Jeffrey Immelt, CEO and chairman of General Electric, will address the Boston College Class of 2010 at the University's 134th Commencement Exercises on May 24.
General Electric CEO Among Six Honorary Degree Recipients
Commencement 2010: GE CEO will speak; BC to also honor Bryk, Harrington, Moore, Sister Hart, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor
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Jeffrey Immelt, whose tenure as CEO and chairman of General Electric has earned accolades from the international business press, will address the Boston College Class of 2010 at the University's 134th Commencement Exercises on May 24.Immelt will receive an Honorary Doctor of Business Administration degree at the ceremonies, which begin at 10 a.m. in Alumni Stadium (Conte Forum in case of rain).
Boston College also will present honorary degrees to: urban education reform expert Anthony Bryk '70, president of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; Yawkey Foundations Chairman and Trustee and former Red Sox CEO John Harrington '57, MBA '66; Sister Mary Hart, RGS, who has dedicated years of service to children in Roxbury and beyond; Joy Haywood Moore '81, deputy head of the academy at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa; Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, archbishop emeritus of Westminster and member of the Congregation for Bishops and the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
Jeffrey Immelt succeeded acclaimed business leader Jack Welch as chairman and CEO of General Electric in 2001. Four days after his tenure began, he was forced to confront the September 11 terrorist attacks that resulted in the deaths of two GE employees, the loss of $600 million in its insurance division and the catastrophic effect on its aircraft engine sector.
Immelt, however, successfully guided GE through the post-9/11 era, and today the company is the world's biggest maker of jet engines, locomotives, medical-imaging equipment and power plant turbines, producing $20 billion in exports. GE has been named "America's Most Admired Company" in a poll conducted by Fortune magazine and one of "The World's Most Respected Companies" in polls by Barron's and the Financial Times. Immelt has been selected as one of the "World's Best CEOs" three times by Barron's, and Time magazine included him among the world's most influential people in 2008.
Born in Cincinnati to a schoolteacher mother and a father who managed the General Electric Aircraft Engines Division, Immelt - who holds degrees from Dartmouth College and Harvard Business School - joined GE in 1982, working in the company's Plastics, Appliances and Medical businesses. He became an officer of GE in 1989 and joined the GE Capital Board in 1997.
In February 2009, Immelt was appointed to the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide President Obama and his administration with advice and counsel in fixing America's economic downturn.
Anthony S. Bryk '70, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, has both inspired and informed school reform efforts across the country.
In 2008, Bryk became the ninth president of the Carnegie Foundation, an independent policy and research center that aims to support changes in American education by building stronger connections between teaching and learning. Since then, the foundation has focused on identifying and promoting strategies to improve college success rates for students attending community college, and provided detailed analysis on successful models for improving attendance and test scores in public schools.
A consulting professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford University, Bryk also taught at the University of Chicago, where he was the Marshall Field IV Professor of Urban Education. While in Chicago, Bryk founded the Center for Urban School Improvement, an organization that supports reform in Chicago Public Schools, and the Consortium on Chicago School Research, a federation of research groups that study ways to advance and assess urban school reform.
Bryk has been honored with the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation Prize for Distinguished Contributions to Education and Scholarship by the Fordham Foundation, and the American Educational Research Association's highest honor, the Distinguished Career Contributions Award.
John Harrington '57, MBA '66 is a familiar name to the Boston College community and to baseball's Red Sox Nation, but his generous work in charitable circles as the chairman and trustee of The Yawkey Foundations qualifies him as an "All-Star" of even greater magnitude.
As steward of the foundations created by the late Thomas A. Yawkey and his wife Jean - the long-time owners of the Boston Red Sox - former team executive Harrington has overseen the distribution of millions of dollars to numerous organizations that support a wide variety of worthy causes, including education, medical research, family services and nature preservation.
An accounting and finance specialist, Harrington began his long association with the Yawkey family in 1973 when he was named treasurer of the Boston Red Sox. He later served as Red Sox CEO from 1992-2002. Harrington was a Boston College trustee from 1998-2006 and continues to serve as a trustee associate. He was also elected president of the Boston College Alumni Association and received the William V. McKenney Award, the Alumni Association's highest honor.
For nearly 30 years, Sister Mary Hart, RGS, has run after-school and summer camp programs in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood, first at St. Francis-St. Philip Parish and, since 2005, at Saint Katharine Drexel. With a focus directed on literacy, leadership and academic enrichment, Sister Hart's program has earned praise from parents and children and accolades from city and school officials.
A member of the order of Sisters of the Good Shepherd whose career spans more than 50 years, Sister Hart serves approximately 75 children ages 5-14, was drawn to parish work two decades ago, after serving at a residential program for teenage girls with special needs.
Sister Hart's work with the neighborhood's children has received honors reserved for the city's "unsung" heroes. In 2009, she received the Robert L. Ruffin Award and in 2007 she was one of six Bostonians to receive The Philanthropic Initiative's Boston Neighborhood Fellows Award, which was presented by Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino.
Joy Haywood Moore '81, an educator and champion of girls' schools, has been a chief administrator for two years at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, which offers hundreds of girls in grades 7-12 the opportunity to develop their full intellectual, social and leadership potential.
Moore's career has been dedicated to leading young women on an educational path that encourages achievement, growth and leadership. She served as the interim head of school and associate head of school at The Archer School for Girls in Los Angeles, and Moore held several positions at Dana Hall School in Wellesley.
She also has served as a trustee for the National Coalition of Girls' Schools and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, on the board of directors for the Women's Lunch Place, as well as several other civic groups. She is a member of the South African Heads of Independent Schools Association and the South African Girls' School Association. Moore also worked at BC with the Alumni Association, Development Office and Boston College Police Department.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, archbishop emeritus of Westminster, was installed as head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales in 2000. He was among the Cardinal electors who participated in the 2005 papal conclave that selected Pope Benedict XVI. Last October, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor was appointed by the Pope to two important Vatican congregations that select bishops for most dioceses of the Catholic Church worldwide, the Congregation for Bishops and the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
In 2002 in Westminster Abbey, he was the first cardinal to read prayers at an English Royal Funeral Service - for the Queen Mother - since 1509. Former president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, he is the author of two books, The Family of the Church and At the Heart of the World.
Born in Reading, England, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor is one of six children, three of whom became priests. He was ordained in 1956 after graduating in philosophy and theology from the Venerable English College in Rome, and in 2006 celebrated 50 years of ordination with a Jubilee Mass in Westminster Cathedral. Although he retired as archbishop last year, he remains active in the College of Cardinals.
For information on the 2010 Commencement Exercises, see www.bc.edu/commencement.