BARD COLLEGE HOLDS ONE HUNDRED FORTY-FIFTH COMMENCEMENT ON SATURDAY, MAY 21, 2005 Distinguished Poetry Critic Helen Vendler to Deliver Commencement Address; Economist William J. Baumol, Nobel Prize–Winning Scientist Paul Nurse, New Yorker

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.— Bard College will hold its one hundred forty-fifth commencement on Saturday, May 21, 2005. At the commencement ceremony, Bard President Leon Botstein will confer 333 undergraduate degrees to the Class of 2005 and 89 graduate degrees: 40 masters of fine arts; 18 masters of arts in the history of the decorative arts, design, and culture; 15 masters of arts in curatorial studies; 14 masters of science in environmental policy; and two masters of science in environmental studies. The program, which begins at 2:30 p.m. in the commencement tent on the Seth Goldfine Memorial Field, will include the presentation of honorary doctoral degrees. The commencement address will be given by distinguished poetry critic and Harvard University Professor Helen Vendler, who will receive an honorary doctor of letters degree. Honorary degrees will also be awarded to economist William J. Baumol, Nobel Prize–winning scientist and Rockefeller University President Paul Nurse, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and editor of The New Yorker David Remnick, and Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons. Other events taking place during commencement weekend include class reunions; a concert by Bard student soloists and composers with the American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein, conductor; and the granting of Bard College awards for 2005. The Bard Medal will be presented to Bard Music Festival Trustee Felicitas S. Thorne; the John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science to Amalia C. Kelly ’75; the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters to Jane Evelyn Atwood ’70; the John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service to Richard G. Frank ’74; the Mary McCarthy Award to Annie Proulx; and the Bardian Award to Hilton M. Weiss. ABOUT THE COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER Helen Vendler is the A. Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University. One of the nation’s most distinguished poetry critics, Vendler was selected to deliver the 2004 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The award is the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. Vendler holds an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Boston’s Emmanuel College and a Ph.D. from Harvard in English and American literature. Before joining the Harvard faculty, she taught previously at Swarthmore, Haverford, and Smith Colleges, and Cornell and Boston Universities. She has held many fellowships, including three NEH fellowships and a Fulbright fellowship, and has frequently been a judge for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. She holds 23 honorary degrees from universities and colleges in the United States and abroad. Her views on contemporary poetry can be read regularly in the pages of The New Republic, The London Review of Books, The New Yorker, and other journals. Her recent books include Poets Thinking: Pope, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats; Coming of Age as a Poet: Milton, Keats, Eliot, Plath; Seamus Heaney; The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets; The Breaking of Style: Hopkins, Heaney, Graham; The Given and the Made: Lowell, Berryman, Dove, Graham; and Soul Says: On Recent Poetry. She has two books in progress: “Our Secret Discipline”: Yeats’s Styles and Forms and Last Looks, Last Books: Stevens, Plath, Lowell, Bishop, Merrill, Ammons. # # # 5/05/05

This event was last updated on 05-27-2005

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