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Journal Archive >
2002 > May Commencement 2002 Omidyars to deliver main address in ceremony that caps Tufts' 150th Internet pioneer Pierre Omidyar, founder of the wildly successful online auction service eBay, and his wife, Pamela Kerr Omidyar, will deliver the main address at Tufts' 146th commencement ceremonies on May 19. The couple, who met while undergraduates at Tufts, will join former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, humorist Roy Blount and a host of accomplished Tufts alumni for special graduation ceremonies marking the university's 150th anniversary this year.
"Pioneers and philanthropists, Pam and Pierre Omidyar have dedicated their lives to building and strengthening community through innovation, technology and activism," said Tufts President Lawrence S. Bacow, who will preside over his first Tufts commencement. "At Tufts, we believe very strongly in these ideals and are proud to see how effectively graduates like the Omidyars have incorporated them into their personal and professional lives." Pierre Omidyar, a 1988 graduate who majored in computer science, pioneered online person-to-person trading by creating eBay, a web-based community in which buyers and sellers are brought together in an auction-style format to trade personal items. Now a multi-million dollar corporation, eBay is the world's largest online marketplace and includes 42.4 million registered users who conduct $5 billion in transactions each year. Pam Omidyar earned her degree in biology from Tufts in 1989. Active citizenship "Pam and I want to make sure that in addition to a great education, Tufts students graduate with a 'personalized tool kit,' enabling them to dissect complex societal problems, ferret out their root causes and then mobilize the resources to solve them," Pierre Omidyar said. Said Pam Omidyar, "We're excited about supporting an environment that encourages experimentation and risk-taking so students and faculty can find and follow their civic passions to make a lifelong, positive difference in our society." Bacow, who noted that the Omidyars recently received the university's Light on the Hill award for accomplished alumni, praised the couple's work through their charitable foundation to expand and strengthen the roles of community and activism in the United States and around the world. "Together, Pierre and Pam have brought new focus and attention to education for active citizenship," Bacow said. "They are committed to making the world a better place, and they are willing to take risks to make it happen. They are wonderful exemplars of the kinds of alumni Tufts is proud to call its own." Honorary degree recipients John DiBiaggio, president emeritus, served as Tufts' 11th president from 1992 to 2001. He previously served as president of Michigan State University and the University of Connecticut. Among his achievements was the establishment of the University College of Citizenship and Public Service, which integrates the theory and application of active citizenship throughout Tufts' undergraduate, graduate and professional school curricula. In 1994, under his leadership, the university launched the Tufts Tomorrow fund-raising campaign, which will reach its goal of $600 million before concluding this year. Eugene Fama, a 1960 Tufts alumnus, helped write the book on modern finance. He is a professor of finance at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, where he also chairs the institution's Center for Research in Security Prices. Fama began teaching modern portfolio theory at Chicago in the 1960sÑbefore modern finance was an established field. His doctoral thesis, "The Behavior of Stock Market Prices," took up an entire issue of the university's esteemed Journal of Business, and the significance of that work had impact throughout the investment industry. Dr. Roderick MacKinnon, a 1982 graduate of Tufts School of Medicine, stands among the elite scientists of the past half-century as the winner of the 1999 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for his exploration of potassium ion channels in the human body and his precise description of how the body's electrical system works at the atomic level. The Lasker prizes, often called "America's Nobels," were established in 1946, and more than half of all Lasker winners since 1962 have gone on to win the Nobel Prize. The Rev. William G. Sinkford serves as president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, which played a key role in the founding of Tufts. When the charter was issued to the Trustees of Tufts College in 1852, it marked the Universalist Church's first venture into higher education. The first four presidents of TuftsÑHosea Ballou II, Alonzo Ames Miner, Elmer Hewitt Capen and Frederick W. HamiltonÑwere Universalist ministers. Sinkford was elected the seventh president of the Unitarian Universalist Association in June 2001 and is the first African American to lead this historically white denomination. Katherine Haley Will, a 1974 Tufts graduate, is the first woman president in Whittier College's 114-year history. She recently completed a strategic planning process that produced a 10-year plan for the college, located just outside of Los Angeles. Before joining Whittier, Will was provost and professor of English at Kenyon College in Ohio and associate academic dean at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D. School speakers
For additional information on Commencement 2002, visit these web sites: http://www.tufts.edu/communications/stories/ 021502TuftsCommencementSpeakers.htm
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