Theoretical physicist Shirley Ann Jackson will give Dartmouth's 2000 Commencement address June 11, the College announced yesterday. Jackson is President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and former Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In addition, a star-studded list of honorary degree recipients will include baseball legend and career home-run record holder Hank Aaron, former U. S. Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin and author of the "Harry Potter" books J. K. Rowling.
Rubin will also deliver the Tuck School of Business Investiture address. Author John Irving will deliver the Dartmouth Medical School's address. The Thayer School of Engineering's Investiture speaker will be Brent Frei '88 Th '89, founder of Onyx Software.
Jackson was the first African-American woman to earn a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the first two African-American women to earn a Ph.D. in physics in the United States.
She became a professor of physics at Rutgers University and then a research scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where her research interests included theoretical, solid state, quantum and optical physics.
She served as Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Committee from 1995"1999. Last year, she was named President of Rensselaer, becoming the first African-American woman to head a national research university.
Jackson is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Physical Society. Recently she received the Golden Torch Award for Lifetime Achievement in Academia from the National Society of Black Engineers, and in 1998 she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
"Dr. Jackson exemplifies the high standards of scholarly accomplishment, leadership and service which we work to cultivate at Dartmouth. She is an important voice in national science policy and in higher education. We are extremely pleased to have her participation as this year's Commencement speaker," Dartmouth President James Wright said in the statement announcing the decision.
While Jackson is not a household name, neither are the Commencement speakers at many other Ivy League universities.
Harvard's Commencement speaker will be Nobel laureate, economist and moral philosopher Amartya K. Sen.
At Princeton, the Commencement speaker is the University's president, but the Baccalaureate speaker will be Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan, a Princeton graduate.
The University of Pennsylvania will host 1995 Nobel laureate in Literature Seamus Heaney as its Commencement speaker and NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell as its graduation speaker for the College of Arts and Sciences.
Yale's Class Day speaker will be Bob Woodward, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Washington Post journalist who co-wrote a series of influential stories in the 1970s that broke open the Watergate scandal.
Brown, Columbia and Cornell do not invite Commencement speakers; their presidents speak instead.
In addition to Aaron, Rowling and Rubin, honorary degrees will be awarded to Audrey Stone Geisel, widow of Theodore Seuss Geisel '25 and president of the Dr. Seuss Foundation, which she founded after her husband's death; Hallmark Cards Chairman Donald Hall '50; and Norman E. "Sandy" McCulloch '50, Chairman of The Rhode Island Foundation, one of the nation's largest community foundations.
McCulloch was active in founding the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth and currently serves as chair of its Board of Visitors. The newest East Wheelock cluster residence hall is named in his honor.
As tradition dictates, other speakers at Commencement will include College President James Wright and the College's valedictorian, who will be announced the week before Commencement.
