Willamette Sends Off Class of 2007
Sunny spring skies presided over Commencement May 13 as the graduates of 2007 gathered under the big white canopy on the Quad.
Libby Appel, longtime artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, addressed the 469 members of the College of Liberal Arts Class of 2007 and the 90 School of Education graduates receiving master of arts in teaching degrees. Appel, the first woman to hold the festival’s top artistic post, was awarded an honorary doctor of fine arts degree. Honorary degrees were also awarded to Mercy Corps founder Dan O’Neill (honorary doctor of humane letters), physicist and Professor Carl E. Wieman (honorary doctor of science), and Cao Jianming, vice president of the People’s Supreme Court in China (honorary doctor of laws).
Members of the CLA Class of 2007 hail from 26 states and seven countries — the U.S., Bulgaria, Ecuador, Japan, Sweden, Thailand and Vietnam. About 38.5 percent of the graduates are from Oregon. The class is 59 percent female, and the top five majors are psychology, biology, economics, English and Spanish. One graduate has a triple major, and 69 have double majors.
The other graduate schools held Commencement earlier in the day. The College of Law awarded 148 JD degrees and one LLM degree, and the class was addressed by Steven T. Wax, federal public defender for the District of Oregon. Atkinson Graduate School of Management awarded 51 MBA degrees during their ceremony in Hudson Hall, and the graduates heard from Tim Boyle, president and CEO of Columbia Sportswear Company.
