Drexel to Celebrate Commencement in Five Ceremonies on June 10-11

Drexel University will celebrate its 124th commencement on its University City Main campus with five separate ceremonies honoring Drexel’s graduating class, June 10-11. More than 5,000 students will receive a degree from Drexel this year. The ceremonies will be held at Drexel’s John A. Daskalakis Athletic Center, 33rd and Market Streets, and will be Webcast live at www.drexel.edu.

Nine honorary degrees will be awarded at the ceremonies. The recipients are listed below:

Friday, June 10
9:30 a.m. ceremony, honoring graduates of Drexel’s College of Engineering and School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems.

Paul E. Gray, Sc.D., president emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and professor emeritus in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Gray’s administration at MIT expanded industrial relations and developed major research in the areas of communications, health sciences and technology, microelectronics, and brain and cognitive science. He helped to establish the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), the Leaders for Manufacturing Program and MIT’s relationship with the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. Gray’s public service record includes four years on the White House Science Council and membership on the Council's Panel on the Health of Universities. He was also vice chairman of the Council on Competitiveness.

1:30 p.m. ceremony, honoring graduates of Drexel’s College of Arts and Sciences and the Goodwin College (including the School of Professional Studies and the School of Education).

Sara Manzano-Díaz, J.D., director of the Women’s Bureau at the United States Department of Labor. The Women’s Bureau is the only federal agency exclusively mandated to serve and promote the interests of working women. Manzano-Díaz has spent her career in public service advocating on behalf of working class families, women and girls, in such roles as Deputy Secretary of State for Regulatory Programs at the Pennsylvania Department of State, as a member of Governor Ed Rendell’s STEM Initiative Team, as Deputy General Counsel for Civil Rights and Litigation at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and as an Assistant Attorney General in New York.


Saturday, June 11
9 a.m. ceremony, honoring graduates of Drexel’s LeBow College of Business.

Joseph A. Frick, vice chairman and managing partner of Diversified Search, an executive search firm headquartered in Philadelphia, and vice chair of the Independence Blue Cross (IBC) Board of Directors. Frick retired from IBC in December, 2010 after 18 years with the company and nearly six years serving as its president and CEO. Frick is a former chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce and currently serves on the boards of the Chamber and its CEO Council for Growth. He is the current chair of the United Way Southeastern PA's annual regional campaign as well as serves as a member of the organization’s Board of Directors and Executive Committee. Frick is also a member of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer, a non-profit organization of action-oriented executives committed to fighting cancer.

Mary L. Schapiro, J.D., chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and the first woman to serve as the agency’s permanent chairman. Schapiro was appointed by President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009, unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and sworn in on January 27, 2009. Prior to becoming SEC chairwoman, she was CEO of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) — the largest non-governmental regulator for all securities firms doing business with the U.S. public. She previously served as Chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and as a Commissioner of the SEC from December 1988 to October 1994, receiving appointments to the Commission from three presidents in addition to President Obama.


1p.m. ceremony, honoring graduates of Drexel’s College of Nursing and Health Professions and School of Public Health.

Edward H. O’Neil, Ph.D., MPA, FAAN, a professor in the departments of Family and Community Medicine, Preventive and Restorative Dental Sciences and Social and Behavioral Sciences (School of Nursing) at the University of California, San Francisco. He also serves as the director of the Center for the Health Professions, a research, advocacy and training institute which he created to assist health care professionals, health professions schools, care delivery organizations and public policy makers understand the challenges and opportunities of educating and managing a health care workforce capable of improving the health and well-being of people and their communities.

Uwe E. Reinhardt, Ph.D., a leading health policy expert and a professor of political economy and economics and public affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Reinhardt has served on a number of government commissions and advisory boards, among them the Physician Payment Review Commission (now MedPAC), and the Veterans Administration’s Special National Medical Advisory Commission. Reinhardt is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, on whose Governing Council he served from 1979 to 1982. He is past president of the Association of Health Services Research and of the Foundation for Health Services Research.

4:30 p.m. ceremony, honoring graduates from the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design and The iSchool at Drexel, College of Information Science and Technology.

Corey Flintoff, a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio whose career has taken him to more than 50 countries, most recently to Egypt, to cover the revolution, and to Afghanistan, to report on the Afghan War. He is currently based in New Delhi, India. Prior to joining the NPR Foreign Desk, Flintoff spent many years as one of the evening newscasters on All Things Considered. He got his start in public radio in 1977 at KYUK, in Bethel, Alaska, and later served as the executive producer for the Alaska Public Radio Network in Anchorage.

Guy G. Garrison, Ph.D., emeritus professor and emeritus dean of Drexel University’s Graduate School of Library Science, as it was then known. Garrison joined Drexel in 1968 and served as dean for 19 years until 1987, and continued to serve as the first Alice B. Kroeger Professor until his retirement in 1992. During Garrison’s years as dean, the College diversified its faculty, strengthened its research efforts, and changed its name to School of Library and Information Studies in 1984, when a bachelor of information systems was introduced. By that point a Ph.D. program had already been launched and the first doctoral degree awarded in 1976. Garrison is a life member of the American Library Association, and has held many positions in that organization.

Melba Pearlstein, an emeritus trustee of Drexel and the president of the Leonard Pearlstein Family Foundation. Pearlstein has been affiliated with Drexel since 1980 when she was part of the group that established the Friends of Design Arts, and served as a university trustee from 1996 to 2003. Pearlstein has also held positions as a trustee of the National Disease Research Interchange Society and board member of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. The Leonard Pearlstein Endowed Scholarship Fund, the Leonard Pearlstein Business Learning Center, and the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery in the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, were all established in honor of her late husband, also a former trustee of the university.

News media contact:
Niki Gianakaris, director of Media Relations, Office of University Communications
215-895-6741, 215-778-7752 (cell) or ngianakaris@drexel.edu