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Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to Speak at Sunday's Commencement

On Sunday, May 25, Madeleine K. Albright, the first woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State, will deliver Mount Holyoke's 160th commencement address. Commencement ceremonies will begin at 10:30 am at the Gettell Amphitheater. The subject of Albright's speech has not been set.

It is expected that 520 seniors will receive bachelor's degrees from President Creighton. Three master's degrees and sixteen certificates will also be awarded. Among the graduates will be a mother-daughter pair, Carrianna Field and her FP mother, Janet Field of Chelsea, VT.

<<< The big day approaches--Spirits were high at last year's commencement (above) and the class of 1997 is equally psyched to be graduating.

In addition to Albright's address, Student Government Association president Chandra Dunn '97 will speak to the crowd during commencement ceremonies. At baccalaureate on Saturday, May 24, the speakers will be Amy E. Auzenne '97; Andreana L. Overton '97; Preston H. Smith II, assistant professor of politics; and Elizabeth Topham Kennan, president emeritus.

Before being confirmed as secretary of state, Albright was the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations. A member since 1993 of President Clinton's cabinet and the National Security Council, she has had a long and distinguished career as a diplomat, policy analyst, and scholar. Among many other positions, she has also served as president of the Center for National Policy and as Donner Professor of International Affairs and director of the Women in Foreign Service Program at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.

It is particularly fitting that Albright, as a female cabinet member, deliver the commencement address at the alma mater of America's first female cabinet member, Frances Perkins. (Perkins served as labor secretary under President Franklin Roosevelt.)

Albright will receive an honorary degree along with five others noted for their distinguished contributions in fields ranging from neurophysiology to literature: Linda Chavez-Thompson, first executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, who has more than a quarter century's experience as an aggressive and effective labor leader; Aminata Sow Fall, who has been described as the most important Senegalese writer of her generation; Gloria Johnson Powell '58, who is a professor of child psychiatry at Harvard University Medical School and director of the Camille Cosby Ambulatory Care Center at the Judge Baker Children's Center in Boston; Anneli Cahn Lax, who is professor emeritus of mathematics at New York University, and one of her generation's best researchers in applied mathematics; and Arturo Madrid, who is Murchison Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University in Texas and a major influence on the national articulation, critical examination, support, and defense of Latino concerns in the United States.