Lyon to award two honorary doctorates at Commencement

The senior Class of 2006 won’t be the only people at Commencement receiving new degrees this year. The Lyon College Board of Trustees has voted to honor two men respected for their dedication to higher education by awarding them honorary doctorate degrees at the 2006 Commencement on Saturday, May 6.

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president of George Washington University, and Dr. Richard H. Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, will both receive the honorary doctorates from Lyon College during Commencement, which begins at 9 a.m. in Couch Garden.

Ekman will also be the keynote speaker at the graduation ceremony. His address, titled "Leaders and Learners," will focus on the enduring value of a liberal arts education and the importance of being able to think from a historical perspective.

Baccalaureate will be at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 5, in Brown Chapel. The Rev. W.W. “Bill” Branch, general presbyter of the Presbytery of Arkansas, will be the speaker. Liturgists will be the Rev. Steven Voris of Albuquerque, N.M., father of Lyon senior Tim Voris, and the Rev. Nancy McSpadden, College chaplain.

Lyon College will award Trachtenberg an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, and Ekman will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, (left) the 15th president of George Washington University, has held the post since 1988, the longest tenure of any GWU president. He previously held the position of president for 11 years at the University of Hartford. Before that, he was at Boston University for eight years serving as dean of arts and sciences and vice president.

Trachtenberg has written three books and numerous articles in academic and lay journals. Recognition for his contributions to education includes 13 honorary degrees prior to the one Lyon is giving him. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Council on Foreign Relations and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Trachtenberg earned the Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University in 1959, the Juris Doctor from Yale University in 1962 and the Master of Public Administration degree from Harvard University in 1966.

He most recently chaired the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) and is past chair of the Atlantic-10 Presidents Council, as well as the Washington Research Library Consortium. In 2004, he chaired the District of Columbia Chamber of Commerce. In 2003, he was presented with the Albert H. Sabin Humanitarian Award. In 2002, he received the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Medal of Merit. The U.S. State Department gave him its Distinguished Public Service Award in 1997 and in 1995, Columbia University honored him with their John Jay Award for Outstanding Professional Achievement.

Richard H. Ekman (right) served as vice president for programs of the Atlantic Philanthropic Service Co. before being appointed president of CIC in September of 2000. From 1991 to 1999, he served as secretary of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where he focused on issues in higher education, technology, libraries, area studies and faculty development. He’s also served as director of the division of education programs and of the division of research programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities.

His campus experience includes appointments as vice president and dean of Hiram College, where he was also a tenured member of the faculty in history who helped in efforts to develop a series of dual-degree programs with private universities across the nation that responded to growing interest in combining the benefits of an undergraduate liberal arts education with advanced professional preparation in selected fields. Prior to Hiram College, Ekman served as assistant to the provost of the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

Dr. Ekman holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University in the history of American civilization, the institution from which he also received his A.M. and A.B. (magna cum laude) degrees. He is co-author, with Richard E. Quandt, of “Technology and Scholarly Communication” (University of California Press, 1999).