Skidmore's 96th Commencement scheduled May 19 at SPAC

Approximately 600 members of the Class of 2007 will receive bachelor's degrees at Skidmore's 96th commencement exercises on Saturday, May 19. The ceremony, open to the public, will begin at 11 a.m. at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

Forty-two students in the College's University Without Walls also will receive bachelor's degrees. In addition, the college will award 10 master of arts in liberal studies degrees.

Skidmore will award honorary doctoral degrees to three distinguished guests: Tom Brokaw, NBC News special correspondent and former anchor and managing editor of the "NBC Nightly News"; Linda Greenhouse, New York Times Supreme Court correspondent since 1978; and Nora Naranjo-Morse, distinguished sculptor, writer, and producer of films that look at the continuing social changes within the Pueblo culture. Each degree recipient will address the audience.

Following tradition, the keynote commencement address will be given by a faculty member – this year, Assistant Professor of English Linda Hall – chosen by the graduating class. President Philip A. Glotzbach will address the graduates and their guests, as will Kyle Paolantonio, president of the Class of 2007.

Keynote speaker Hall came to Skidmore in 2003 from New York City, where she taught at Fordham and Columbia universities. She earned a B.A. degree from Sarah Lawrence and an M.F.A. degree from Columbia. She received the 2006 McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Nonfiction. A former staff writer for New York magazine, Hall has had essays and reviews published in Southwest Review, Under the Sun, Salmagundi, The American Prospect, and The Hudson Review. Two of her essays were cited as “notable” by The Best American Essays.

Biographical profiles of the degree recipients follow:

Tom Brokaw
News anchor and author Tom Brokaw served 21 years as the anchor and managing editor of “NBC Nightly News,” stepping down as anchor in 2004 but continuing at NBC, where he reports and produces long-form documentaries and critical expertise during breaking news events.
Brokaw began his journalism career in 1962 at KMTV in Omaha, Neb. NBC News hired him in 1966 and from 1976 to 1981 he anchored the network’s “Today” program. He has covered every presidential election since 1968 and was NBC’s White House correspondent from 1973 to 1976.  

In addition to “Nightly News,” Brokaw reported a series of hour-long documentaries titled “Tom Brokaw Reports,” on such topics as literacy, affirmative action, drunk driving, corporate scandals, immigration, and education. He also is the author of articles, essays, and commentary published in the mainstream media as well as the following books: The Greatest Generation (1998), The Greatest Generation Speaks (1999), An Album of Memories (2001), and A Long Way from Home (2002).

His numerous honors include the Peabody Award, the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism, the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award, an Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement, and induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Linda Greenhouse
Linda Greenhouse returns to Skidmore for commencement, having delivered in 2005 the college’s annual Ronald J. Fiscus Lecture. At that time, she spoke on “Court, Country, and Culture,” topics very familiar to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has covered the U.S. Supreme Court for The New York Times since 1978. She has also covered Congress and the New York State Legislature for the paper.

A 1968 graduate of Radcliffe College at Harvard, Greenhouse earned a Master of Studies in Law degree at Yale University on a Ford Foundation fellowship.

She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and an honorary member of the America Law Institute. In addition, she is a vice president of the Women’s Forum of Washington, D.C., and serves on the council of the Schlesinger Library on the History of American Women, at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Her awards include the 2002 Henry J. Friendly Medal for contributions to the law, from the American Law Institute; the 2002 Golden Pen Award from the Legal Writing Institute; the Carey McWilliams Award from the American Political Science Association; the Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting in 1998; and the 1993 John Peter Zenger Special Media Award from the New York State Bar Association.

Nora Naranjo-Morse
A sculptor whose primary media are clay and bronze, Nora Naranjo-Morse has work in the collections of the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Ariz., the Minnesota Institute of Art in Minneapolis, and the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff. She has been featured in group and solo exhibitions at the White House, the Portland Art Museum, Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa, and the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M. In 2002, she was a featured artist in “Staging the Indian: The Politics of Representation,” at Skidmore’s Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery.

"For hundreds of years Pueblo people have treasured their powerful relationship with clay," wrote Naranjo-Morse in the preface to her book of poetry, Mud Woman (1992, University of Arizona Press). She has received fellowships from the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, Ind., and the South Western Association of Indian Affairs; and residencies from the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff and the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, Calif. She is the mother of Eliza Sartori Naranjo-Morse, a member of Skidmore’s Class of 2003.