingual, an eloquent answer to purists who refuse to see language as something that lives and changes,” wrote The New York Times of Agua Santa: Holy Water, Pat’s collection now reprinted by The University of Arizona Press. Pat’s poetry collections include Adobe Odes, Aunt Carmen’s Book of Practical Saints, Agua Santa: Holy Water, Communion, Borders, and Chants. She also has published a memoir, House of Houses, and Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the Middle. Pat’s work also has received praise from The Washington Post, which described her acclaimed memoir, House of Houses, as a “textual feast . . . a regenerative act . . . and an eloquent bearer of the old truth that it is through the senses that we apprehend love.” A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, Pat has received numerous awards, including the 2006 National Hispanic Cultural Center Literary Award and a 2003 Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, which provided her the opportunity to write in Umbria, Italy. She has served as a Visiting Carruthers Chair at the University of New Mexico, was a recipient and judge of the Poetry Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, has been a recipient and advisor of the Kellogg National Leadership Fellowships. In 2006, she received an Honorary Doctorate in Letters from the State University in New York, Buffalo. Pat is the mother of three grown children. She and her husband Dr. Vernon Scarborough live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree: Mr. Richard G. Robb has served on many corporate and civic boards, including the Jane Goodall Institute Board, Charlotte Central YMCA Board and the NC Zoological Society Board, where he was responsible for the betterment of many of the habitants. He has been a member of the NC State Endowment Fund Board and served for eight years on the NC State Board of Trustees. As a member of the Board of Trustees, he chaired the Academic Affairs and Personnel Committee and the Faculty-Trustees Honorary Degree Committee. In his service, Dick helped to redefine the process of Honorary Degree candidate selection, adding prestige to the title and reinvigorating the process. He also helped to initiate the creation of the Campus Design Review Panel at NC State, providing an improved approach to approving projects on campus. Since its first meeting in October 1999, the Panel reviewed 89 projects, ensuring that each project fulfill the Guiding Principles of NC State’s Master Plan. In recognition of his dedication to NC State, Dick was named an honorary NC State alumnus, one of only nine in the institution’s history. Dick is a Trustee and Treasurer of the Park Foundation of Ithaca, New York, and co-manages the Park Foundation’s investment fund, playing an instrumental role in helping to design the Park scholarship program. Dick also has served as a Trustee at Warren Wilson College, where he founded the Environmental Leadership Program. In Avery County, North Carolina, he created a reading program for children, dispensing thousands of books for all children under the age of five for family reading. Dick earned a degree in business administration from The Ohio State University in 1958, followed by service in the United States Army. Prior to his retirement, Dick worked as the global head of NationsBank’s merger and acquisitions department with offices in Charlotte, Atlanta, Dallas and London. Dick is a prominent animal rights advocate and is deeply committed to numerous environmental issues. In 2007, he was named a Significant Sig by Sigma Chi Fraternity. Dick and his wife, Sally, will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary this year. They have three sons. Richard, Jr. has a degree from Duke University and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Karl has a degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and David has a Master’s from Duke University and his undergraduate degree from NC State. He spends summers in the mountains of North Carolina, and lives on an island in the Gulf of Mexico during the winter.

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree: Mr. C.D. Spangler, Jr. is an accomplished businessman for whom public service in education has been a lifelong avocation. In 1954, he received a B.S. degree from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master’s in business administration from Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration in 1956. The next two years after graduation, Dick served in the U. S. Army, returning to Charlotte in 1958 to work for his father’s company, C.D. Spangler Construction Company. Both Dick and his wife, Meredith, were active volunteers in the educational system, and in 1972, Dick was elected to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education. He served as Vice Chairman from 1974 to 1976, during which time he participated in statewide efforts to provide a kindergarten program for all 5-year-olds in the public schools. In 1973, while continuing to serve as President of the family construction company, Dick became Chairman of the Bank of North Carolina, and was subsequently elected director of the NC National Bank. From 1982 until 1986, Dick was Chairman of the North Carolina State Board of Education, and in 1984, he co-chaired Governor James B. Hunt’s Commission on Education for Economic Growth. In both roles, he advocated a return to emphasis on teaching the basics, higher salaries for teachers, and programs for training high school principals for their challenging jobs. Dick became President of The University of North Carolina in 1986, serving for eleven years until 1997. He has served on numerous boards, including the Mint Museum of Art, Crozer Theological Seminary and Union Theological Seminary. He has held directorships with the Equitable Life Assurance Society and Jefferson-Pilot Corporation, BellSouth Corporation, and National Gypsum Company, and is a former member of the Business-Higher Education Forum. He is a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. President Spangler was awarded the Alumni Achievement Award from Harvard Business School in 1988 and the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award in 1994. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Associates of Harvard Business School. In 1997, President Spangler was presented the Distinguished Public Service Award from the North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry. The Spangler’s have two daughters, Anna and Abigail, both Wellesley graduates. Anna holds an M.B.A. degree from Harvard, and Abigail holds a PhD from Columbia University.

Freeman A. Hrabowski, III has served as President of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) since 1992. His research and publications focus on science and math education, emphasizing minority participation and performance. He is the author of a number of articles and has co-authored two books, Beating the Odds and Overcoming the Odds, which focus on parenting and high-achieving African American males and females in science. He serves as a consultant to the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Academies. He also serves on the boards of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Constellation Energy Group and chairs the Marguerite Casey Foundation. Dr. Hrabowski is the recipient of many honors and awards, including election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In addition to a number of honorary degrees, he has received the prestigious McGraw Prize in Education, the U.S. Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring, and the Columbia University Teachers College Medal for Distinguished Service. He graduated at age 19 from the Hampton Institute with highest honors in mathematics and received his M.A. in Mathematics and Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration and Statistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign at age 24.

Carl Wieman is a renowned scholar in science education. He received his B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973 and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1977. From 1984 to 2006, Dr. Wieman was a member of the faculty at the University of Colorado, recognized as a Distinguished Professor of Physics and a Presidential Teaching Scholar. In January 2007, he joined the University of British Columbia as the Director of the Carl Wieman Science Foundation Initiative, while retaining a 20 percent appointment at the University of Colorado, Boulder to direct the Science Education Initiative there and head the Physics Education Technology Project, a science education initiative founded by Dr. Wieman. This initiative creates educational online interactive simulations and studies their effectiveness. Dr. Wieman’s involvement in these collaborative initiatives are aimed at achieving departmental-wide sustainable improvement in undergraduate science education. He has conducted research in a variety of areas of atomic physics and laser spectroscopy. His research has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001 for the first creation of, and early experiments on, Bose-Einstein condensation. Dr. Wieman has worked on a variety of research and innovations in teaching physics to a broad range of students, and on student beliefs about physics and chemistry, the learning of quantum physics, and problem-solving skills. His work in education has been recognized with the National Science Foundation’s Distinguished Teaching Scholar Award in 2001, the Carnegie Foundation’s U.S. University Professor of the Year Award in 2004, and the American Association of Physics Teachers’ Oersted Medal in 2007. Dr. Wieman is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and chairs the Academy Board on Science Education. He also is a member of the National Academy of Education.

Dr. Kenneth Olden is the former Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Toxicology Program (NTP) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Serving in these positions from 1991 to 2005, Dr. Olden became the first African-American to become Director of one of the 18 institutes. After earning a Ph.D. in Cell Biology/Biochemistry from Temple University, Dr. Olden held several research, teaching and director positions, including Research Fellow and Instructor of Physiology at Harvard University; Associate Professor of Oncology at Howard University’s Medical School; Professor of Oncology and Director of Howard University’s Cancer Center; and Professor and Chair of the Howard University Department of Oncology. Over the course of his career, Dr. Olden has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Presidential Distinguished Executive Rank Award and the Presidential Meritorious Executive Rank Award given by President Clinton for his “sustained extraordinary accomplishments.” He has published over 125 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals, one of which was subsequently designated as a “citation classic.” Dedicated to improving the health of humanity, Dr. Olden is an active advisor to several non-profit foundations, including the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, the Avon Breast Cancer Foundation and the Research Triangle Environmental Health Collaborative. Currently, Dr. Olden is the Chief of the Metastasis Section, Laboratory of Molecular Carcinogenesis at the NIEHS and the Yerby Visiting Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Mr. Eduardo Catalano is a world-renowned architect and a member of two prestigious learned societies in his native Argentina — the Academy of Science and the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1950 he was named professor of architecture at the Architectural Association in London and was then appointed head of the Department of Architecture at the North Carolina State University School of Design, where he taught and practiced for five years. During his tenure at NC State he designed and constructed his revolutionary house. House and Home magazine would later name his home the “House of the Decade,” and Life magazine would feature it prominently in a special 1957 issue devoted to the marvels of design and technology that would shape the world of tomorrow. One of his most important contributions was the famous Juilliard School of Music, one of five buildings forming the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. In 1971, the United States government honored him by selecting him as the architect for a new U.S. Embassy in Argentina. The construction of the Embassy in Argentina was followed by the construction of another Embassy in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa. In addition to these notable works of architecture, Mr. Catalano is also the architect of the Student Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Governmental Center in Greensboro, North Carolina. He is the author of six books on architecture and has received four first prizes in national architectural competitions. He is a graduate of the University of Buenos Aires and has graduate degrees in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. Mr. Catalano has lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts since 1956.

Mr. Roger Milliken is the chairman of Milliken & Company, the 141-year old textile and chemical product company headquartered in Spartanburg, South Carolina. A graduate of Yale University, Mr. Milliken has been a leader in continuous quality improvement and a contributor to the emergence of bar coding, rapid response standards, supplier recognition and many other practices now standard throughout the textile industry. In recognition of his efforts, the American Textile Manufacturing Institute honored him in 1986 with its “Samuel Slater Distinguished Service Award,” and he was the first recipient of The Textile & Needle Trades Division of ASQC Quality Award in 1991. In 1999, the Northern Textile Association presented him with its “Lifetime Achievement Award” and Textile World Magazine named him “Leader of the Century” that same year. Since 1984 he has been Chairman of the Crafted With Pride in the U. S. A. Council, Inc., and in 1997, the South Carolina Quality Forum inaugurated its first “Roger Milliken Medal of Quality” award in his name, dedicated to his contributions to the promotion of quality principles in South Carolina and the entire nation. A strong advocate for the environment, Mr. Milliken’s company was named one of only 21 “Environmental Champions” in the nation, by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency and McGraw Hill publishing. He has received numerous awards for his contributions to business and was among the first of seven laureates elected to the South Carolina Business Hall of Fame. Most recently, the Greenville Chamber of Commerce presented him with the 2006-Buck Mickel Leadership Award for his positive influence in shaping the Upstate of South Carolina

Dr. David Blackwell is a renowned statistician and mathematician. The first African American to be inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 1965, Dr. Blackwell’s most well-known contribution to the world of statistics is the Rao-Blackwell Theorem, which establishes an approach for finding the best unbiased estimator. He is a co-author of the book, Theory of Games and Statistical Decisions and has published over 80 publications and received a dozen honorary doctoral degrees. At the age of 22, Professor Blackwell received his doctoral degree from the University of Illinois- Urbana Champagne in 1941. Following graduation, he received the Rosenwall Postdoctoral Fellowship to attend the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton University. Dr. Blackwell taught at Southern University and Clark College (currently called the Clark Atlanta University). In 1944, he joined Howard University, where he published 20 publications and became the chair of the mathematics department. In 1954, he joined the statistics faculty at the University of California-Berkeley, chairing the statistics department for four years and advising over 50 doctoral students before retiring in 1989.

Professor Blackwell has served as president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the International Association for Statistics in Physical Sciences and the Bernoulli Society. He also has served as the Vice President of the American Statistical Association and the American Mathematical Society. He received the John von Neumann Theory Prize from the Operations Research Society of America in 1979 for his work in dynamic programming and the R A Fisher Award from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies in 1986. Five years ago, the Blackwell-Tapia lectureship was established in his honor to celebrate and honor the success of diversity in mathematical sciences.

Walter Royal Davis is one of North Carolina’s most prominent philanthropists. A native of Pasquotank County, Mr. Davis graduated from Hargrave Military Academy in 1938. With no money to attend college, he spent several years as a truck driver before a $1,000 loan allowed him to found the Permian Corporation in Texas. He later merged his company with Occidental Petroleum, and developed the first oil wells in the Middle East. Today Mr. Davis’ business empire encompasses properties ranging from oil wells to seaside resorts. Mr. Davis’ humble origins impressed upon him the importance of education, and his business successes allowed him to concentrate his philanthropic efforts on creating scholarships that helped the less advantaged earn degrees.

Mr. Davis has contributed to numerous programs in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at NC State, such as the NC 4-H Youth Development, which enabled a new construction at the Eastern 4-H Environmental Center. He also contributed to the NCDA Farmer Disaster fund, which provided cash grants to some of North Carolina’s hardest-hit victims of flooding after Hurricane Floyd. Mr. Davis provided the single largest gift to our 4-H Lifetime Achievement Awards Gala as a way of recognizing his good friend, Commissioner James Graham. His generous contributions to the James Graham Scholars Endowment helped to create one of the College’s largest scholarship endowments, supplying full scholarship awards to at least 9 students each year. He served three terms on the board of trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and spent two years as board chairman.

In 1994, Walter Davis was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal from the General Alumni Association of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has also been awarded the William R. Davie Award from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill board of trustees, and in 2004 was the inaugural recipient of the Light on the Hill Award. Mr. Davis also served on the Duke University board of trustees, and was a member of the University of North Carolina board of governors for 10 years.

Mr. Billy Ray Hall is the founding president of the North Carolina Economic Development Center, a 20-year-old organization recognized nationally as a leader in innovative rural economic development programs and policies. Prior to the Rural Center, Mr. Hall served four governors of North Carolina in ascending levels of policy positions, ranging from Policy Director to Deputy Secretary for the Department of Natural Resources and Community Development. He also served as Chief Economist for the Office of State Planning. Governor Jim Hunt assigned him as Director of the Redevelopment and Disaster Recovery effort for North Carolina after Hurricanes Fran and Floyd. A graduate of NC State with a bachelor’s and master’s in economics, Mr. Hall received a College of Management Outstanding Alumni Award in 2000.

He has served on numerous economic development boards, including the NC Rural Internet Access Authority, The Biofuels Center of North Carolina Board, the NC Foundation for Soil & Water Conservation Districts Board, e-NC Authority Board, the Golden LEAF Long-term Economic Advancement Foundation Board, and is currently a member of the Kerr-Tar Regional Economic Development Corporation Board. Mr. Hall has also chaired the North Carolina Rural Development Council and served as the Executive Director of the NC Commission on Jobs and Economic Growth.

Ms. Arlinda F. Locklear has specialized in federal Indian law for thirty-five years, representing tribes throughout the country in federal and state courts on treaty claims to water and land, taxation disputes with states and local authorities, reservation boundary issues, and federal recognition of tribes. Ms. Locklear has represented tribes in the United States Supreme Court in several cases and was lead counsel in two such cases. In 1984, Ms. Locklear was the first Native American woman to appear in the Supreme Court, as she successfully challenged the state of South Dakota’s authority to prosecute a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe for on-reservation conduct in Solem v. Bartlett. In 1985, she represented the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin in Oneida Indian Nation v. County of Oneida, in which she formulated and argued the theory adopted by the Supreme Court, holding that tribes have a federal common law right to sue for possession of tribal land taken in violation of federal law.

Ms. Locklear began her career as an attorney at the Native American Rights Fund in Boulder, Colorado, and later transferred to the Washington, D.C. office, where she supervised significant litigation of Indian issues, as well as the legislative work of the office. She was a member of the Board of Advisors for the Encyclopedia of Native Americans in the 20th Century and is a member of the Board of Trustees for the University of North Carolina, Pembroke. Ms. Locklear was awarded the Outstanding Woman of Color Award given by the National Institute of Women of Color in 1987, the Julian T. Pierce Award give by Pembroke State University in 1994, the 1995 Carpathian Award for Speaking Out, given by North Carolina Equity, and the Parks Award for Community Service, given by North Carolina State University in 2003. Ms. Locklear earned her law degree from Duke University School of Law and is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina.

Mr. Arthur Tab Williams, Jr. is co-founder of WILCOHESS, a chain of more than 300 gasoline stations, travel centers and restaurants in seven southeastern states. Mr. Williams graduated from NC State in 1950 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Agronomy. After returning from military service during the Korean War, Williams was appointed sales supervisor for the Winston-Salem Tobacco Market in 1955. In 1957, Mr. Williams joined Taylor Oil Company, later branching off with his wife, Elizabeth, to form A. T. Williams Oil Company in 1963. Mr. Williams has been active in giving back to his community, serving on the Boards of the Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce; Winston-Salem Business, Inc.; The Winston-Salem Foundation; BB&T; WFU Baptist Medical Center; NC State Alumni Association; Senior Services; Hospice and Palliative Care Center; The Salvation Army; Forsyth County Day School, which he also helped to establish; and on the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Utility Commission.

Throughout his career, Mr. Williams has been an active leader in major fund-raising efforts at NC State, and in 1996, he established a trust fund that contributes annual gifts to support three scholarships at this alma mater. He and his wife opened the Elizabeth and Tab Williams Adult Day Care Center of Senior Services, which assists seniors with Alzheimer’s Disease and other chronic health problems, providing respite for their family members. He has been the recipient of NC State’s Watauga Medal, the Winston-Salem Foundation Man-of-the-Year Award, the Boys Scouts of American Distinguished Citizen Award, The Salvation Army’s William Booth Award and the NC Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Mr. Gianfranco Zaccai is co-founder, president and CEO of Continuum Boston, Milan, & Seoul Zaccai, a pioneer company in the interdisciplinary field of using design research to identify compelling opportunities for innovation, accelerating product time to market and ultimately creating consumer delighting experiences. Continuum has played a key role in the development of breakthrough products in industries producing high volume consumer goods and bio-medical devices, exemplified in work on the Swiffer and Thermacare product lines for P&G to the US Genomics Trilogy Analyzer. At Continuum, Zaccai is dedicated to exploring the power of design in relation to developing nations. A current project in this field is the $100 laptop for the Media Lab at MIT. Zaccai has engaged in development projects in Mexico, Colombia, South Africa, India and Chile. Continuum’s work has been featured in both national and international publications and has received global recognition including a Presidential Design Award from President Clinton; the Compasso D’Oro in Italy; the Red Dot and IF Awards in Germany; and numerous awards from IDSA and BusinessWeek.

Zaccai serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Design Management Institute (DMI) in Boston and on the Board of Advisors to the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. He is also a Visiting Lecturer at the SDA Bocconi School of Management in Milan, Italy. Zaccai holds degrees in industrial design from Syracuse University and in architecture from the Boston Architectural Center.

Dr. Ralph Cicerone was elected the President of the National Academy of Sciences on February 7, 2005. Among his many achievements in shaping policy on climate change, global warming and pollution was the landmark study Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, which was conducted by the National Academies at the request of the White House. Dr. Cicerone’s work as an atmospheric chemist includes research on the plasma physics of Earth’s ionosphere, the chemistry of the ozone layer and radiative forcing of climate change. He was elected to the NAS in 1990 and has been an active member of its Council since 1996. His work has been honored by the American Geophysical Union with its James B. Macelwane and Roger Revelle medals, and the Franklin Institute gave him the Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science. His research has received worldwide recognition from the World Cultural Council and the United Nations. Prior to becoming the president of the NAS, Dr. Cicerone was the chancellor at the University of California’s Irvine campus, where he was one of the few heads of a major research university to maintain his own laboratory. Dr. Cicerone’s distinguished career as a research scientist, a university professor and administrator began at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied electrical engineering and was a varsity baseball player. After graduating from MIT, Dr. Cicerone received his masters and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Mr. David Effron is a Grammy-Award winning conductor and educator. He received a bachelor of music degree from the University of Michigan in 1960 and a masters of music from Indiana University in 1962. He also received a Fulbright Scholarship and a Rockefeller Foundation Grant to study with Wolfgang Sawallisch in Cologne, Germany. He was a member of the New York City Opera conducting staff for 18 years and has conducted major orchestras in Canada, Taiwan, Korea, Europe, Israel and Mexico. The Grammy-winning performer is the former head of the Eastman School of Music and the Merola Program in San Francisco. Since 1998, he has been the professor of conducting at Indiana University and the artistic director of the Brevard Music Center, where he first studied the piano at the age of 14.

Dr. J. Stuart Hunter is one of the world’s foremost statisticians and a devoted supporter of NC State, from which he has already received three degrees: an Electrical Engineering degree in 1947, a master of science in Engineering Mathematics in 1949 and a doctorate in Experimental Statistics in 1954. He became a pioneer in industrial experimental design and is the co-author of the classic statistics textbook, Statistics for Experimenters. He devoted his professional life to the industrial applications of statistics, publishing papers, editing journals and conducting seminars. From 1961 until he retired in 1986, Dr. Hunter was a popular instructor at Princeton University and is now Professor Emeritus in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. A leader in his field for more than four decades, Dr. Hunter has been a consultant to many industries and government agencies. He has published extensively and was the founding editor of the journal Technometrics. He has been a staff member of the National Academy of Science and was the statistician in residence at the University of Wisconsin. In 2004, Dr. Hunter was named a Distinguished Alumnus for the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.

Dr. Daniel L. McFadden, a Raleigh native who grew up in Spencer, NC, shared the 2000 Nobel Prize for Economics for his work in microeconometrics, a method for studying economic decisions using complex mathematical equations. His groundbreaking work used mathematical models to analyze how consumers make decisions on where they work, shop and travel. He is best known in his adoptive town of San Francisco for developing models to determine the expansion of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. McFadden left his family farm at the age of 16 to enroll at the University of Minnesota, even though he never graduated from high school. He had his bachelor’s degree in physics by the age of 19, and his doctorate in behavioral sciences from Minnesota by the age of 25. He has been a professor of economics since 1962, teaching at the University of Pittsburgh, California-Berkeley, Yale and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been at Berkeley since 1990, and from 1995-96 he was chair of the school’s Department of Economics.

Dr. John Ruffin is the director of the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities and is recognized worldwide for his work in improving the health status of minority populations in the United States and in developing and supporting educational programs for minority researchers and health care practitioners. Dr. Ruffin is committed to conceptualizing, developing and implementing innovative programs that create new learning opportunities and exposure for minority and health-disparity students and faculty. A native of New Orleans and a 1965 graduate of Dillard University, Dr. Ruffin received a master’s degree from Atlanta University and a doctorate in systematic and developmental biology at Kansas State. From 1978-86, Dr. Ruffin was a professor of biology at North Carolina Central. From 1986-90, he was NC Central’s Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He has been with the National Institute of Health since 1990.

Dr. George S. Tolley is the president of RCF Economic and Financial Consulting, Inc., and Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago. In a career spanning nearly a half-century, Dr. Tolley has helped to shape domestic policy and influence international development as a consultant to the governments of China, Venezuela, Panama, Korea, Thailand, Iran and Gambia. From 1955-66, Dr. Tolley was a member of the NC State Department of Economics and Business. Since 1966, he has been a Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he received his master’s in 1950 and doctorate in 1955 in economics. In addition to his academic career, Dr. Tolley served as the Director of the Economic Development Division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy for the U.S. Treasury Department. He currently serves as a consultant for both the World Bank and the Agency for International Development. He has written 17 books and published more than 100 articles in professional journals. Dr. Tolley received his undergraduate degree in economics from American University in 1947.

Dr. Roscoe R. Braham, Jr. is a former U.S. Air Force pilot and weather-officer and Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. A noted cloud physicist, meteorologist and educator, Dr. Braham earned his undergraduate degree from Ohio University and his masters and doctorate degrees from the University of Chicago. He was a member of a three-person National Academy of Sciences planning group that developed a plan for multi-university partnership and collaboration for atmospheric research. He is also credited with the discovery of the cell organization of thunderstorms and the coalescence-freezing mechanism of precipitation formation in natural clouds. Dr. Braham has been an advisor to the Australian government and the U.S. State Department’s Agency for International Development. He is the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions including the Silver Medal from the U.S. Department of Commerce; the Rossby Research Medal from the American Meteorological Society; and the Losey Award from the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi and the American Association for Advancement of Science.

Dr. Lynn Margulis is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Best known for her theory of symbiogenesis, which challenges a central tenet of neodarwinism, Dr. Margulis is the author of numerous articles and books. The most recent book publications include Symbiotic Planet: A new look at evolution (1998) and Acquiring Genomes: A theory of the origins of species (2002) co-written with Dorion Sagan. Also are Luminous Fish: Tales of science and love (2007), Minds, life and universe: Conversations with great scientist of our times (2007) co-edited with Punset and Dazzle gradually: Reflections on the nature of nature (2007) co-written with Dorion Sagan. Dr. Margulis is also acknowledged for her contribution to James E. Lovelock’s Gaia concept that posits the Earth’s surface interactions among living beings sediment, air, and water have created a vast self-regulating system. In 1983 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and she received the Presidential Medal of Science from President William Clinton in 1999. A faculty mentor at Boston University for 22 years, Dr. Margulis also served as president of Sigma Xi Society, the international honor society of science and engineering. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago, a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin and a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley.

The Honorable Bonnie McElveen-Hunter is the CEO and owner of Pace Communications, and current Chairman of the American Red Cross. From 2001 to 2003 Ms. McElveen-Hunter served as the U.S. Ambassador to Finland. During her term as ambassador, she led several initiatives, including The Helsinki Women Business Leaders Summit (2002); Stop Child Trafficking: End Modern-Day Slavery (2003); and Children of Karelia. For her efforts and services, the President of Finland awarded Ms. McElveen-Hunter the Commander Grand Cross of the Order of the Lion–one of that country’s highest honors. In addition to her chair appointment with the American Red Cross, she has also served as a member of the International Board of Directors of Habitat for Humanity, chaired the Alexis de Tocqueville Society, is the founder of the $1 Billion dollar Women’s Leadership Initiative and served on the United Way of America Board as a member of its National Leadership Council. Recognized as a successful entrepreneur and owner of one of the largest private custom publishing companies in the nation, Ms. McElveen-Hunter is the recipient of numerous business awards including, the “Woman Entrepreneur of the Year” Award from the National Foundation for Women Legislatures; the National Athena Award for business and civic contributions from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; and the “Outstanding Business Leader” Award from Northwood University. She was inducted into the Junior Achievement Business Hall of Fame in 2004 and is the 2004 recipient of the National Alexis de Tocqueville Society Award and the 2006 recipient of Appeal of Conscience Award Public Service Award.

Ms. McElveen-Hunter currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina and Washington, D.C. She is married to Bynum Hunter, an attorney with Smith Moore and her son, Bynum Hunter, Jr. is with a private equity firm in New York.

Dr. Rex M. Nettleford is Vice Chancellor Emeritus at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica and a well-known Caribbean scholar, trade union educator, social and cultural historian and political analyst. He is also the founder, artistic director and principal choreographer of the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica, which has appeared worldwide to international acclaim since 1962 and is regarded as a leading Caribbean authority in the performing arts. A former Rhodes scholar, Dr. Nettleford was a founding governor of the Canada-based International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and former Chairman of the Commonwealth Arts Organization. He also served as a consultant on cultural development to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and was a member of its executive board. A noted author and editor, Dr. Nettleford has published numerous articles and books including “The Rastafarians in Kingston, Jamaica” (with F R Augier and M G Smith); “Mirror, Mirror: Identity, Race and Protest in Jamaica”, “Caribbean Cultural Identity” and Inward Stretch, Outward Reach: A Voice from the Caribbean. He is the recipient of several awards, including the Zora Neale Hurston-Paul Robeson Award from the National Council for Black Studies and the Pinnacle Award from the National Coalition on Caribbean Affairs (NCOCA). In 2003, the Rhodes Trust of Oxford established the Rex Nettleford Prize in Cultural Studies in his honor and the Government of Jamaica made him an Ambassador-at-large/Special Envoy the following year. Dr. Nettleford is a Distinguished Fellow in the UWI School of Graduate Studies and a Honorary (Life) Fellow of the Centre for Caribbean Thought.

Johnnetta Cole is President of Bennett College for Women. Dr. Cole’s distinguished career as a college and university professor and administrator has spanned three decades. Among her many achievements, she made history in 1987 by becoming the first African American woman to serve as president of Spelman College. Under her leadership, Spelman became the first historically Black college or university to receive a number one rating by U.S. News and World Report magazine when the college was named the number one liberal arts college in the south. Dr. Cole is also professor emerita of Emory University from which she retired as Presidential Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Women’s Studies and African American Studies. She served on President-elect Bill Clinton’s transition team as cluster coordinator for education, labor, and the arts and humanities, and she was also the first African American to serve as Chair of the Board of the United Way of America. Dr. Cole received her undergraduate degree from Oberlin College. She earned a master’s degree and Ph.D in anthropology from Northwestern University.

Richard Meier is the founder and owner of Richard Meier & Partners, Architects. Recognized as one of the most accomplished and well-known contemporary architects, Mr. Meier has tremendous influence on the architectural world, both here in the United States and abroad. He has received the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects, the Praemium Imperiale from the Japanese Government, and in 1984, he was awarded the prestigious commission to design the $1 billion Getty Center in Los Angeles, which was completed in 1997. In that same year, Mr. Meier became the youngest recipient of the Pritzker Prize for Architecture, the field’s highest honor. Mr. Meier received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University.

Patrick Moore is Chairman and Chief Scientist for Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. Dr. Moore is an internationally-renowned ecologist and environmentalist. Beginning his career as an activist and founder of Greenpeace where he worked in the top committee for 15 years, today Dr. Moore now concentrates on collaborative efforts aimed at finding environmental solutions. An accomplished author, photographer and public speaker quoted in the media worldwide, Dr. Moore believes strongly in the multi-stakeholder, consensus-based approach to resolving environmental, social, and economic issues. In 1991, Dr. Moore founded Greenspirit Enterprises – the parent company of Greenspirit Strategies which works with leading organizations in forestry, biotechnology, aquaculture, plastics and mining and developing solutions in the areas of natural resources, biodiversity, energy and climate change. Dr. Moore received his undergraduate degree and Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia.

Dean Kamen is the president and, founder of DEKA Research and Development Corp. He is the inventor of numerous devices to improve medical care and quality of life, including the Segway® Human Transporter; the iBOT®, a wheelchair that can negotiate stairs and rough surfaces, go up and over curbs and raise a seated person to eye level with a standing person; a portable dialysis machine and the first wearable insulin pump. Mr. Kamen holds more than 100 U.S. and foreign patents and received the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton for “inventions that have advanced medical care worldwide and for imaginative leadership in awakening America to the excitement of science and technology.” In 1989 he founded US First (Foundation for the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), which sponsors an annual national robots engineering contest for high school students. Kamen is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. His numerous honors include the Heinz Award in Technology, the Economy, and Employment, the Hoover Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Mr. Kamen attended Worcester Polytechnic Institute and has received honorary degrees from a number of colleges and universities.

W. Duke Kimbrell is Chairman of the Board for Parkdale Mills, the world’s largest independent cotton yarn manufacturer. Mr. Kimbrell has repeatedly been recognized for his service to the textiles industry and has been on Textile World’s top ten list of executives for service to the industry seven out of twelve times. When he became CEO in 1961, Parkdale Mills had 200 employees and $11 million in sales. In 1999, Parkdale had 3,600 employees and $934 million in sales. Mr. Kimbrell is also an active member of the American Textile Manufacturers Institute, serving on the board of directors and chairing the Cotton Committee. Among his many awards and accolades, he has received Textile World’s Lifetime Achievement Award, The Watauga Medal and has been named Textile World’s Leader of the Year. Mr. Kimbrell received his undergraduate degree in Textiles from NC State.

Hugh Morton is an internationally acclaimed photographer, a conservationist and a naturalist. In 2003, he published Hugh Morton’s North Carolina, a collection of 264 of his photographs chronicling the history and beauty of North Carolina. His photos have appeared in numerous publications, including the Saturday Evening Posts, Colliers, Time, National Geographic, Newsweek as well as books, videos and posters. Mr. Morton owns Grandfather Mountain and has been active in preserving and promoting the state’s natural treasures. In 1996 he was appointed by Governor Hunt to the Year of the Mountains Commission; he chaired the Governor’s Advisory Committee on Travel and Tourism in 1982; and he has served in various capacities on the State Board of Conservation and Development. His work on pollution issues with N.C. State Professor Robert Bruck and the resulting documentary led to the General Assembly’s Passage of the 2002 Clean Smokestacks Bill. Among his many honors, Morton has received the John Tyler Caldwell Award for the Humanities, the highest honor given by the N.C. Humanities Council, the North Carolinian of the Year Award from the N.C. Press Association and the North Carolina Society Award. Mr. Morton attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and served as a photographer in the U.S. Army, earning a Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

William R. McNeal is the Superintendent of Schools for the Wake County Public School System. He has devoted nearly his entire career to the Wake County School System, beginning as a junior high school teacher in 1974 and to being named superintendent in 2000. Throughout his career, McNeal has been committed to high academic standards. As associate superintendent for instructional services, he helped developed the district’s first unified academic goal in 1998. As superintendent, he has worked to narrow the achievement gap while embracing a new goal – high academic growth and 95 percent of students meeting academic standards by 2008. McNeal was honored as the National Superintendent of the Year for 2004 by the American Association of School Administrators. He serves on numerous boards and professional organizations, including the Governor’s Education First Task Force, the Southern Regional Education Board and the Wake County Education Partnership Board of Directors. Mr. McNeal received his undergraduate and master’s degrees from North Carolina Central University.

Eva Clayton, former Congresswoman of the 1st Congressional District of North Carolina and currently the Assistant Director-General and Special Advisor to the Director-General on World Food Summit Follow-up for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: From the beginning of her public career as a member of the Warren County Board of Commissioners to her history-making election as the first woman and the first African-American woman to be elected to the United States Congress from North Carolina, Mrs. Clayton has sought to improve the lives of the state’s citizens. Elected President of her Democrat Freshman Class, Mrs. Clayton was the first woman ever to hold the office. Her many achievements are the result of her service on the House Agriculture Committee and the House Budget Committee. She has been an active member of the Congressional Black Caucus and is past Chair of its Foundation. She retired from Congress in 2002. A native of Savannah, she earned a baccalaureate degree from the Johnson C. Smith University and a master’s Degree from North Carolina Central University.

Harvey K. Littleton, artist and a founder of the Studio Glass Movement: Although he began his distinguished career as a potter, Mr. Littleton is most recognized for his use of glass as an artistic medium. A recipient of a Master of Fine Arts in 1951 from Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills, MI, Mr. Littleton first gained acclaim as a ceramist. In 1959, however, he began to investigate glass as an artistic medium and, in 1962, led a glassblowing workshop. In that seminar, Mr. Littleton introduced the idea that glass could be mixed and melted, blown and worked in the studio by the artist, a view at odds with the widely held belief that glass objects could only be made via mass production in a factory. Mr. Littleton, a University of Wisconsin faculty member since 1951, retired in 1976 to Spruce Pine, NC, where he set up his glass studio. His home is near the Penland School of Crafts, the studio in which he, his colleagues and students advanced the artistic and technological processes for the Studio Glass Movement. He has a baccalaureate degree from the University of Michigan, an MFA from Cranbrook, and has studied at the Brighton School of Art in England.

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer Inc. and the inventor of the Apple I and the Apple II: While working at Hewlett Packard in California, Mr. Wozniak and Steven Jobs collaborated to develop, in Jobs’ garage, the Apple I computer. With money raised by selling Jobs’ Volkswagen microbus and Wozniak’s Hewlett Packard calculator and credit from local electronics suppliers, the pair began to fill their first order for 25 Apple I computers. Thus began the personal computer revolution. Years later, Mr. Wozniak left Apple Computer, and has since devoted his time to a number of community projects, including doing volunteer work in Silicon Valley kindergartens teaching local Hispanic children. Currently Mr. Wozniak is the CEO of Wheels of Zeus, a company that designs wireless electronics products. For his contributions to computing, Mr. Wozniak was awarded the national Medal of Technology in 1985 and the Heinz Award for Technology in 2000. He has also been inducted into the National Academy of Engineering and the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Richard Benedick is a major figure in global environmental affairs and career diplomat who has served in Iran, Pakistan, France, Germany and Greece. He is senior advisor at Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and president of the National Council for Science and the Environment, an organization of more than 500 universities, scientific societies, industry and civic groups dedicated to improving the scientific basis for environmental decision-making.

He was chief negotiator and a principal architect of the historic Montreal Protocol to protect the stratospheric ozone layer, and has served as special advisor to secretaries-general of United Nations conferences on environment, development and population issues. His book “Ozone Diplomacy: New Directions in Safeguarding the Planet,” was selected for an anthology of 20th century environmental classics. In 2002, he was elected to the American Academy of Diplomacy, an association of 100 former cabinet secretaries, ambassadors and statesmen who have made notable contributions to American foreign policy.

Ward was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1962 for his opera “The Crucible,” which was based on the Arthur Miller play. He was Mary Duke Biddle Professor and is now professor emeritus at Duke University. Prior to that, he served as chancellor of the N.C. School of the Arts; vice president and managing editor of Galaxy Music Corporation and Highgate Press; director of the Third Street Music School Settlement, and as faculty member and assistant president of the Juliard School of Music.

Ward has received numerous accolades in his career, including election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the National Academy of Arts and Letters, the New York Music Critics Circle Citation Award, and three Guggenheim fellowships.

R. Scott Wallinger, retired senior vice president at MeadWestvaco Corporation and a champion of sustainable development; Richard Benedick, former United States ambassador and a principal architect of a major treaty protecting the atmosphere; and Robert Ward, an internationally renowned composer, will receive honorary degrees on behalf of NC State from Interim Chancellor Robert Barnhardt.

A 1960 graduate of NC State, Wallinger has worked tirelessly to promote sustainable forestry. He is a founding director of the National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry, and co-leader of The Forests Dialogue, an international group representing industry, nongovernmental organizations and forest owners that uses dialogue to break impasses on critical forest issues.

Early in his professional career, Wallinger pioneered a program that provided thousands of private forest landowners in the Southeast with the advice they needed to make informed decisions about their land. Building on that program, he led the forest industry in the effort to establish the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, which commits every member company to implement sustainability practices on their own lands.

Ken Burns, award-winning filmmaker whose career spans over 20 years of nationally acclaimed documentaries: Mr. Burns is the director, producer, co-writer, chief cinematographer, music director and executive producer of the landmark television series The Civil War. The series attracted an audience of 40 million – the largest PBS audience ever – during its premiere in September 1990. The series garnered more than 40 major film and television awards, including two Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, and the Peabody Award. Mr. Burns’ other documentaries covered subjects ranging from the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, which was nominated for an Academy Award, to baseball and Mark Twain. He is a 1975 graduate of Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, and co-founder of Florentine Films.

Edward Carroll Joyner, NC State University alumnus and entrepreneur whose achievements include the expansion of the Golden Corral restaurant chain: From humble beginnings, Mr. Joyner earned his way through NC State, went on to start his first business in 1961 (Western Auto retail store), before investing in real estate. He invested in the Golden Corral Restaurants, opening the chain’s second restaurant in 1972 in Fayetteville, NC. During his association with Golden Corral restaurants, the number of restaurants grew to 148. Mr. Joyner continues his entrepreneurial endeavors with steak restaurants in North and South Carolina. A 1956 graduate of NC State, Mr. Joyner is a recipient of the university’s Watauga Medal.

William G. Hill, Professor of Genetics and former Dean and Provost of the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland: A renowned researcher and teacher in the field of quantitative genetics and animal breeding, Dr. Hill is considered the world’s leading quantitative geneticist. Over the past 40 years, he has published a series of papers that provided a theoretical framework for understanding the genetic basis of quantitative traits in domestic plant and animal species. With colleagues worldwide, including at NC State, Dr. Hill has applied his theory to data from cattle, pigs, poultry, sheep, mice, the fruit fly, and malarial parasite. His honors are many, and include membership in the Royal Society of London, the highest scientific honor in the United Kingdom. He is a graduate of Wye College, the University of California at Davis, Iowa State, and the University of Edinburgh.

Cyma Rubin, Emmy and Tony Award winning producer, director, and writer, is president of Business of Entertainment, Inc.: A graduate of NC State in textile management, Ms. Rubin won four Tony Awards for her first Broadway show, “No, No, Nanette.” She produced other musicals that resulted in 11 Tony Award nominations. Among her film productions, “Greaser’s Palace,” won the London Film Festival Award. In 1999, she produced and directed a 90-minute television special, “Moment of Impact: Stories of the Pulitzer Prize photographs,” that won the 1999 Emmy and Telly Awards for best documentary. The first American exhibition of the photographs opened in New York in 2000. Ms. Rubin was curator, and produced and co-edited the catalog. Her many affiliations include membership in the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences; she is an active participant and supporter of the performing and visual arts.

Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), has been president of RPI since 1999. A theoretical physicist, her career has been marked by a series of “firsts.” In 1995, she was the first African-American woman appointed to head the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where she is credited with overhauling procedures and processes in planning, budgeting, safety evaluation and performance management. She is the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. in any field from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the first African-American woman to head a national research university.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the American Physical Society, Jackson strives to encourage minority students to pursue careers in the sciences. She earned her baccalaureate degree in physics at MIT.

Lt. Gen. Dan K. McNeill commanded American military forces in Afghanistan in the fight against terrorism. In Afghanistan, he commanded almost all of the 7,000 U.S. forces and has coordinated the efforts of coalition forces from Canada, Britain and other countries.

His military career has included command of airborne infantry units at the company, battalion, brigade and corps levels. Most recently, McNeill commanded the 82nd Airborne Division and later the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, high honors for an army general. In 2000, under his command, Fort Bragg won recognition as one of the two top army posts in the nation. McNeill earned a bachelor’s degree from NC State in 1968 and upon graduating was commissioned as a second lieutenant.

Mr. John P. Sall, executive vice president of SAS Institute, is one of the co-founders of the world’s largest privately held software company. Sall has designed, developed and documented many of SAS Institute’s earliest analytical procedures. He has supervised the start-up of a number of SAS initiatives. He was principal designer and developer of JMP (a graphically oriented statistical package developed originally for Macintosh computers), and now leads the JMP product team and is responsible for the SAS InSchool division.

He was elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1998. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Beloit College, a master’s degree from Northern Illinois University, and has studied graduate-level statistics at NC State.

Dr. E. Travis York, chancellor emeritus of the State University System of Florida, served as chancellor of the University of Florida System from 1975 to 1980. He began his academic career as an associate professor in agronomy at NC State, where he rose to the position of professor and head of the department. During his career, he held numerous positions at the University of Florida, including provost for agriculture and vice president for agricultural affairs. He is now Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida.

York answered the call to national service at the requests of U.S. Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Carter and Reagan, serving two terms on the Board for International Food and Agricultural Development and leading multiple presidential missions on agricultural development to a variety of countries. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Auburn University, and his Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine’s Child Study Center. Yale medical faculty member since 1968. Founder and Director of the Child Study Center’s Comer School of Development Project and Associate Dean of the Yale Medical School. Founder of the Comer School Development Program that promotes the collaboration of parents, educators, and community to improve social, emotional, and academic outcomes for children that, in turn, helps them achieve greater school success. His teamwork concept is improving the educational environment in over 500 U.S. schools.

President Emeritus of the University of Michigan and Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences. Member of the National Academy of Engineering, and recipient of the National Medal of Technology for exemplary service to the nation. Director of the University of Michigan’s Millennium Project, a “laboratory where new paradigms of learning institutions can be designed, constructed and studied.” Advised Chancellor Marye Anne Fox on the Commission on the Future of NC State.

Nationally recognized author and retired professor of English at North Carolina State University. Served on the NC State faculty from 1989 to 1998. The author of 9 novels, including Oral History, Saving Grace, and Fair and Tender Ladies, and 3 collections of short stories. Latest novel, The Last Girls, will be released in Fall 2002. Recipient of numerous honors, including a 1999 Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Considered one of the foremost authors of the South and the nation.

Pulitzer Prize winning syndicated columnist for The Washington Post whose column is published in 225 newspapers. Won the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary in 1994. Knight Professor of the Practice of Communications and Journalism at the DeWitt Wallace Center and the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University, Durham, NC. Recipient of numerous other journalistic awards, he authored the 1991 book, Looking Backward at Us. Featured speaker at 2001 Emerging Issues Forum.

President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Former Provost, Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Dean of Engineering at the University of Michigan. Member of National Academy of Engineering, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Research interests are in the areas of heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and optics.

Dr. James H. Goodnight, SAS Institute founder, president and CEO, received bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from NC State. Goodnight leads the largest privately held software company in the world. SAS Institute in Cary, NC, is often tops the list of “best places to work” in the U.S. Goodnight served as a faculty member at NC State from 1972 to 1976, and continues to serve as an adjunct professor. Goodnight is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and author of several papers on statistical computing. In 1997, Goodnight co-founded Cary Academy, an independent co-ed college preparatory school for students in grades six through 12. Goodnight and his wife, Ann, live in Cary, NC.

Mr. Thomas Karl is director of the National Climatic Data Center, the world’s largest data center for climate data and information. He also manages the Climate Change Data and Detection Program Element for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Global Programs. Karl is best known for his work on climate change. He has authored about 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals and more than 200 technical reports. He is the editor of the Journal of Climate and associate editor for Climate Change. He has also been called on to brief the White House and Congress on climate variability and climate change. Karl is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union and has received numerous awards for his climate work. He did postgraduate work at NC State after receiving a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a bachelor’s degree from Northern Illinois University. He lives with his wife, Dale Ann, in Asheville, NC.

One of the world’s foremost cancer researchers, Chu discovered prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and developed a prostate cancer detection test based on PSA that now saves thousands of lives worldwide each year. He is director of cancer research and chairman of the Diagnostic Immunology Research and Biochemistry Department at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., and professor of experimental pathology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Chu received his master’s degree from NC State in 1965.

A noted geographer, author and Emmy Award-winning television analyst, de Blij is one of America’s leading advocates of geography in the mass media. Over the past decade, he has served as geography editor on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” geography analyst for NBC News, and senior editor for the PBS series “The Power of Place.” A popular speaker on the public lecture circuit, de Blij will deliver this year’s Commencement address to NC State graduates and their families.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, Fitch is one of the world’s foremost evolutionary biologists and is a significant contributor to the development of the field of bioinformatics. In the 1960s, he became one of the first scientists to verify evolution at the molecular level. He is professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California at Irvine

Henney served as Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration during the Clinton administration. She is the first woman to head the FDA, and is credited with reforming it to improve its responsiveness. A cancer specialist and nationally recognized public health administrator, Henney has held key posts at the FDA and the National Cancer Institute under four presidents: Jimmy Carter, George H. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

Lane is one of America’s most influential and respected science policy-makers. During the past decade, he served five years as director of the National Science Foundation and two-and-a-half-years as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, a post he left last January. Since then, he has been University Professor and Senior Fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.

McSwain, a Sanford resident, is one of North Carolina’s leading business owners and philanthropists. She has been instrumental to the growth of many programs at NC State’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, including the public education building at the JC Raulston Arboretum, which will be named in her honor. In 1997, she donated 300 acres and a historic house in Sanford to establish the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service’s Lee County Center. She is also a major benefactor of the North Carolina Museum of Art

Hunt, this year’s commencement speaker, served 16 years as governor of North Carolina. He is an NC State alumnus whose achievements include initiation of Smart Start, a program to help young children succeed in primary school; the Emerging Issues Forum, an annual conference at NC State featuring discussions by national leaders about key issues; and other educational initiatives.

Chairman of the executive committee of the board of directors of Bulab Holdings, Buckman is recognized for his vision in integrating technology into the workplace far in advance of his business competitors. He is a strong supporter of the educational initiatives in NC State’s College of Natural Resources.

Chairman of Ruddick Corporation and an alumnus of NC State, Dickson has served the university as a member of the board of trustees and has been awarded the Watauga Medal. In addition to leading the Ruddick Corp., which comprises two major companies – American and Efrid (an international textile company), and Harris Teeter (a grocery chain) – Dickson serves on the North Carolina Textile Foundation.

President and CEO of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center at Research Triangle Park, Dr. Hamner is a state and national advocate for biotechnology, and assisted NC State as a member of the blue-ribbon panel Commission on the Future of NC State.

Chancellor Emeritus of NC State, Dr. Monteith served as interim chancellor in 1989 and assumed leadership of the university in 1990. He is credited with guiding NC State through a period of growth, and overseeing the university’s successful effort to gain a Phi Beta Kappa chapter. He retired in 1998.

President of Warren Wilson College in Asheville, N.C., Orr leads one of the nation’s finest institutions combining service learning with the academic curriculum, and has guided both fund-raising and construction efforts for the college. He is the author of North Carolina Atlas: A Portrait for a New Century; Land of the South; and North Carolina Atlas: Portrait of a Changing Southern State.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program, 5/00)

Donna E. Shalala is the longest serving Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) in U.S. history. She accepted the post in January 1993 to lead the federal government’s principal agency for protecting the health of Americans and providing essential human services. HHS administers a wide variety of programs including Medicare, Medicaid and federal welfare and children’s programs.

In her seven years as secretary the agency has helped guide the welfare reform process and made health insurance available to an estimated 2.5 million children. The agency has raised child immunization rates to the highest levels in history; led the fight against young peoples’ use of tobacco; created national initiatives to fight breast cancer, racial and ethnic health disparities, and violence against women; and crusaded for better access and better medications to treat AIDS.

Born February 14, 1941, in Cleveland, Ohio, Donna Shalala earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Western College for Women in 1962 and a doctoral degree from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 1970.

From 1975 to 1977, she served as treasurer of New York City’s Municipal Assistance Corporation, the organization that helped rescue the city from the edge of bankruptcy. Shalala then went on to become President of Hunter College in New York, a position she held for eight years. She also was an Assistant Secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Carter administration.

From 1987 to 1993, she served as the Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin‑Madison, the first woman to head a Big Ten university. Business Week named her one of the five best managers in higher education.

She also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Iran. She has more than two dozen honorary degrees and a host of other honors, including the 1992 National Public Service award and the Glamour Magazine Woman of The Year award in 1994. She has been elected to the National Academy of Education, the National Academy of Public Administration and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

CEO, Interface, Inc., and Co-Chairman of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development

Born in West Point, GA, in 1934, Ray Anderson graduated with highest honors from Georgia Institute of Technology, earning a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering. He worked as an industrial engineer at Procter & Gamble and Deering-Milliken before serving as director of development and marketing manager in the carpet division at Deering-Milliken. In 1973, Anderson founded Interface, Inc., a manufacturer and sales outlet of free-lay carpet tiles, broadloom carpet, interior fabrics, chemicals and architectural products for commercial interiors.

The co-chairman of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, Anderson has worked diligently to make Interface a sustainable corporation by leading a worldwide war on waste and pioneering the process of sustainable development. This means developing processes and technologies to harness solar energy and provide raw material needs by harvesting and recycling carpet and other petrochemical products, while eliminating waste and harmful emissions from Interface’s operations.

In 1996 Anderson received the inaugural Millennium Award for Corporate Environmental Leadership from Global Green and was also recognized as the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the Southeast Region. He was named International Businessman of the Year in 1992 by the Society of International Business Fellows. He is also a member of a number of religious, civic and business organizations.

W.T. Doherty-Welch Foundation Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Texas A&M University

Known worldwide for both his research and as the author of some of the most important contemporary chemistry textbooks, Dr. F. Albert Cotten has been the director of the Laboratory for Molecular Structure and Bonding at Texas A&M since 1983, and has taught at the College Station, Texas, school since 1972.

Cotton was born in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1930. He attended Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University) from 1947 to 1949, and received his bachelor’s degree from Temple University in 1951. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1955, and that year took a position as chemistry instructor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1961, at age 31, he attained the rank of full professor, becoming the youngest person to achieve that rank at MIT up to that time.

Called one of the most important chemists of this century because of his fundamental and pioneering discoveries in inorganic and organometallic chemistry, Cotton has been recognized for his work worldwide, with numerous memberships to science academies across the globe. He received the Baekland, Kirkwood, Gibbs, Nichols, Richards, Cotton and Pauling gold medals from the American Chemical Society – the only American chemist to receive all seven gold medals. In 1998, he received the Priestly Medal, the highest award of the American Chemical Society, and the gold medal of the American Institute of Chemists. He holds 23 honorary degrees from institutions in 10 countries.

Nobel laureate and chairman of the department of immunology at St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital

Peter Doherty, who early in his career aspired to become a “country vet,” earned distinction as one of the world’s premier immunologists after he and colleague Rolf Zinkernagel discovered why T cells were able to detect and attack only infected cells, leaving healthy cells completely intact. He shared a Nobel Prize in Medicine with Zinkernagel in 1996 as a result of this research.

Doherty was born in Queensland, Australia. He attended the University of Queensland, where he pursued a career in veterinary medicine. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1962, and his master’s degree in 1966. He completed his Ph.D. in animal pathology in 1970 at the University of Edinburgh. After serving a term as a veterinary officer at Brisbane’s Animal Research Institute (1963-67), Doherty worked as a scientific officer with the department of experimental pathology at the Moredun Research Institute in Edinburgh. In 1972, he received a research fellowship in the microbiology department of the John Curtain School of Medical Research, part of the Australian National University in Canberra.

Since 1988, Doherty has served as chairman of the department of immunology at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. He has also led the department of experimental pathology at the John Curtin School of Medical Research (1982-88) and served on the faculty at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, Pa. (1975-82). He was named Australian of the Year in 1997.

President emeritus, University of Notre Dame

Under the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh’s 35-year tenure as president of the University of Notre Dame, the school emerged as a highly regarded institution of higher learning. He liberalized the rules of student life, opened the campus to women, and, in the interest of protecting academic freedom, led the transfer of university control from the Catholic Church to a lay board of trustees.

Born May 25, 1917 in Syracuse, N.Y., Hesburgh joined the Order of the Congregation of Holy Cross in 1934, and was ordained a priest in 1943. In 1945, he was assigned to teach religion and serve as chaplain at Notre Dame. He was promoted to head of the religion department in 1948, and to executive vice president a year later. When he assumed his role as president at age 35 in 1952, he was the youngest in Notre Dame’s history.

Hesburgh has served on more than 50 government commissions – including a pivotal role on the Civil Rights Commission – and more than two dozen boards of trustees, with involvement in such organizations as the National Science Foundation, the United Negro College Fund, and the American Council on Education. He co-chaired, with University of North Carolina President Emeritus William Friday, the Knight Commission which studied the effects of business on collegiate athletics. He has also received more than 138 honorary degrees.

President of the Dominican Republic

A native of Santiago, Dominican Republic, Hipolito Mejia was born in 1941 and graduated as an associate agronomist from Polytechnic Institute of San Cristobal in 1964. He attended NC State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in the 1960s. He worked – first as agricultural investigator and later as national director – in the Dominican Republic’s Tobacco Institute before joining Rohm and Haas, a U.S. agricultural chemicals manufacturing company, as Caribbean representative. He was selected president of the National Association of Agriculture Professionals in 1970. In 1973, Mejia became vice-president of programming and agricultural development at Industrias Linda.

Mejia’s political career began in 1978 as the Dominican Republic’s Secretary of Agriculture. He passed two powerful tests during his tenure: rehabilitating Dominican agriculture after the devastation of two cyclones, and eradicating African pig fever which threatened the country’s livestock. After his four-year term, Mejia returned to the private sector as an agricultural consultant, but he remained active politically, serving as national vice-president of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD).

Mejia became president of the Dominican Republic after the PRD won elections held in May 2000.

North Carolina master potter and owner of Jugtown Pottery

An internationally known master potter, Vernon Owens was born in 1941 in the famous pottery community of Seagrove, NC. A descendant of a long line of potters, Owens began turning pots as a young child, and has developed and refined the skill through years of observation and practice. Owens has a strong link to the traditional methods of North Carolina pottery as well as the newer pottery methods of the day.

Owens began turning pots professionally in 1960 at Jugtown Pottery, a business known for its quality craftsmanship. In the late 1960s, Owens collaborated with Nancy Sweezy to create safer glazes with lower lead content. Owens purchased Jugtown Pottery in 1983, and since then has maintained its integrity and tradition. He has also preserved the technique of using the old-fashioned groundhog kiln, which burns wood, at Jugtown.

Owens received the National Heritage Award from the National Endowment of the Arts in 1996. In addition to his “excellent aesthetic eye” and his lifetime commitment to pottery making, Owens was cited for his far-reaching cultural vision of the future prospects and revitalization of the great pottery tradition in Seagrove.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program, 5/99)

Kaye Gibbons is an internationally acclaimed author, best known for her novels about self-reliant Southern women and the challenges they have faced in their lives. Since 1988 she has been the author-in-residence of the Friends of the Library of North Carolina State University.

A native of Nash County, Gibbons attended NC State University from 1978 to 1980, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she pursued a degree in English from 1980 to 1984.

In 1987, she published her first novel, Ellen Foster, a haunting tale of a young girl’s escape from an abusive home life and her search for a new identity and family. For the book, which was made into a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie production in 1997, Gibbons won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Other critically acclaimed novels by Gibbons are A Virtuous Woman, A Cure for Dreams, Charms for the Easy Life, Sights Unseen and her latest novel, On the Occasion of Her Last Afternoon. In 1997, Ellen Foster and A Virtuous Woman were chosen as selections for the “Oprah Book Club,” and promoted nationally on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

In addition to the Kaufman Prize, Gibbons has received numerous honors for her fiction, including being named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres — a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters — in France. She has been awarded the prestigious North Carolina Award in Literature; a Special Citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation; a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; the Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Award from UNC-CH; and the Nelson Algren Heartland Award for Fiction from the Chicago Tribune.

Her nonfiction essays and stories have appeared in Southern Living, Kenyon Review, The New York Times Supplement and other national publications.

Aside from her work as an author, Gibbons is active in the Raleigh community, serving on the Board of Directors for the Friends of the Library of NC State and volunteering for the American Red Cross Ball, SPCA Benefit and the Books for Children Project. She lives in Raleigh with her husband and their five children.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program, 5/99)

In 1941, Katharine Stinson became the first woman to graduate with an engineering degree from North Caroline State University. She was one of only five women nationwide to graduate with a degree in engineering that year.

A barrier -breaker from an early age, Stinson always knew she wanted to fly airplanes. In 1932, at the age of 15, she met her idol, Amelia Earhart, who encouraged the lanky Wake County teenager to follow her dream but also warned her that just being a pilot wouldn’t be enough to make a decent living. Stinson’s best bet for success, Earhart said, was to go to college and major in aeronautical engineering. Adhering to that advice, Stinson applied for admission to NC State but was told the university did not accept women as freshmen. Undaunted, she enrolled at nearby Meredith College, completed 48 credit hours in one year, and successfully enrolled at NC State the following autumn.

Her pioneering ways continued after graduation, when she became the first female engineer hired by the Civil Aeronautics Administration, now the Federal Aviation Administration. In 1953, she helped found the Society of Women Engineers. During her 32 years working for the FAA, she was responsible for many engineering firsts, including successfully converting light airplanes into gliders for pilot training during World War II and reconverting the trainers back to engined airplanes after the war.

Stinson has received numerous awards for her contributions to aerospace engineering, including the FAA Sustained Superior Performance Award; the Distinguished Women in the Aerospace Industry Award; and the Aviation Pioneer of the Year Award from the Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. She was the first woman to serve on the board of directors of the NC State Alumni Association. In 1971, she became the first woman named a Distinguished Alumna of the College of Engineering.

She established the Katharine Stinson Scholarships for Women in Engineering in 1987, making it possible for other young women to pursue engineering degrees at NC State. In 1997, the street running from the university’s main visitor’s gate to the College of Engineering was renamed Stinson Drive in her honor.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program, 12/99)

In 1941, John Thomas Biggers enrolled at the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia, intending to become a plumber. Luckily for the world of art, things worked out a little differently for the 17-year-old boy from Gastonia, North Carolina.

Today, Biggers is one of our country’s most accomplished artists. His paintings and drawings hang in museums and private collections nationwide, and his murals — including two at Winston-Salem State University, and one in the North Carolina Legislative Building on which he advised his nephew, James Biggers — are widely considered to be the finest painted by any artist of his generation. Throughout his long and productive career, Biggers has created works that draw upon the experiences of African-Americans in the rural South to illustrate and celebrate the richness of diversity and the commonality of all human experience. He has said, “I’m not a big-city artist telling a big-city story; I’m a southern man telling a story about home.”

Biggers was born in Gastonia on April 13, 1924, the seventh and youngest child of Paul and Cora Biggers. Overcoming poverty, racism and personal tragedy — his father died in 1937 when he was just 13 — Biggers persevered, and enrolled at Hampton Institute in 1941. There, despite his initial goal of becoming a plumber, he was drawn to art and began to develop his own personal style, a bold synthesis of African and African-American folk cultures with western modernism. One of his earliest and most famous murals, Dying Soldier, was exhibited in a show, “Young Negro Art,” in 1943 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Following two years of service in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Biggers returned to college and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art education from Pennsylvania State University in 1948. Biggers spent the next 34 years of his life as a professor of art at Texas Southern University in Houston, where he directed a program that has produced many of America’s most prominent black artists, art historians and teachers.

Biggers retired from his teaching post at Texas Southern in 1983, but continues to serve the university as Professor Emeritus, and to paint and inspire new generations of artists. He and his wife of nearly 51 years, Hazel Hales Biggers, live in Gastonia and in Houston, Texas.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program, 5/98)

Gen. Henry Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a highly decorated graduate of North Carolina State University, is the first member of the elite U.S. Army Special Forces — the Green Berets — to rise to the nation’s top military post. The 56-year-old, four-star general became the 14th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in October 1997.

The Edgecombe County native serves as the principal military adviser to the president, the secretary of defense and the National Security Council. Previously, he served as commander in chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command, which oversees the Green Berets and the Navy SEALs.

Shelton earned his commission through the Reserve Officers Training Corps at NC State, where he graduated in 1963 with a degree in textile engineering. He earned a master of science degree from Auburn University. His military education includes completion of the Air Command and Staff College and the National War College programs. In the two decades after his commissioning, Shelton held a variety command and staff positions in the United States and Vietnam. He served two tours in Vietnam, first with the 5th Special Forces Group and then with the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

Following his selection in 1987 as brigadier general, Shelton served in the Operations Directorate of the Joint Staff. In 1989, he began a two-year assignment as assistant division commander for operations of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) — a tour that included a seven-month deployment to Saudi Arabia for Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. After the Gulf War, he was promoted to major general and assigned to Fort Bragg, where he commanded the 82nd Airborne Division. He was promoted to lieutenant general in 1993. In 1994, he commanded the Operation Uphold Democracy joint task force in Haiti. In 1996, Shelton was promoted to general and became commander in chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command.

His awards and decorations include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal (with 2 oak leaf clusters), Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit (with oak leaf cluster), Bronze Star Medal with V device (with 3 oak leaf clusters), and the Purple Heart.

Shelton is married to Tarboro native Carolyn Johnson Shelton. They have three sons, Jon, Jeff and Mark.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program, 5/98)

Edgar S. Woolard Jr., retired chairman and chief executive officer of E.I. duPont de Nemours & Co., is an alumnus and advocate of North Carolina State University. A 1956 graduate of the NC State College of Engineering, the Washington, N.C., native joined DuPont in 1957 as an industrial engineer at its Kinston site.

He rose through the company ranks and in 1989 became one of the youngest men to hold the job of chairman in the company’s history. Called by U.S. News & World Report “The New Organization Man,” Woolard is credited with leading by example, initiating total quality management principles, embracing technological change in the industry, and guiding DuPont to a leadership position in the global marketplace.

Woolard also was one of the first leaders in the chemical industry to espouse “corporate environmentalism,” a commitment to place corporate environmental stewardship in line with societal needs and expectations around the world. It was a leadership commitment that required extra effort and investments to modify or adopt new practices and processes.

For many years, Woolard’s bold leadership also has raised expectations and possibilities for NC State. He is a member of the N.C. Textiles Foundation and a member of the Lifetime Giving Societies’ Peele and Pullen societies, and is a former member of the NC State Board of Trustees.

Less than a decade ago he served as honorary chairman of NC State’s successful Century II Campaign, a five-year, $230 million effort for the support of university programs in teaching, research and public service.

Last year, Woolard signed on as a member of the Campaign for NC State Students leadership team, which is seeking to raise $80 million in endowments for scholarships and fellowships by December 1999. He and his wife, Peggy, contributed more than $1 million to endow John T. Caldwell Alumni Scholarships. The campaign is expected to exceed its goal, having already reached the 90 percent mark.

Woolard was the recipient of the Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award at NC State in 1988 and recently received the Alumni Association’s 1998 Meritorious Service Award.

He and his wife, Peggy, reside in Wilmington, Del., and Jupiter, Fla.

(Biography as published in commencement program 1998)

Dr. Nicolaas Bloembergen is an internationally acclaimed physicist whose honors include the 1981 Nobel Prize for Physics and the 1974 National Medal of Science.

Bloembergen is Gerhard Gade University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, where he earned his doctorate in physics in 1951. A native of the Netherlands, Bloembergen earned degrees from the University of Utrecht and the University of Leiden before coming to the United States to study. He became a naturalized citizen in 1958.

Bloembergen shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with A.L. Schawlow for their contributions to the development of laser spectroscopy, and with K. Siegbahn for his contribution to the development of high resolution electron spectroscopy. Bloembergen’s National Medal of Science cited his pioneering applications of magnetic resonance to the study of condensed matter. He won the Alexander von Humbolt Senior U.S. Scientist Award in 1980 and 1987, and the Alexander von Humbolt Medal in 1989. His 1983 IEEE Medal of Honor recognized his “pioneering contributions to quantum electronics, including the invention of the three-level solid state maser.”

His research has included nuclear and electronic magnetic resonance, solid state masers and lasers, and especially nonlinear optics and spectroscopy. His work with colleagues in developing a rigorous theory of nonlinear polarizability led to the extension of the laws of reflection and refraction.

Bloembergen has published more than 300 papers in various scientific journals and is the author of two major monographs.

In addition to his service on the faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University for more than four decades, Bloembergen also was a visiting professor in Berkeley and Pasadena as well as in Paris, Leiden, Bangalore and Munich. He is a member of numerous academies in the United States and abroad, and has served on dozens of U.S. government, industry and academic advisory committees.

He holds honorary degrees from Harvard University, Laval University, Moscow State University, Hartford University, the University of Central Florida, the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, and the University of Connecticut.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program, 12/98)

Dr. Joab Langston Thomas has had a distinguished career in higher education, having served as chief executive officer of three major U.S. universities, including North Carolina State University.

Thomas earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in biological science from Harvard University, where in 1955 he launched his academic career in teaching and research. He returned to his native Alabama in 1961 to join the biology faculty at the University of Alabama, subsequently rising through the ranks to become vice president for student affairs.

In 1976, Thomas became NC State’s ninth chancellor. Under his leadership from 1976 to 1981, NC State increased student enrollment and faculty numbers. He is credited with establishing the John T. Caldwell Merit Scholarship program, making significant facilities’ improvements, and developing a number of institutes, centers and foundations.

Thomas’ tenure featured a strong commitment to the humanities at a university acclaimed for its strengths in science, engineering and technology. He established the College of Humanities and Social Sciences’ Extension program — the first of its kind in the country. While he was chancellor, ground was broken for the construction of NC State’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

Following his NC State days, Thomas served as president of the University of Alabama and of The Pennsylvania State University. Since his 1995 retirement, Thomas and his wife, Marly, have resided in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

During his career, he actively served in major education organizations and working committees, such as the American Association of State Colleges and Universities; the Association of American Universities and its Task Force on International Studies; and the Big 10 Conference and its Planning Committee and Council of Presidents.

He is a member of numerous professional associations, has served on countless prestigious corporate and nonprofit boards of directors, and has received scores of honors and awards. He holds honorary degrees from the University of Alabama, Stillman College and Tri-State University.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program, 12/97)

Dr. Albert Carnesale, chancellor of UCLA, is an NC State alumnus who has had a distinguished career in his field of American foreign policy and international security as well as in higher education.

Prior to his UCLA appointment in March 1997, Carnesale served as Harvard University’s acting president, provost and dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy. His teaching and research have focused on the implications of the end of the Cold War and on issues associated with nuclear weapons and arms control.

Having earned a bachelor’s degree at Cooper Union (1957) and a master’s degree at Drexel University (1961), Carnesale was awarded a doctorate in nuclear engineering from NC State in 1966. As a member of the university’s faculty from 1962 to 1969, he received the alumni Award for Outstanding Teaching and was named to the Academy of Outstanding Teachers.

From NC State, he went on to become chief of the defensive weapons systems division of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency’s Science and Technology Bureau. He was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) with the Soviet Union from 1970 to 1972. He led the U.S. delegation to the International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation, a 66-nation study of the relationship between civilian nuclear power and proliferation of nuclear weapons. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1974.

Carnesale consulted widely on foreign and defense policy matters with private firms and governmental agencies, and has written extensively about international affairs, defense policy and nuclear energy. He is a member of Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Pi Sigma and Sigma Xi honorary societies.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program 12/97)

Ben Rankin Morris, former publisher of The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C., rightfully claims deep NC State roots. His late father Theodore Page Morris (NC State Class of 1919) was the nephew of Walter Hines Page, one of the university’s founding fathers.

Morris, himself, earned a degree in textile engineering from NC State after service in the Army Air Corps in World War II. The Gaston native spent 20 successful years in the textile industry, before entering newspaper publishing. He transformed the family-owned newspaper into a thriving corporation with eight subsidiaries in four states.

As an executive with Knight-Ridder, he championed many public issues, including a movement to restrain state and federal government spending. His efforts led to the approval of a constitutional amendment being approved by South Carolina voters to tie state taxation to growth in personal incomes. He later spearheaded a statewide petition drive calling for a U.S. Constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget.

Morris was president of the S.C. State Chamber of Commerce in 1974, was appointed by Gov. John C. West to the first state Commission on Human Affairs, and was named to the S.C. Business Hall of Fame in 1990. He is an advocate for the Junior Achievement Program and has served on its local advisory board and as honorary chairman of the Junior Achievement Hall of Fame. He has won numerous awards which recognize his contributions to the community and society.

Morris and his wife, Henriette, live in Columbia and have four married children and nine grandchildren.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program, 5/96)

Fred McFeely Rogers is the longtime host of the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood television program, a child development expert, an ordained Presbyterian minister and a family advocate. Rogers was born in 1928 in Latrobe, Pa., a small town east of Pittsburgh, where he also was raised.

He attended Rollins College in Florida, where he majored in music composition. After graduation in 1951, he was hired by NBC in New York as an assistant producer. He later worked as floor director on several programs.

In 1953 he moved back to Pittsburgh at the request of WQED, the nation’s first community-supported public television station. Rogers developed and began producing several programs there, including The Children’s Corner. Some of Rogers’ program regulars, including puppets Daniel Striped Tiger and King Friday XIII, began their long lives on the show.

It was during the seven-year run of The Children’s Corner that Rogers began studying child development and attending the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in his spare time. He was ordained by the Pittsburgh Presbytery in 1962 with a charge to continue his work with children and families through the media.

Rogers first appeared on camera in 1963, when he was hired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to create a 15-minute children’s series entitled MISTEROGERS.

In 1964 Rogers returned to Pittsburgh, where his show evolved into the half-hour Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Rogers uses his own observations and training along with consultations with experts to write Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, the longest running show on public television.

The program reaches almost eight million households and child-care settings each week. There are nearly 700 episodes in the series, and Rogers continues to write and produce several weeks of new programs each season.

Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is a slow-moving, quiet program aimed at teaching children to fmd within themselves the courage to grow.

Rogers’ work has earned two George Foster Peabody Awards and several Emmys.

Rogers is president of Family Communications Inc., the nonprofit organization he founded in 1971 to produce materials that encourage the healthy emotional growth of children and their families. He has received honorary degrees from more than 30 colleges and universities, including Yale, Carnegie Mellon and Boston universities and his alma mater, Rollins College.

Rogers and his wife, Joanne Byrd Rogers, have two married sons and two grandsons.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program, 12/96)

Dr. Prezell Russell Robinson is president emeritus of Saint Augustine’s College where he is also Charles A. Mott Endowed Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences. But Robinson’s influence extends far beyond the Raleigh campus where he spent 28 years as the top administrator. He also has made an international imprint during his career.

Robinson is serving for the second time as a U.S. Alternate Representative to the United Nations. He was first appointed by President Bush in 1992 and was appointed again by President Clinton in 1996. He also was selected by the Department of State to visit and lecture in six African countries in 1971 and was appointed by President Carter to serve on the U.S.-Liberian Commission in 1980.

Robinson, who was born in Batesburg, S.C., graduated from Voorhees School and Junior College in Denmark, S.C., before earning a bachelor’s degree in economics and social science from Saint Augustine’s. He earned master’s and doctoral degrees in rural education and rural sociology-economics from Cornell University.

He was a dean and sociology professor at Saint Augustine’s between 1956 and 1964, was appointed executive dean and professor in 1964 and was named acting president in June 1966. He became president and a professor of sociology eight months later.

Robinson has earned recognition throughout his career, both as a faculty member and an administrator. He was voted one of three outstanding teachers at Saint Augustine’s in 1961-62, was awarded a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to India in 1965 and selected one of 20 college presidents in the “100 Most Effective Presidents of America” in 1986. Robinson has received 11 honorary degrees.

Robinson has a long history of involvement in the Raleigh community. He is active in the Episcopal Church, at the parish, diocesan and national levels. In addition, Robinson is vice chairman of the North Carolina State Board of Education and has served on numerous academic and community organizations. They include: the executive committee of the International Association of University Presidents; the board of directors of The Episcopal Church Fundation; the Association of Southern Colleges and Universities, of which he was president in 1974-75; the executive committee of the United Negro College Fund, of which he was president and a member from 1978 to 1981; the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, of which he was president from 1982 to 1985; the Association of Episcopal Colleges, of which he was president from 1989 to 1994; the board of directors of The Episcopal Church Pension Fund, on which he has served since 1985; and the board of trustees of Peace College in Raleigh and of Voorhees College.

Robinson, who lives in Raleigh, retired in 1995. He and his wife, Lulu, have a daughter.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program, 5/95)

Dr. William Brantley Aycock, chancellor emeritus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a Johnston County native who earned a bachelor’s degree in education from North Carolina State University in 1936 and a master’s degree in history from UNC-Chapel Hill the following year.

His career was interrupted by World War II and service in the U.S. Army. Aycock received a Bronze Star, Silver Star and the Legion of Merit for action in the European Theater of Operations as battalion commander in the 87th Infantry Division. Later he served as a Reserve officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

After the war, he resumed his education in law school at UNC-Chapel Hill, and joined the law faculty in 1948 a semester before graduating first in his class. He was named acting dean of the School of Law in 1956.

As chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill from 1957 to 1964, Aycock led the university through a period of rapid growth. Following his term as chancellor, he resumed teaching in the law school; was named Kenan Professor of Law in 1966; was a five-time winner of the McCall Teaching Award; and was the first faculty member to be named to the UNC-Chapel Hill General Alumni Association board of directors. He retired as a full-time faculty member in 1985, but continued to teach and publish.

Over the years, Aycock earned a reputation for his personal and professional stand on issues such as disadvantaged youth and the rights of women. He co-authored “The Military Law Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice” with Seymour Wurfel in 1955.

Aycock also played a role in international affairs as personal assistant to Frank Porter Graham, the United Nations representative during critical peacemaking negotiations in 1951 between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.

His achievements have earned him numerous awards including the Thomas Jefferson Award; the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the UNC-Chapel Hill Law Alumni Association; the William Richardson Davie Award from the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees; the Liberty Bell Award from the N.C. Bar Association; the Distinguished Service Medal from the UNC-Chapel Hill General Alumni Association; and the University Award from The University of North Carolina Board of Governors.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program, 5/95)

Retired Army General Maxwell R. Thurman is a High Point native who earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from North Carolina State University in 1953.

After a distinguished military career that spanned 38 years, Thurman retired from the Army in 1991. One of the few non-West Point graduates to reach the four-star rank, Thurman was a principal architect of the all-volunteer Army. He played a major role in reshaping the Army’s image and recruitment success with the advertising campaign, “Be All That You Can Be–In the Army.”

He probably will be best remembered, however, as commander of “Operation Just Cause,” the invasion of Panama in 1989. As head of the U.S. Southern Command, Thurman orchestrated what was at the time the largest U.S. Military maneuver since the Vietnam War.

During his career, Thurman held a variety of command and staff positions both overseas and in the United States. He commanded light artillery and rocket units and served as an intelligence officer in Europe, served in the Middle East during the 1958 Lebanon crisis, and twice served in Vietnam.

Thurman commanded the 82nd Airborne Division Artillery, and from 1979 to 1981 was commander of the Army Recruiting Command. He was appointed vice chief of staff in 1983 and served as the Joint Chief of Staff in the absence of the chief of staff. In 1987 he assumed command of the Army Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, Va. He is credited with molding the Army’s “Air-Land” battle doctrine to capitalize on the sophisticated weapon systems and highly trained soldiers.

In 1991, Thurman was named executive-in-residence in what was then the NCSU Division of Economics and Business, now the NCSU College of Management. In that position, he helped design and participate in outreach programs to the local business community.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program, 12/95)

Raymond H. Dawson has been an integral part of the University of North Carolina for nearly four decades.

For 20 of those years, Dawson served as vice president for academic affairs and senior vice president of the 16-campus system. Upon his retirement in 1992, he continued as a member of the political science faculty at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

A native of Arkansas, Dawson earned his bachelor’s degree at the College of the Ozarks and his master’s degree at Vanderbilt University. He completed his doctorate in political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and joined the faculty there in 1958. He was named dean of the university’s College of Arts and Sciences and General College in 1968.

When the state’s public universities were restructured in 1972, Dawson left the Chapel Hill campus to become the top academic officer in the General Administration of the newly formed UNC system.

The author of two books and numerous scholarly articles, Dawson earned distinction for his achievements in teaching. He received UNC-Chapel Hill’s Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and the Danforth Foundation’s E. Harris Harbison Prize for Distinguished Teaching.

In 1987, the UNC-Chapel Hill General Alumni Association honored him with its Distinguished Service Medal.

During Dawson’s tenure with General Administration, he guided the university system’s academic programs, advised two presidents of UNC, and helped defend the UNC programs before the N.C. General Assembly. During his tenure, UNC’s enrollment rose from 88,000 to 147,000, system-wide minimum admissions requirements were adopted, and academic standards were raised on many campuses.

He also was the key negotiator in the system’s 10-year conflict over desegregation methods with the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and was the principal architect of the 1981 consent decree that led to a resolution of the crisis.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program, 12/95)

Burley B. Mitchell, Jr. was sworn in as the 24th chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court in January, 1995, promising to continue the court’s “great history of protecting rights.”

A Raleigh native, Mitchell graduated from North Carolina State University cum laude and the University of North Carolina School of Law, after serving in the U.S. Navy from 1958 to 1962 as a member of the 7th Fleet, Asia. Mitchell also is a graduate of the Senior Appellate Judges Seminar, New York University School of Law, and the Institute of Judicial Administration.

His career in justice began in 1969, when he became an assistant attorney general of North Carolina. He served as district attorney for the 10th Judicial District (Raleigh) from 1972 to 1977, prior to being appointed to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, where he served until 1979.

He was named secretary of the N.C. Department of Crime Control and Public Safety in 1979 and served in that post until 1982, when he was appointed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina. He was elected to retain his seat in 1982 and reelected in 1984 and 1992.

Governor James B. Hunt, Jr. appointed Mitchell to succeed the former Chief Justice James Exum, who retired in late 1994.

Mitchell’s career of public service includes serving as chair of the Governor’s Advisory Board on Prisons and Punishment; member and chair of the Governor’s Crime Commission; member of the N.C. Courts Commission; and member of the N.C. News Media Administration of Justice Board of Advisors.

He is a past recipient of numerous awards, including the Outstanding Young Man of the Year Award from the City of Raleigh, the Freedom Guard Award of Community, Religious and Governmental Activities from the N.C. Jaycees; the National Guard Citizenship Award; and N.C. State Outstanding Alumnus Award.

Justice Mitchell is married to the former Mary Lou Willett of Raleigh and has two children.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program, 5/94)

John Hope Franklin is a renowned educator, historian and author who is the James B. Duke Professor of History Emeritus at Duke University.

Dr. Franklin is a native of Oklahoma and a graduate of Fisk University. He received a master of arts degree and a doctoral degree in history from Harvard University.

From 1985 to 1992, Franklin was professor of legal history in the Duke University School of Law. Prior to that time he served as professor of history at several universities, including St. Augustine’s College, North Carolina College at Durham (now N. C. Central University), Howard University and Brooklyn College.

He was chairman of the History Department at the University of Chicago (1967-1970) and was named John Matthew Manly Distinguished Service Professor (1969-1982). Dr. Franklin also has served as professor at Cambridge University, England, and as visiting professor at Australian and New Zealand universities, Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin, Cornell University, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Hawaii.

He has written a number of books including “The Emancipation Proclamation,” “The Militant South,” “The Free Negro in North Carolina,” “Reconstruction After the Civil War,” and “A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North.”

Perhaps his best known books is “From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans.”

His most recent book is a collection of essays covering a teaching and writing career of 50 years. “Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938-1988″ was published early in 1990.

Dr. Franklin has served on many national commissions and delegations, including the National Council on the Humanities, from which he resigned in 1979 when he was appointed to the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. He also served on the President’s Advisory Commission on Ambassadorial Appointments.

He received the Council for the Jefferson Medal for 1984 presented by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, and was the first recipient of the Cleanth Brooks Medal by the Fellowship of Southern Writers in 1989. In 1990 he received the Encyclopedia Brittannica Gold Medal for the Dissemination of Knowledge.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program, 12/93)

Dr. Ernest L. Boyer has had a long and distinguished career in education. Since assuming the presidency of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1979, Boyer has helped shape the national education debate.

He is consistently cited as one of the foremost educators in the nation and in 1990 was named Educator of the Year by U.S. News and World Report.

During the past decade, Boyer has been Senior Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School and education columnist for The London Times. He was a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University and a Distinguished Fulbright scholar to India and Chile.

Boyer received his doctorate from the University of Southern California and was a post-doctoral fellow in medical audiology at the University of Iowa Hospital.

He came to the Carnegie Foundation after serving as U.S. Commissioner of Education under President Carter. Prior to this appointment, Boyer served for seven years as Chancellor of the State University of New York, with its 64 campuses and 350,000 students.

Boyer has written landmark books, including “High School: A Report on Secondary Education in America,” “College: the Undergraduate Experience,” “Campus Life,” “Scholarship Reconsidered,” and “Ready to Learn: A Mandate for the Nation.”

Boyer is a Quaker. He is married to the former Kathryn Garis Tyson, a certified nurse midwife. They have four children.

(Biography as published in Commencement Program, 5/91)

Fifty years ago, William C. Friday, class president, stood at the podium and addressed his fellow graduates of North Carolina State College’s Class of 1941. He urged them to “keep State College constantly in your mind. . . You and I are going to be held responsible in a great measure for the growth and progress of the institution.”

William Friday went a step further, however, and for the following 50 years has been an outstanding advocate not only for his alma mater, but for The University of North Carolina, and for American higher education.

While still a student, William Friday began turning heads. One journalist wrote prophetically in 1941, “This man Friday is a big operator. He hobnobs with North Carolina’s main-line politicians and gives every indication of being a coming member of that select coterie….He thinks nothing of running up to the Governor’s office for a chat….In recent weeks, with appropriations in mind, he has been buttonholing legislators to extoll State College and point to its needs. None close their minds to this friendly, frank-faced boy from Gaston.”

It surprised few that by his 15th class reunion, Friday had been named president of the Consolidated University of North Carolina. At 36 years old in 1956, he was one of the youngest university presidents, and certainly was one of few who had ascended to such academic heights without previous top administrative experience, or an advanced academic degree, or any classroom teaching experience.

Thirty years later, when he retired as president of The University of North Carolina system in 1986, he had left a legacy of national admiration for the state’s system of higher education. He had achieved that legacy not by heavy-handed autocracy, but by encouraging quiet cooperation and communication among his administrators.

Friday spent his boyhood in Dallas, N. C., where he was a debater, played baseball and wrote sports news for the Gastonia Gazette. He was president of his class each year in high school.

He entered Wake Forest College for one year and then transferred to North Carolina State College. At State he earned numerous awards, was sports editor of the Technician and president of the senior class. He earned a bachelor’s degree in textile engineering with honors.

After service as an ensign in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he entered law school at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he earned a degree in 1948. Shortly after, he married Ida Willa Howell of Lumberton.

Friday served as an assistant to Gordon Gray, president of the University of North Carolina, from 1951 to 1955. In 1956 he began his career as president–a career marked by smooth administrative leadership despite inevitable conflicts and controversies brought on by the system’s growing pains.

During his tenure, the system grew from three institutions to 16, its annual budget rose from $40.7 million to $1.5 billion, and enrollment climbed from 14,971 to 125,000 students.

Meanwhile, Friday guided American higher education as well, serving as chairman of numerous national panels including the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the American Council on Education, President Johnson’s Task Force on Education, President Carter’s Task Force on Education, the American Council on Education and the Knight Foundation National Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.

In 1985 he received the American Council on Education’s National Distinguished Service Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the following year was rated the most effective public university president in the nation by the Council of Advancement and Support of Education.

Through the years, Friday maintained first-hand contact with the people of North Carolina and hosted the television program “North Carolina People” for 19 years.

Friday continues his active role in academia as University Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.