CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The 144th Commencement of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will take place May 16 (Saturday) at Memorial Stadium, 1402 S. First St., Champaign. The event begins at 9:30 a.m.
The featured speaker will be Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, the president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation since 2003. With more than 30 years of personal experience as a medical practitioner, policymaker, professor and nonprofit executive, Lavizzo-Mourey combines the scientific and ethical values she learned as a doctor with a conviction that meaningful philanthropy must achieve lasting social change. As noted on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website, the foundation under her leadership has researched, evaluated and implemented transformative programs tackling the nation’s most pressing health issues.
Lavizzo-Mourey earned her M.D. at Harvard Medical School in 1979 and an MBA in health care administration in 1986 at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
Lavizzo-Mourey and Ralph J. Cicerone, the president of the National Academy of Sciences and the chair of the National Research Council, will be awarded U. of I. honorary doctor of science degrees at commencement.
Cicerone earned his Ph.D. in 1970 on the U. of I.'s Urbana-Champaign campus, where his adviser was Sidney A. Bowhill, the director of the Aeronomy Laboratory from 1962-87.
Timothy Nugent, the director emeritus of the U. of I.'s Division of Disability Resources and Educational Services, also will be awarded an honorary doctor of humane letters degree.
The U. of I. Alumni Association will present five awards:
Dale H. Flach will receive a 2015 University of Illinois Distinguished Service Award. Flach will be honored for his insight and innovation in developing programs that continue to serve – well beyond his career tenure – not only the University of Illinois but also communities throughout the state. After graduating with a B.S. in physical education in 1959 and an Ed.M. in 1964, and completing his military obligation, he started his U. of I. career with residence halls on the Urbana-Champaign campus. He was instrumental in initiating the Allen Hall Unit One program and was a strong advocate for the living-in-residence concept. Flach then was assistant dean for Student and Alumni Affairs at the newly formed U. of I. College of Medicine at Rockford, where he leveraged faculty and community partnerships to involve medical students in myriad ways while developing the student support program. He was at the forefront of developing the Illinois Rural Medical Education Program to recruit applicants from rural areas throughout downstate Illinois and, following their formal training, have them return as primary care doctors to meet the needs of underserved communities. He was involved in virtually all aspects of developing this innovative program, including the establishment of a statewide network of community hospital-based clinical training sites for medical students, and he continues to serve on its Recruitment and Retention Committee.
Nick Holonyak Jr., will receive a 2015 University of Illinois Alumni Achievement Award. Holonyak will be honored for his pioneering and world-renowned achievements in optoelectronics that facilitate conversion between electricity and light. The most prominent among his achievements is the first practical LED (light-emitting diode) that revolutionized lighting and communications technology. He also developed the laser diode, the basis of CD and DVD players, fiber optics, barcode scanners and other laser technologies. With University of Illinois professor Milton Feng, Holonyak also developed the first transistor laser, which is changing the future of high-speed signal processing, integrated circuits, supercomputing and other applications. Holonyak was a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Illinois from 1963 until he retired to emeritus status in 2013, and holds the John Bardeen Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics. His work has garnered the prestigious Draper Prize from the National Academy of Engineering, the Lemelson-MIT Prize, the Global Energy Prize from Russia, the U.S. Medal of Technology and Medal of Science, and the Engineering and Science Hall of Fame Medal, among numerous international and professional honors. Holonyak is a three-time graduate in electrical engineering from the U. of I. College of Engineering, having earned a bachelor’s degree in 1950, master’s degree in 1951 and Ph.D. in 1954.
Molly Melching will receive a 2015 University of Illinois Alumni Humanitarian Award. Melching will be honored for her work to develop literacy and skills training programs, reduce infant and maternal mortality rates, increase school and birth registrations, and foster human rights and female leadership in communities in Senegal and elsewhere. After participating in the first University of Illinois – University of Dakar graduate exchange program in 1974, she concluded that many development efforts were not addressing the true needs of African communities. Together with local villagers, Melching developed a new type of learning program for adults and adolescents by using African languages and their traditional methods of learning. This effort became the impetus for her 1991 founding of Tostan (“breakthrough” in the Wolof language), an organization that has engaged hundreds of thousands of people via a grass-roots education model called the Community Empowerment Program. Melching’s work has garnered international acclaim for its positive social transformation, including the abandonment of female genital mutilation and child/forced marriage in more than 7,000 communities in eight African countries. She received a bachelor’s degree in 1971 and master’s degree in French in 1979 from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Sylvia Puente will receive a 2015 University of Illinois Alumni Achievement Award. Puente will be honored for her national leadership and work to improve educational quality and access, as well as social equality issues, for the Latino community through policy analysis and advocacy. The executive director of the Latino Policy Forum in Chicago since 2009, she is known as a leading voice for Latino/Latina advancement and was named one of the “100 Most Influential Hispanics in the U.S.” by Hispanic Magazine. Puente works with more than 100 organizational leaders in the Chicago area on issues such as education, housing and immigration reform. She is often called upon to provide perspective on the implications of the nation’s changing demographics, and has consulted on immigrant integration policies in Spain, Israel and Mexico. She convenes the Illinois Latino Agenda and started the Latina Leadership Council of the Chicago Foundation for Women. In 2012, she was honored with the Diversity Leadership Award from the University of Chicago, where she received a master’s degree in public policy. Her 1980 University of Illinois undergraduate degree was in economics from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Don B. Wilmeth will receive a 2015 University of Illinois Alumni Achievement Award. Wilmeth will be honored for a distinguished 40-year career as one of the most productive and renowned historians of American theater and popular entertainment. His work has helped to establish American theater studies as a respected academic discipline, challenging the once-popular opinion that the field should focus exclusively on elite literature. The Asa Messer Professor Emeritus and former head of the department of theater at Brown University, Wilmeth has excelled as a scholar, teacher and editor. He has served in top leadership positions, such as president of the American Society for Theatre Research and editor of the acclaimed, three-volume Cambridge History of American Theatre. Wilmeth has received numerous national and international accolades, including the Barnard Hewitt Award for Excellence in Theatre History, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Career Achievement Award from the American Society for Theatre Research. At the University of Illinois, he earned a Ph.D. in 1964 in speech, and he has since returned to campus to share his time and knowledge with current U. of I. theater students.
The stadium will open at 8 a.m. Construction will reduce access to the stadium, so guests are encouraged to arrive as early as possible. The ceremony will take place regardless of the weather – unless conditions are deemed unsafe. Guests may bring into the stadium sealed plastic water bottles up to 20 fluid ounces, and sunscreen is recommended.
Tickets are required and may be picked up Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., at the event services window at the Illini Union, 1401 W. Green St., Urbana.
Guest seating will be on the west side of the stadium (enter through Portals 1 and 3 along First Street). Parking will be available in Lot E-14 (at First Street and Kirby Avenue, Champaign) and, if weather permits, in a grass lot west of the stadium.
The wheelchair accessible entrance is Gate 24. Guests with a handicap permit on display may park in the north lots of State Farm Center.
Kirby Avenue will be closed from First Street to Fourth Street from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., as will First Street between Kirby Avenue and Peabody Drive.
Shuttle buses will run from 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. on May 16 and from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. on May 17 to convocation venues throughout the campus.
A reception for graduates and their families will take place in the gardens of the President’s House, 711 W. Florida Ave., Urbana, from noon to 1:30 p.m. on May 16. Academic attire is encouraged.
All students who have earned bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral and professional degrees and advanced certificates during the preceding year are honored at Commencement.
The first floor of the main library will be open from 1 to 4 p.m. May 16 and 17 for visitors and students to view the University Honors Bronze Tablets.
Many individual U. of I. units have scheduled additional convocation ceremonies. More information is available online.