School Celebrates 102nd Commencement

On a gorgeous spring afternoon, 88 students received their diplomas in the School's graduation ceremony at Zellerbach Hall on Saturday, May 15, 1999. Dr. Marisi Nerad, director of research at UC Berkeley's Graduate Division, and an alumna of the School of Education (Ph.D., '88) gave the keynote address. She spoke about a study she is conducting of Ph.D. graduates ten years after they finished their degrees, and reported that "Ninety-five percent of all respondents- nearly 4,000 people- felt that it was worthwhile to have completed their graduate degrees." She emphasized that graduate education should include opportunities to work in teams, since many in her survey reported that their work required participation in that area- an opportunity not always included in higher education.

Eric Scott Lewis, earning his credential and master's in the MACSME program, spoke as a representative of the graduating teacher education students. His talk emphasized the high skill-level he saw in his classmates, observing that they were joining the teaching profession because it was their calling, and that they could have chosen many other careers.

Ben Zion Loewy spoke on behalf of the doctoral students, remembering when he bought his textbooks on the first day of class, and they landed "with a resounding thud" on his kitchen table, indicating the volume of work he had ahead of him. He complimented Deborah Friedman, coordinator of Student Academic Services, on her advising of graduate students, saying, "Meeting Deborah was the equivalent of finding out that the answers to all the odd number problems are in the back of your math book."

Outstanding Disseration Awards went to Theo Dawson (Ph.D., '98), whose lifespan study on "developmental and conceptual features of evaluative reasoning about education" was advised by Elliot Turiel; and to Philip Vahey (Ph.D., '98), who wrote his thesis on promoting student understanding of probability using a technology-mediated inquiry environment- Bernard Gifford chaired his dissertation committee.

Associate Dean Joseph Duggan of the Graduate Division conferred the degrees. Duggan, who often plays the 'bad cop' in enforcing Graduate Division regulations, surprised the assembly with his humor. Duggan is a scholar of medieval literature, and he remarked that he liked graduation because, "There are only two days of the year when I can dress up like someone from the Middle Ages: Halloween and Commencement." He reminded the graduates that the word "master" as in "Master of Arts" was related to both the Latin word "magister," meaning teacher, and the word "magus," meaning magician. "Doctor," he explained, comes from the past participle of the Latin verb to teach, indicating that a doctoral graduate is someone who has been thoroughly taught- "taught to death, I suspect, in many cases."

Dean Garcia presented School Psychology doctoral candidate Sheri Castro with her Master's Degree