The
Rodin Decade: Growth and Transformation
Click here to see Honors for President Rodin.
Trustee Chairman James Riepe presented the following citation and conferred
an honorary degree upon President Judith Rodin
at last week's Commencement.
The
Rodin Decade: Growth and Transformation
Citation:
President Rodin
Most universities are lucky to have a pioneering
scholar and visionary leader of your caliber pass their
way once every 250 years. Penn was blessed to get you twice.
As a Mayor's Scholar out of Girls' High,
you became an undergraduate sensation at Penn both in the
psychology department, where your professors spotted your
talents, and in politics, where, as president of the women's
student government, you helped to lay the groundwork for
a merger with the men's student government.
You have been blazing trails ever since.
Not long after earning your doctorate in psychology at
Columbia, you joined the psychology faculty at Yale, where
you spent the next two decades discovering and explaining
the biological and psychological factors that lead to obesity.
You helped
launch the women's health movement,
and you expanded our understanding of aging by demonstrating
that elderly people who are empowered lead more active,
healthier, and longer lives than those who are consigned
to helplessness.
In 1994, you left Yale, where you had served
as provost, and returned to your alma mater to become the
first woman president of an Ivy League University. You
immediately energized the Penn community to implement a
bold agenda of growth and change.
You led a revolutionary transformation of
undergraduate education. You launched an innovative college
house system, as well as sensational student hubs for writing,
community service, technology, and research.
You boosted
Penn's academic capacity through
strategic investments that attracted top-flight faculty,
beautified the campus, supported new amenities, doubled
federal research funding, and tripled our endowment.
You led an
unprecedented effort to transform a neighborhood in distress
into a thriving, sustainable
urban oasis. You discerned inextricable links between Penn's
future and the economic and social health of University
City, and it was your genius to create the dynamic in which
the West Philadelphia initiative would benefit Penn and
it's neighbors.
If our founder
Benjamin Franklin is the first citizen of Penn, you are
a close second--and only by virtue
of Franklin's seniority.
In gratitude for a remarkable decade of leading
Penn through a period of spectacular growth and transformation,
and in appreciation of a brilliant career in higher education,
the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania are pleased
to confer upon you, Judith Rodin, the degree of Doctor
of Laws, honoris causa.
During
the past ten years since Dr. Judith Rodin became Penn's
president, the University's
campus and its international reputation have grown in
perceptible ways. The transformation is exemplified by
numerous connections to the community. Since returning
to her alma mater where she had been president of the
women's student government in her days as
an undergraduate, Dr. Rodin has created a living legacy.
Photo by Karen C. Gaines
Photo by Karen C. Gaines
Ten years ago, then-Trustee
Chairman Al Shoemaker* accompanied newly-nominated president
Rodin, and her son, Alex across campus.
Photo by Marguerite Miller
The
plaque in honor of two Penn alumni--Morris
Seitz, and his daughter, Judith Seitz Rodin, at the
Generational Bridge, outside Jon
M. Huntsman Hall.
Photo by Marguerite Miller
King Solomon (1963) by Alexander Archipenko, a gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey
H. Loria, to Penn in honor of the inauguration
of President Judith Rodin, October 21, 1994. |
Photo by Marguerite Miller
Looking at University Square through a steel sculpture by Jose De Rivera (1959)
in the lobby of the renovated Annenberg School
for Communication. |
Wireless PennNet@University
Square debuted in 2002.
Photo by Stuart Watson
President Judith Rodin at the ribbon-cutting
for the Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander University of
Pennsylvania Partnership School in fall 2002.
Photo by Marguerite Miller
The
garage at 38th and Walnut.
The Kelly Family
Gates by Mark Lueders, dedicated last May--at the
entrance to the Charles Addams Fine Arts Hall--provide
a whimsical welcome and personify the creative
spirit. |
Photo
by Marguerite Miller
Grande Venus (1915) by Pierre Auguste Renoir, a gift of Mr. & Mrs. Jeffrey
H. Loria, at the entrance to the Office of the
President in College Hall. |
The Class of 1949 Generational Bridge (connecting
Locust Walk, over 38th Street) and the Women's Walkway
were dedicated
in November 2001 to commemorate 125 Years of Women
at Penn.
*Correction: Originally, the then-Trustee Chairman was misidentified
as Paul Miller. The correct person is Al Shoemaker.