December 1, 1997

Daniel Patrick Moynihan to Speak at Middlebury

College’s Commencement ‘98: Middlebury to Award Honorary

Degrees to Moynihan and Eight Others

U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York

will speak at Middlebury College’s Commencement ‘98 next May,

and receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Moynihan’s tie

to Middlebury dates back to World War II, when he was a member

of the U.S. Navy’s V-12 unit stationed at the College. By the

end of the war, over 1,200 Navy men from 20 different states had

studied at Middlebury as part of the preliminary portion of their

officer training program.

The College also will present honorary degrees to

seven other distinguished individuals, including Jamaica Kincaid,

a resident of Bennington, Vt., who will receive an honorary Doctor

of Letters degree. An author and former staff writer for “The

New Yorker,” Kincaid won the Morton Daween Zabel Award of

the American Academy and was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

Her latest book is “The Autobiography of My Mother.”

Another Vermont resident, Crea Lintilhac of the Lintilhac

Foundation in Shelburne, Vt., will receive an honorary Doctor

of Science degree. The foundation, which funds environmental and

social projects in Vermont, has supported the work of several

Middlebury professors, including Patricia Manley of the geology

department and her studies of Lake Champlain, and Steve Trombulak

of the biology department and his monitoring of amphibian populations

on Mount Mansfield.

The College will award Millard Dean Fuller, the founder

of Habitat for Humanity, an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters

degree.

James Ibbotson, a musician, composer, member of the

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and parent of a 1998 graduate, will receive

an honorary Doctor of Arts degree.

Anne Lincoln Bryant, executive director of the National

School Boards Association and former executive director of the

American Association of University Women, will receive an honorary

Doctor of Education degree.

The College will

award Alice F. Emerson, senior fellow at The Andrew W. Mellon

Foundation, an honorary Doctor of Letters degree. Dr. Emerson’s

vision of technology-enhanced language learning has led her to

support Middlebury as the leader of a nationwide collaborative

of 62 liberal arts colleges that seek to improve language instruction

through the use of technology.

Roch Thibodeau, a resident of Burlington,

Vt., who died earlier this year, was a leader of the Alliance

for the Mentally Ill of Vermont. The College will award him an

honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree posthumously.

Middlebury College Dean of Admissions

Emeritus Fred F. Neuberger, who worked at the College from 1955

to 1991, will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.