From human rights to the worldwide struggle in opposition to HIV/AIDS, from the heights of science and the apex of the regulation, from Germany to Ellington, the honored visitors of UConn’s graduation ceremonies carry a wealth of expertise, perception, and knowledge to share with this 12 months’s graduates.
Audio system on the ceremonies, which start on Could 7, embrace:
College of Social Work, Could 7, 1:30 p.m., Jorgensen Middle for the Performing Arts
Speaker and Honorary Diploma Recipient: Jody Ok. Olsen, Ph.D., 20th Director of the Peace Corps
Josephine (Jody) Olsen served because the 20th Director of the Peace Corps between March, 2018 – January, 2021. With the start of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, Olsen made the unprecedented resolution to evacuate all 7,000 Peace Corps Volunteers from 61 nations safely again to america. Olsen additionally championed world ladies’s financial empowerment, opened Peace Corps in a brand new nation, Viet Nam, and re-opened three nations wherein Peace Corps had beforehand served.
Olsen started her profession as a Peace Corps Volunteer, serving as an schooling Volunteer in Tunisia from 1966-1968. She has additionally served the company in 5 different senior degree positions, together with Deputy Director. She is at the moment finishing a semester as Resident Fellow on the IOP Harvard Kennedy College.
Previous to returning to the Peace Corps in 2018, Olsen was Visiting Professor on the College of Maryland-Baltimore College of Social Work and Director of the College’s Middle for World Training for eight years the place she developed and directed inter-professional world well being tasks for well being graduate college students, and taught worldwide social work, world social coverage, and world well being.
Olsen acquired a BS from the College of Utah, a Grasp’s in Social Work from the College of Maryland, Baltimore, and a Ph.D. in Human Improvement from the College of Maryland, School Park. Amongst her awards, she has acquired the College of Maryland President’s Award, the College of Utah’s alumni of the 12 months award, and honorary doctorates from Michigan Technological College and the Rochester Institute of Know-how.
UConn Well being (College of Drugs and College of Dental Drugs), Could 9, 1:00 p.m., Jorgensen Middle for the Performing Arts, Speaker and Honorary Diploma Recipient: Dr. William G. Nelson, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Nelson is the Marion I. Knott Professor of Oncology and Director of the Sidney Kimmel Complete Most cancers Middle at Johns Hopkins. As Director, Dr. Nelson oversees an internationally famend most cancers middle that sees greater than 13,000 new most cancers sufferers and garners greater than $150 million in direct prices for analysis every year. He at the moment holds Professorships in Oncology, Drugs, Pharmacology, Pathology, Radiation Oncology, Urology, and Environmental Well being Sciences – probably the most ever at Johns Hopkins. He additionally maintains a joint appointment on the Howard College School of Drugs.
His analysis targeted on the molecular pathogenesis of prostate most cancers. In 1941, Charles B. Huggins described helpful responses of superior prostate most cancers to castration, a discovering for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize. For greater than half a century afterward, the origin of prostate most cancers itself was attributed to an over-abundance of male hormones. Dr. Nelson, his colleagues, and his trainees found that prostate cancers arose not in response to androgen stimulation, however fairly as a consequence of continual or recurrent irritation. They went on to explain the important thing pre-cancerous lesion within the prostate, proliferative inflammatory atrophy (PIA), and to report the commonest acquired genome defect in prostate most cancers, epigenetic ‘silencing’ of the carcinogen-detoxification gene GSTP1.
These analysis findings about the reason for human prostate most cancers have had a lot of sensible purposes. First, PIA lesions seem to come up upon publicity to repeated infections and to carcinogens current in over-cooked meats, offering a mechanistic foundation for a lot of population-scale associations of way of life and prostate most cancers danger. Second, molecular diagnostic assays for GSTP1 epigenetic defects kind the premise for US and European regulatory agency-approved exams for prostate most cancers prognosis. Lastly, a number of of the molecular mechanisms recognized have fueled a wave of recent drug growth for prostate most cancers prevention and remedy.
Dr. Nelson can be extremely wanted as a lay communicator for most cancers drugs and most cancers analysis, whether or not on community tv, by means of a quarterly column in Most cancers Immediately, in testimony to federal and state legislative our bodies, or radio and social media shops. His nationwide management contains serving on the Board of the V Basis, as a Scientific Co-Chair for Stand Up 2 Most cancers, on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Prostate Most cancers Basis, and as Government Editor of Most cancers Immediately.
Proprietor of 11 issued patents, he’s a co-founder of Digital Harmonics, offering algorithmic instruments for each biomedicine and protection, and of Brahm Astra Therapeutics, creating new anti- most cancers medication.
School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Could 8, 9:00 a.m., 1:30 p.m., and 5:30 p.m., Gampel Pavilion, Speaker and Honorary Diploma Recipient: Richard Robinson ’79, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court docket of Connecticut
Chief Justice Robinson grew up in Stamford and attended the College of Connecticut, incomes his BA in 1979. He attended regulation college on the College of West Virginia, and commenced his profession within the Metropolis of Stamford Legislation Division. He rose to Assistant Company Counsel till his appointment as a Choose of the Superior Court docket. He was then appointed a Choose of the Connecticut Appellate Court docket in 2007, then to the Supreme Court docket in 2013. He was nominated to be Chief Justice in 2018, and was unanimously confirmed by each the State Senate and the State Home of Representatives.
Alongside the way in which he has engaged in a variety of public service, together with as President of the Stamford Department of the NAACP, President of the Assistant Company Counsel’s Union, and Chair of the Connecticut Fee on Human Rights and Alternatives. He’s additionally a 4th diploma black belt in karate. He has acquired quite a few awards and recognitions, together with the Connecticut Bar Affiliation’s Henry Naruk Judiciary award for Integrity, and the Ebony Journal Energy 100 Award.
Chief Justice Robinson is the chief of the Judiciary of the State of Connecticut however he’s far more. His profession represents the mission of the College of Connecticut and the UConn Legislation College on the highest degree. He grew up in a time of racial pressure, particularly whereas visiting with family members within the South, and persevered via early years of follow when shoppers and others doubted his skills and colleagues would make inappropriate feedback about his race. By his experiences he developed an ethical compass and human abilities which have enabled him to be a principled chief each within the regulation and in social justice. And now, as our Chief Justice, each demonstrates and articulates excessive highest values of our nation, whereas guiding our state ahead beneath the rule of regulation.
College of Nursing, Could 7, 9:00 a.m., Jorgensen Middle for the Performing Arts, Speaker and Honorary Diploma Recipient: Shelia Tlou, Co-Chair, United Nations World HIV Prevention Coalition and former Minister of Well being for the Republic of Botswana
Sheila Tlou is the Co-Chair of the United Nations World HIV Prevention Coalition and the Co-Chair of World Well being Group’s (WHO) Nursing Now World Marketing campaign. She can be the UN Eminent Particular person for Girls, Ladies, and HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa, and the Worldwide Council of Nurses Goodwill Ambassador for Lady Little one Training.
From 2010 to 2017, Tlou was Director of the UNAIDS for Jap and Southern Africa. On this function, she supplied management and political advocacy for high quality sustainable AIDS response in 21 African nations, from Eritrea to South Africa, together with the Indian Ocean Islands of Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and Comoros. She has been instrumental within the formation of advocacy our bodies equivalent to The Pan-African Optimistic Girls’s Coalition (PAPWC) and the Excessive-Degree Job Drive on Girls, Ladies, Gender Equality and HIV in Africa; and he or she initiated and chaired a Excessive-Degree Job Drive on Complete Sexuality Training and Companies for Younger Individuals in Jap and Southern Africa.
She is a former Member of Parliament and Minister of Well being of the Republic of Botswana (2004-2008). She can be former Professor of Nursing on the College of Botswana and Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Nursing and Midwifery Improvement in Main Well being Look after Anglophone Africa. She has carried out analysis and taught programs to nursing, pre- medical and social science college students on gender points referring to HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive well being and rights, and getting old and older individuals. She has performed a key function within the growth of nationwide nursing and medical schooling curricula, working to broaden the scope of Well being Sciences schooling in sub-Saharan Africa.
Tlou has an important appreciation for wonderful and performing arts and has been concerned in beginner theatre since her major schooling. She has portrayed Treasured Ramotswe, the heroine of Alexander McCall Smith’s Quantity One Girls Detective Company e book sequence, in a number of beginner theatre productions in Botswana. She additionally starred within the Anthony Mingella BBC Film, “The Quantity One Girls Detective Company” (2008).
College of Enterprise, Could 7, 1:30 p.m., Gampel Pavilion, Speaker and Honorary Diploma Recipient: Richard Vogel ’87, Founding Accomplice, CFO and COO, Loeb Enterprises
A seasoned advertising and marketing government, skilled supervisor and startup advisor, Richard Vogel has spent a profession shaping and translating concepts into profitable advertising and marketing packages within the U.S. and overseas. He’s a Founding Accomplice, Chief Monetary Officer and Chief Working Officer of Loeb Enterprises, a New York-based personal investor, targeted on cultivating alternatives in rising media and shopper advertising and marketing. He holds the identical title at Loeb NYC, Loeb Enterprises’ startup lab and enterprise arm. Vogel is chargeable for the event and execution of present tasks, in addition to the monetary administration and administration of the corporate and its holdings.
Previous to partnering with Michael Loeb to create Loeb Enterprises in 2005, Vogel was the President of MDSC Corp., a completely owned subsidiary of Synapse Group. On this function, he ran every of the corporate’s working items and was chargeable for its advertising and marketing partnerships with U.S. bank card issuers, main publishers, worldwide airways, and e-commerce corporations. Earlier than becoming a member of Synapse, Vogel held a lot of positions in shopper advertising and marketing at Time Warner Inc. (1988-1994). Vogel started his profession working for E.F. Hutton on the ground of the New York Inventory Alternate.
Vogel earned a Bachelor of Science diploma in finance, Magna Cum Laude, and was an Honors Scholar from the College of Enterprise on the College of Connecticut in 1987. In 1990, he earned an MBA in Finance from the Stern College of Enterprise at New York College.
Vogel is a member of the Werth Institute Advisory Board (5/18-Current). As an undergraduate, Vogel was a member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity and the John F. Kennedy Institute for Worldwide Relations. Vogel is a former board member and previous President of the Stamford Jewish Group Middle, the place he additionally served as co-Chair of the Centennial Committee.
College of Engineering, Could 7, 9:00 a.m., Gampel Pavilion, Speaker: Jeanine Gouin ’87, UConn Board of Trustees
Gouin, of Durham, is at the moment in her second time period as an alumni consultant on the UConn Board of Trustees. Elected immediately by graduates of the varsity, her present time period ends in 2025.
On the board, Gouin serves because the vice chair of the Tutorial Affairs Committee and is a member the next committees: Government; Buildings, Grounds and Atmosphere; Institutional Development; Joint Audit and Compliance; and Development Administration Oversight.
Gouin is america Operations Supervisor for SLR Worldwide Company, primarily based in Cheshire, and oversees over 400 workers throughout the nation in 23 completely different workplaces. She at the moment employs greater than 50 UConn graduates at SLR.
Along with her place on the Board of Trustees at UConn, she has been a member of the College of Engineering Civil and Environmental Engineering Advisory Board since 1995. Gouin was the alumni consultant on the UConn Environmental Coverage Advisory Committee from 2009 to 2012. She is an invited visitor lecturer within the College of Engineering and has been a keynote speaker at UConn’s Open Home.
Gouin was named as an Honoree of the Connecticut Girls’s Corridor of Fame in 2019 and was named to the Connecticut Know-how Council’s Girls of Innovation in 2017. She was inducted into the UConn Academy of Distinguished Engineers in 2014.
Gouin is a life-long Connecticut resident, a legacy UConn mother or father, and a passionate supporter of public schooling.
Neag College of Training, Could 8, 9:00 a.m., Jorgensen Middle for the Performing Arts, Speaker and Honorary Diploma Recipient: Theresia Bauer, member of the state parliament of Baden- Württemberg, Germany.
Theresia Bauer was born on 6 April 1965 in Zweibrücken. From 1985 to 1993 she studied political sciences, political economics and German in Heidelberg and Mannheim. Throughout her diploma she was lively in college politics, representing college students on the massive and small senate and on the executive board of the College of Heidelberg.
Between 1993 and 1995, Bauer was an advisor on political schooling on the “Gesellschaft für politische Ökologie” (Society for Political Ecology), and subsequently Managing Director of the Heinrich-Böll Basis in Baden-Württemberg.
Since 2001 she has been a part of the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg. There she has been a member of the committee for science, analysis and artwork, spokeswoman for increased schooling coverage, deputy parliamentary celebration chief and parliamentary government secretary of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen.
Because the Minister for Science, Analysis and the Arts, Ms. Bauer was chargeable for all universities within the State of Baden- Württemberg. On this function, she performed a important function to strengthen the trade program between Connecticut and Baden- Württemberg. This program just lately celebrated its twenty fifth anniversary. Since 2015, UConn has been the administrator for this program on behalf of the State of Connecticut. Throughout that point, 1,200 college students from each states participated on this life altering expertise. UConn’s profitable signature Eurotech program wouldn’t have been successful with out her sturdy help.
Within the spring of 2018, she supported the launch of a brand new UConn Eurobiz program. Within the Fall of 2018, Bauer secured new funding to award six UConn college throughout completely different disciplines to journey to the analysis universities in Baden-Wuerttemberg to provoke new collaborations. In Could 2019, on behalf of the 2 states, Bauer and President Susan Herbst renewed the trade relations. Bauer additional expanded this system to incorporate the Universities of Training in order that Connecticut’s faculties of schooling may take part within the trade. It’s her perception that tearing down the partitions of ignorance and narrow-mindedness should start from Ok-12 schooling, and from world minded educators.
College of Pharmacy (BS in Pharmacy Research), Could 8, 6:00 p.m., Jorgensen Middle for the Performing Arts, Speaker: Amy Antipas ’84, Ph.D.
Amy Antipas, MA, Ph.D., Senior Director of Drug Product Design at Pfizer Worldwide Analysis, Improvement and Drugs, is a 1989 Honors graduate of the College of Pharmacy, a former chair of its Advisory Board, and present lively member.
Antipas has pursued her ardour for analysis and creating patient-centric drugs over the past twenty-seven years at Pfizer in Groton. Her expertise spans from influencing the drug supply and molecular construction of recent drug candidates and designing early scientific formulations, to submitting new drug purposes for breakthrough therapies. Her work enabled the event of Chantix®, Xeljanz® and Slentrol®. Antipas manages a gaggle of drug growth specialists throughout three analysis websites in america, and is championing a extra patient-centric strategy to drug product design.
In 2019 Antipas was named as a finalist for the Girls of Innovation award given by the Connecticut Know-how Council. She is an American Basis for Pharmaceutical Training Fellow with a BS in Pharmacy from UConn (1989) and Masters (1991) and Ph.D. (1994) levels in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the College of Kansas. She can be a registered pharmacist within the state of Connecticut.
Antipas is a member of Rho Chi, Lambda Kappa Sigma and Alpha Phi Omega (service).
College of Pharmacy (PharmD), Could 8, 1:30 p.m., Jorgensen Middle for the Performing Arts, Speaker: Dr. Deidre Gifford, Commissioner of the Connecticut Division of Social Companies and Senior Advisor to the Governor for Well being and Human Companies
Deidre Gifford was appointed by Governor Ned Lamont to guide the Division of Social Companies in June 2019, after government service with the federal Middle for Medicare and Medicaid Companies, and expertise in medical follow, the nonprofit sector and authorities service in Rhode Island.
In Could 2020, because the COVID-19 pandemic intensified, Gov. Lamont appointed Gifford to additionally head the Division of Public Well being, as Performing Commissioner. She has served as a number one member of the governor’s crew in planning and implementing the state’s complete response to the general public well being emergency till September of 2021.
In July 2021, Gov. Lamont appointed Gifford to the extra responsibility of serving as Senior Advisor to the Governor for Well being and Human Companies. On this function, she is tasked with coordinating a multi-agency strategy among the many state’s 9 well being and human companies companies to enhance well being and healthcare in Connecticut. The Senior Advisor is chargeable for convening and main coordination efforts between these companies, working carefully with the Workplace of Coverage and Administration, in addition to offering the governor with coverage enter and suggestions that deal with problems with well being, healthcare prices, high quality, and disparities.
Previous to starting service in Connecticut, Gifford was Deputy Director for the Middle for Medicaid and CHIP (Kids’s Well being Insurance coverage Program) Companies on the Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Companies (CMS) from 2016 to 2019. Earlier than becoming a member of CMS, she served because the Director of State Coverage and Packages on the Nationwide Affiliation of Medicaid Administrators, the place she led that group’s efforts with states to help and advance value-based buying in Medicaid.
From 2012 to 2015, Gifford served as Medicaid Director within the Rhode Island Government Workplace of Well being and Human Companies, having beforehand served because the company’s medical director. Throughout her tenure, she superior adjustments within the fee and supply system to enhance the standard of care and improve the worth of Medicaid companies, together with the growth of quite a few initiatives in care coordination, info know-how, and supplier fee improvements.
A graduate in Public Well being of the College of California at Los Angeles, Gifford acquired her medical diploma from Cornell College Medical School in New York. She specialised in obstetrics and gynecology and went on to obtain a grasp of public well being diploma in epidemiology from UCLA.
College of Legislation, Could 15, 10:30 a.m., UConn College of Legislation, Speaker: Joel Motley III, Managing Director at Public Capital Advisors LLC
Joel Motley served because the chairman of the board of Human Rights Watch, which investigates human rights abuses world wide, from 2013 to 2016. He’s a member of the Council on Overseas Relations and serves on its Finance and Finances Committee. Motley additionally serves on the boards of the Pulitzer Middle for Disaster Reporting, Historic Hudson Valley and as secretary of the board of the Greenwall Basis.
A graduate of Harvard School and Harvard Legislation College, Motley was impressed to hitch the authorized occupation by his mom, the civil rights chief Choose Constance Baker Motley. She was a lawyer for the NAACP Authorized Protection and Academic Fund, the primary Black lady to argue earlier than the U.S. Supreme Court docket and the primary Black lady to develop into a federal decide.
In 2016, Joel Motley co-produced a brief movie about his late mom, “The Trials of Constance Baker Motley,” to honor her affect on college desegregation.
Motley started his authorized profession in company regulation at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York Metropolis. He subsequently served as an aide to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and because the senator’s chief of employees in New York Metropolis and surrounding counties earlier than he entered funding banking. He co-founded Carmona Motley in 1992 and is at the moment an unbiased director of Invesco Mutual Funds and an unbiased director of the Workplace of Finance of the Federal House Mortgage Financial institution System.
School of Agriculture, Well being and Pure Sources, Could 7, 6:00 p.m., Gampel Pavilion, Speaker: State Rep. Jaime Foster ‘12
Jaime S. Foster is serving her first time period as State Consultant within the Connecticut Common Meeting, proudly serving the 57th District of Ellington and East Windsor. She at the moment serves on the Public Well being, Power and Know-how, and Kids’s Committee.
Previous to being elected to serve within the Common Meeting, Rep. Foster served on the Ellington Human Companies Fee, Board of Training, and the State’s Milk Promotion Board. She is going to proceed to serve on the Ellington Farmers Market Board of Administrators.
Rep. Foster is an alumnus of UConn’s School of Agriculture Well being and Pure Sources; she acquired her B.S. in Dietetics and subsequently accomplished internship and testing necessities to be a Registered Dietitian. She has additionally obtained her MS and Doctorate in Dietary Sciences.
Professionally, Rep. Foster works as a analysis scientist for the Yale- Griffin Prevention Analysis Middle.
Rep. Foster is dedicated to advocating for significant change that can enhance the lives of these locally. Her background in well being and diet coverage will probably be very important because the legislature navigates the COVID-19 pandemic and prepares for future public well being crises. She is dedicated to supporting native agriculture and rebuilding our economic system.
College of Effective Arts, Could 7, 6:00 p.m., Jorgensen Middle for the Performing Arts, Speaker: Juanita Austin ‘15
Juanita Austin is a curator and cultural producer, born and raised in New London, Connecticut. A graduate from the College of Connecticut, with a B.A. in Digital Media & Design, she has served as a pacesetter on many grassroots neighborhood arts initiatives and now runs her personal arts group, Cultured AF.
Her work facilities on supporting underrepresented artists and creating protected and equitable areas for these artists to thrive. Cultured AF’s headquarters are positioned at her artwork lounge, Cultured Studios, in downtown New London which is a gallery, arts boutique, and neighborhood occasion area. She has labored within the New London Arts Group for over 4 years and in her expertise, she has curated artwork exhibitions, organized festivals, and produced reside arts & music occasions.
Juanita’s work has constructed bridges with arts communities throughout the state. She’s strongly obsessed with constructing neighborhood and creating experiences that brings artwork into everybody’s lives.