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School's 104th Commencement Packs Zellerbach HallA full house filled the orchestra section of Zellerbach Hall for the Graduate School of Education Commencement on Saturday, May 12, 2001. The graduates included sisty M.A. recipients, twenty-six Ph.D.s, and two Ed.D.s. This year's degrees included the first two graduates of the American Indian Leadership Program, where UC Berkeley recruited prominent figures from Native American communities in the Southwest interested in focusing their careers on education. "This was one of the best experiences in education for us because of the flexibility and challenge it provided for all of us," said Mary Eunice Romero, a member of the Cochiti Pueblo tribe who received her Ph.D. When she was called up to the stage to be hooded, she draped her advisors, Professors Lily Wong Fillmore and Glynda Hull, in hand-woven shawls from her tribe which she presented as gifts. Dr. Romero is currently doing research at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The other graduate of the program who received her Ph.D. this year is Christine Sims. GSE graduates also included Megan Alyssa Jones, who is hearing impaired and legally blind. She receive a Ph.D. "I've been at Cal since I was an undergraduate," she said. "I've learned a lot about life and academics. In the fall, I'll be taking a job as a professor at the University of Hawaii." Her disseration was on services for the deafblind in the United Kingdom. Friends and relatives, numbering over thirty, came from as far away as Wales, Michigan and Washington State to wish her well at Commencement. Nick Harris, who was a first team All-American football player at Cal, received an M.A. in Education. He has signed on as the punter for the Denver Broncos in the fall. MUSE English Credential Program graduate Kristin Land entertained the audience with a humorous journal of her years as a grad student and apprentice teacher. Her talk showed how idealism can survive the most difficult circumstances when tempered with humility and humor. She confessed she once wanted to say to her class, "May you all have twins just like yourselves." Ph.D. graduate Brian Bielenberg, representing the doctoral students, gave an impassioned speech on the imperative to improve education and society. "Do we want a new generation of fighter jets, or schools for a new generation?" he challenged. He urged the graduates to use their knowledge to influence not just schools but the nation's priorities so that education will have greater weight. Professor Eugene Garcia, presiding over his last Commencement as dean, gave the keynote address. He spoke about his childhood growing up in rural Colorado, and the way the North Star had always been a symbol for him of keeping on course. Dean Garcia told the graduates to be cynosures themselves, "to do right things and to do things right." This was the first year to confer degrees for the new dean of the Graduate Division, Mary Ann Mason. She was surprisingly personal, recounting how a particular high school teacher had changed her daughter's life. "The graduate program that is providing the greatest service to society is education," she stated. Ronni Gravitz, president of the Education Alumni Association, welcomed the graduates as new members. She also conferred the Outstanding Dissertation Awards on Margaret Elisabeth Perrow and Douglas Burton Clark. Dr. Perrow gave a moving talk about her research in post-apartheid South Africa, and cited the Zulu concept of ubuntu, mutual responsibility, as an important influence on her own life and research. She used a joke to illustrate her point: "One of the young adult participants in the job preparation program I studied defined the effect of ubuntu this way," she said. "'If you go to other people's funerals, they'll come to yours.'" |
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