Dear Class of 2002,
We recently got this email from the Chair of the Honorary Degree Committee of the Alumni Council. It is a call for nominations of alumni/ae for Honorary Degrees, to be awarded at the June 2010 Commencement. See below.
Vanessa Green, '02 President
Phil Mone, '02 Vice President
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Dear Class and Club Presidents:
I want to introduce myself as the chair of the Honorary Degree Committee of the Dartmouth Alumni Council for the 2009-10 academic year, and would like to solicit your input. As you may be aware, approximately 6-8 honorary degrees are awarded each June at graduation with 1 or 2 of them granted to Dartmouth alumni. The mission of the Honorary Degree Committee is to recommend a handful of Dartmouth alums each year to the President's office for consideration for this prestigious honor. The criteria we look for in awarding an honorary degree to an Alumnus include professional achievement, philanthropic/civic/community service and a track record of post-graduation involvement with the College. As you can see from the list below of the 18 alumni who have received this award over the past decade, it includes a broad range of business executives, educators, artists, scientists and community leaders who have distinguished themselves, often not only in one, but multiple areas.
I am hoping that you can help the Honorary Degree Committee identify some good candidates we might not otherwise come across. Your assistance is critical to our process, as we work independently from the administration and want to cull names from a variety of sources. Our ongoing mission is to consistently build our database to include a robust pipeline, particularly in classes that are more than 25 years past graduation. Our vetting is often a multi-year process and names often come up on more than one occasion, so the key is to create a pipeline that is reviewed on a regular basis.
Please contact Suzanne Young '77 (suzanne.young@dartmouth.edu), our Committee's secretary and the College's Senior Associate Director of Alumni Regional Affairs, with any alumni names you would like us to consider. Please include a brief description of the person and your rationale for their consideration, focusing on the criteria mentioned above. As you can imagine, we deal in strict confidentiality and would ask that you do the same. It is important to note that our Committee's input is only part of the overall process; it is the President's Office that makes the final determination each year, in which a number of other factors might come into play.
Finally, keep in mind that the College does not bestow Honorary Degrees posthumously.
On behalf of the Honorary Degrees Committee, I thank you, in advance for your assistance. We look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Louisa C. Guthrie '79
Chair, Honorary Degree Committee
2009-2010 Alumni Council
Alumni/na Honorary Degree Recipients 2000-2009
Donald J. Hall '50
Norman E. McCulloch, Jr. '50
Ira Heyman '51
Fred McFeely Rogers '50
E. John Rosenwald Jr. '52 T'53
Robert P. Henderson '53 T'54
Frederick Whittemore '53 T'54
Richard Page '54
Lo-Yi Chan '54
Jeffrey Immelt '78
Gordon Russell '55
Robert Barry '56
Chiharu Igaya '57
Erich Kunzel '57
Henry Paulson '68
Richard Hill '41 T'42
Ralph Manuel '58 T'59
Louise Erdrich '76
