126th Commencement scheduled for May 18 at Assembly Hall

By David Porreca

The 126th Commencement of the UI at Urbana-Champaign will take place in two ceremonies May 18 at Assembly Hall.

The commencement speaker at both ceremonies will be Diane Sawyer, news correspondent and co-anchor of "PrimeTime Live," a news program on ABC-TV. Sawyer and four other dignitaries will receive honorary degrees.

Candidates in the colleges of Applied Life Studies, Communications, Law, Liberal Arts and Sciences, Veterinary Medicine, the School of Social Work, the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science will receive degrees at the 10:30 a.m. ceremony.

Candidates in the colleges of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, Commerce and Business Administration, Education, Engineering, and Fine and Applied Arts will receive degrees at the 2 p.m. ceremony. WILL-AM (580) will provide live coverage of the 2 p.m. ceremony.

Doors will open at 9:30 a.m. for the morning ceremony and at 1 p.m. for the afternoon ceremony. After all students and their guests with tickets are seated, the remaining seats will be made available to the public.

Commencement is held once a year to honor all students who have earned bachelor's, master's, doctoral and professional degrees and advanced certificates during the preceding academic year.

Sawyer, a native of Glasgow, Ky., joined ABC News in February 1989. In addition to her work on "PrimeTime Live," she is a co-anchor of the ABC News program "Turning Point," which premiered in March 1994.

Her investigative work for "PrimeTime Live" has earned Sawyer several of the most prestigious awards in broadcast journalism. During the 1991-92 television season, her report on racial discrimination in American society won the grand prize in the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. She has received other honors for her work, including the Emmy, George Foster Peabody and National Headliners awards.

Before joining ABC, Sawyer spent nine years at CBS News. She worked as a State Department correspondent and co-anchored the "CBS Morning News" and "60 Minutes."

Sawyer earned her bachelor's degree from Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass., in 1967. She began her broadcasting career the same year in Louisville, Ky., where she worked as a reporter for WLKY-TV until 1970.

After leaving Kentucky, Sawyer held several staff positions in President Richard Nixon's administration. Following Nixon's resignation in August 1974, Sawyer assisted the former president in the writing of his memoirs.

Also scheduled to join Sawyer in receiving honorary degrees:

• William G. Karnes, retired president and chief executive officer of Beatrice Foods. Karnes earned a bachelor of science degree with honors from the UI in 1933. He joined Beatrice Foods as a law clerk in 1936 and moved quickly through the ranks. After 16 years with the company he became president and CEO, retiring 24 years later in 1976. Under his leadership, Beatrice Foods was transformed from a dairy company into one of the nation's largest and most diversified food companies. When Karnes took over in 1952, the company employed 8,000 workers and posted annual sales of $229 million. At his retirement, the company had 80,000 workers and sales in excess of $4 billion.
• Rudolph A. Marcus, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in chemistry. From 1954 to 1978, Marcus served on the UI faculty as an associate and full professor of chemistry. Since 1978 he has held the Arthur A. Noyes chair in the department of chemistry, California Institute of Technology. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Marcus has received numerous awards for his pioneering work in the theory of reaction rates and electron transfer, including the National Medal of Science in 1989.
• Robert L. Metcalf, professor emeritus of entomology and former head of the UI zoology department. Metcalf earned a bachelor's degree in liberal arts and sciences from the UI in 1939. A year later, he earned a master's degree in entomology, also from the UI. In 1946, he joined the faculty at the University of California, Riverside, where he remained for more than 20 years, earning a reputation as one of the leading scholars in his field. In 1968, he joined the UI faculty, holding appointments at the Illinois Natural History Survey, the Institute of Environmental Studies and the Center for Advanced Study. Metcalf retired in May 1987.
• Arnold R. Weber, former president and current chancellor of Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. Weber earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the UI in 1950. Two years later, he earned a master's degree in industrial relations, also from the UI. He taught industrial relations and labor economics at the University of Chicago from 1958 to 1973, interrupted by service in the Nixon administration from 1969 to 1971. Weber worked as an administrator at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh from 1973 to 1980. He spent the next five years as president of the University of Colorado, then served as president of Northwestern from 1985 to 1995.

Three Alumni Achievement Awards will be presented by the UI Alumni Association at the Assembly Hall commencement ceremonies. Receiving the awards:

• Jerry Colangelo, class of 1962, president and chief executive officer of the Phoenix Suns basketball organization. Colangelo has been honored with an unprecedented four NBA Executive of the Year awards. He has been a guiding force in acquiring the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team and the Phoenix Coyotes hockey team. Colangelo also has led efforts to build two major sports facilities, the multipurpose America West Arena and the retractable-dome Bank One Ballpark.
• John A. Georges, class of 1951, chairman and chief executive officer emeritus of International Paper Co. Georges is widely credited with turning the company into the $14 billion global business it is today. His success in international commerce has made him a sought-after participant on various boards and an adviser to congressional leaders. He and his wife, Lou, have helped establish the John A. Georges Institute for Corporate and Educational Leadership at the UI. He also was instrumental in creating the John A. Georges International Paper Co. chair in Chemical Engineering at the university.
• Robert D. Novak, class of 1952, is a well-known syndicated columnist and political commentator. He regularly appears on television political roundtable programs such as CNN's "Crossfire" and "Capital Gang," of which he is co-executive producer. In 1963 Novak began a collaboration with fellow journalist Rowland Evans that resulted in one of the longest-running syndicated columns in the country. In appreciation of his education at the UI, he established the Robert D. Novak Scholarship in 1992 to encourage English and rhetoric majors who show promise as writers.

The Alumni Association Distinguished Service Award will be presented to Gayl Simonds Pyatt, who earned a bachelor's degree in the teaching of English from the UI in 1964. For more than 15 years, she has dedicated her time and talents as a board member of the Alumni Association, a board member and first woman president of the UI Foundation, and as a national advocate for Campaign Illinois.

Among other planned activities in honor of the graduating class, the UI Symphonic Band will give a free concert for graduates, candidates and their guests at 8 p.m. May 17 in the Great Hall of the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are not required.

All graduating students and their guests are invited to a reception hosted by UI President and Mrs. James J. Stukel and Chancellor Michael Aiken from 8:30 to 10 a.m. May 18 in the gardens of the president's house.

University Dining Services will host a graduation lunch from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. May 18 at the Illini Union Ballroom. The lunch is open to the public. Reservations are suggested. Call (217) 333-0690 for prices and information.

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