Lesley University Commencement to be held May 16 in Boston
April 29, 2009
Lesley University’s 2009 commencement ceremonies will be held Saturday, May 16 at Bank of America Pavilion in Boston.
Lesley will confer degrees on more than 3,100 graduates this year, including more than 2,500 Master’s degrees, nearly 500 Bachelor’s degrees and four Ph.Ds. Ceremonies will begin at 10 a.m. for graduates of Lesley College and The Art Institute of Boston and 2 p.m. for the School of Education and the Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences.
Graduates at the morning ceremony will be addressed by Arthur creator Marc Brown and graphic designer Luba Lukova. Graduates at the afternoon commencement will be addressed by MacArthur-winning sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot and Shakespeare & Company founder Tina Packer. Each of the speakers will receive an honorary degree.
Marc Brown
The honorary degree recipients reflect Lesley University’s educational mission to prepare graduates with the knowledge and skills to be the catalysts who are shaping a more just, humane and sustainable world.
Marc Brown is the creator of Arthur, the star of a series of bestselling books and of the popular PBS Emmy and Peabody Award-winning children’s show of the same name. Brown is an executive producer for PBS and the creator of another popular PBS children’s show, Postcards from Buster. As the author and illustrator of more than 100 picture books for children, Brown offers stories for children that both educate and entertain. Prior to his encounter with Arthur, Brown held many different jobs, including truck driver, soda jerk, actor, chicken farmer, television art director, short order cook, and college professor.
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, a MacArthur-prize-winning sociologist, is the Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education at Harvard University, where she has been on the faculty since 1972. Educator, researcher, author and public intellectual, Lawrence-Lightfoot has written nine books including The Good High School: Portraits of Character and Culture which received the 1984 Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research Association, Balm in Gilead: Journey of A Healer, which won the 1988 Christopher Award, given for “literary merit and humanitarian achievement,” Respect: An Exploration, The Essential Conversation: What Parents and Teachers Can Learn From Each Other and her most recent, The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50. Her volume, The Art and Science of Portraiture, documents her pioneering approach to social science methodology which bridges the realms of aesthetics and empiricism.
Luba Lukova
Luba Lukova is an internationally recognized, New York-based, Bulgarian-born artist. One of the most distinctive image makers working today, she expertly blends human forms and objects to express elemental and universal themes that include love, envy, peace, war, hunger and ecology. Her original art uses metaphors, the juxtaposition of symbols and very few lines and text to best capture the essence of basic humanity. She is highly regarded for her New York Times op-ed illustrations and has received many distinguished commissions. As a visiting artist at The Art Institute of Boston in fall 2008, Lukova gave a lecture and presented Social Justice at both The Art Institute of Boston Main Gallery and The Gallery at University Hall. The works in Social Justice use Lukova’s signature style to comment on the great questions of our time including Health Coverage, Income Gap and Censorship.
Tina Packer
Tina Packer is a British-born actress, director, and author who founded Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass. in 1978 and has served as artistic director since its founding. The company is central to cultural life in the Berkshires with a reputation for quality that extends far beyond Massachusetts. In Britain, Packer was an associate artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company, performed in the West End and acted with repertory companies in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leicester and Coventry. Packer has worked for the BBC and ITV television companies and in film and is the author of Shakespeare’s Lessons in Leadership and Management, co-authored with John O. Whitney, as well as Tales from Shakespeare, an adaptation for children of Shakespeare’s plays.
For more details, visit the commencement website.