Commencement Speakers
School of Graduate Studies Commencement
Thursday, May 16, 4 pm—Rockett Arena, Richard B. O'Keefe Complex
Speaker and honorary degree recipient
Martha J. Kanter
United States Under Secretary of Education
Martha J. Kanter was
nominated by President Barack Obama to be the nation’s Under Secretary of
Education in April 2009 and was confirmed by the Senate in June of that year.
Kanter reports directly to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and is
responsible for the oversight of policies, activities and programs related to
postsecondary education, adult and career-technical education, federal student
aid, and five White House initiatives. The latter encompass Asian Americans and
Pacific Islanders, educational excellence for Hispanics, historically black
colleges and universities, tribal colleges and universities, and faith-based
and neighborhood partnerships.
As part of President
Obama’s goal for the U.S. to have “the best educated, most competitive work
force in the world by 2020”—as measured by the proportion of college graduates over
the next decade—Under Secretary Kanter is charged with planning and policy
programs that spur education, economic growth and social prosperity. Improving
college access and affordability, advancing educational quality and working on
initiatives that will result in more college students not just enrolling—but
completing their degrees—are components of President Obama’s American
Graduation Initiative with which Martha Kanter is charged.
She has begun a new
partnership with the U.S. Department of Labor that recently announced the first
$500 million of a $2 billion federal investment to increase quality, graduation
and employment opportunities for community college students. During her tenure
the Direct Student Loan program was successfully implemented, resulting in a 50
percent increase in college enrollment. As a result, nine million students
today are Pell Grant recipients.
Under Secretary Kanter
holds an EdD in organization and leadership from the University of San
Francisco, as well as honorary degrees from five institutions of higher
education. She began her career as an alternative high school teacher in New
York and Massachusetts, later establishing the first program for students with
learning disabilities at San Jose City College in California. After serving as
dean, vice president and president of several California community colleges,
Martha Kanter was chosen to head the Foothill-De Anza Community College
District, one of the largest community college districts in the nation, as
chancellor in 2003.
Among
numerous honors and awards, Under Secretary Kanter has received the Excellence
in Education Award from the National Organization for Women’s California
chapter and was named Woman of the Year for Santa Clara County by the American
Association of University Women. In 2011, she was appointed to the U.S.
National Commission for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural
Organization.
College of Health and Human Services and Bertolon School of Business Commencement
Saturday, May 18, 10 am—Rockett Arena, Richard B. O'Keefe Complex
Speakers and honorary degree recipients
William S. Cummings
Real Estate Developer, Philanthropist
Raised in Medford, Bill
Cummings has throughout his life centered most of his personal, professional
and philanthropic activities in his native state of Massachusetts. A graduate
of Tufts University, where he has served as a charter trustee, he began a sales
and marketing career with Vick Chemical Company (VapoRub) in North Carolina,
but soon moved back home to work for Gorton’s of Gloucester.
Bill then purchased a
very old food products manufacturing firm in Medford and substantially
developed it into Old Medford Foods, Inc. His subsequent development of its
real estate would be the beginning of a long and highly successful career in
commercial real estate. Since 1969, when he founded the eponymous Cummings
Properties, LLC, Bill Cummings has purchased, built and managed extensive
commercial real estate holdings in eastern Massachusetts, including the
award-winning Cummings Center office and technology park in Beverly. The firm
today
is considered one of the most financially solid real estate companies in the
country, and currently operates more than 10 million square feet of its own
commercial space in 10 metropolitan Boston communities.
Committed to giving
back, Bill Cummings and his wife, Joyce, founded Cummings Foundation, Inc. in
1986, and New Horizons, a not-for-profit assisted and independent living
community in Woburn and Marlborough. More recently, they created two new
grant-funding organizations, Institute for World Justice, LLC and OneWorld
Boston, Inc. The latter has provided a grant to Salem State to help the
university establish a Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and bring the
resources, programs and relationships of the Holocaust Center Boston North into
this new center on campus.
Although the Cummings’
primary philanthropic focus is on supporting local organizations, they also
have a strong interest in Rwanda. During a January 2012 trip there, they
recognized how much good their philanthropy could accomplish in this country
still recovering from the horrific genocide in 1994. They pledged significant
support to Kigali Genocide Memorial and Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, which
educates and cares for 500 of Rwanda’s most vulnerable youth, many of whom were
orphaned during the genocide.
Bill and Joyce Cummings
have the distinction of being the first Massachusetts residents to sign on to
Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet’s ‘Giving Pledge,’ a commitment by the
world’s wealthiest individuals and families to dedicate the majority of their
wealth to philanthropy.
Cummings Foundation’s support of Tufts’ veterinary school has been significant and, in 2004, the school was renamed Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. Bill Cummings was awarded an honorary DPS (doctor of public service) degree from Tufts University in May 2006, and was named one of the 50 most influential Bostonians by The Boston Business Journal in 2011 and 2012.
Joyce M. Cummings
Philanthropist, Community Volunteer
Joyce M. Cummings was
raised in Alabama, making her way to Boston after college for a one-year
internship in dietetics at Massachusetts General Hospital. The internship
ultimately led to a full-time job at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, where
she served as a professional dietician. She met her future husband, Bill, in
the hospital’s kitchen.
They raised a family in
Winchester and began a habit of charitable giving and community service that
would become the hallmark of their lives. As Bill Cummings built his real
estate business, Joyce Cummings devoted her time to local causes, serving as a
longtime member of the board of trustees of Winchester Community Music School
and as president of Winchester’s En Ka Society.
Joyce’s volunteer
service has extended beyond the town in which she resides. Elected a trustee
for the Corporation of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, she also served
as a director of Hospice Care, Inc. of Stoneham, and is a founding trustee of
New Horizons at Choate Retirement Community in Woburn.
In 1986, Bill and Joyce
Cummings formed Cummings Foundation, Inc. for the purpose of giving back to
area communities. Since 1996, the Foundation has provided more than $2 million
in scholarship aid to hundreds of local students and provided key support to
the Woburn Boys and Girls Club, Supportive Living, Inc., North Shore YMCA, and
Beverly Hospital, among hundreds of other organizations. In June 2013, the
Foundation will announce a total of $10 million in grants to 100 local area
nonprofits.
Inspired to provide
philanthropic support to Rwanda following a 2012 visit, Joyce and Bill Cummings
are supporting two Partners in Health hospitals there, and funding the building
of Rwanda’s first cancer infusion center. They will return to Rwanda this August
for the opening of the center. The Cummings anticipate providing additional
support to Rwanda in an effort to help it reach its goal of being
self-supporting.
A visit to Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in 2009 inspired Joyce and Bill Cummings to think more broadly about how education might help prevent such horrors from occurring again and in 2012 Cummings Foundation gifted Salem State with a grant to help establish a Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
College of Arts and Sciences and School of Education Commencement
Saturday, May 18, 3 pm—Rockett Arena, Richard B. O'Keefe Complex
Speaker and honorary degree recipient
Sima Samar, MD
Chair, Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission
Dr. Sima Samar was born
in Afghanistan with two distinct disadvantages: she was female and she was a
member of the Hazara tribe, one of the country’s most persecuted. Despite the
disadvantages she faced at birth—and the challenges she would continue to
confront throughout her life—Sima Samar has not only succeeded, but become a
powerful international voice for human rights.
In 1979, the Soviet army
invaded Afghanistan. By the time it departed in 1988, Samar had lost her
husband, his three brothers and more than 60 members of her family. She had
also obtained a medical degree from Kabul University Medical College, and begun
practicing at a government hospital in Kabul. Fearing for her safety, she
ultimately fled to a remote area of Central Afghanistan, later traveling to
Pakistan for her son’s education.
Upset by the poor
quality of health care at the Mission Hospital of Quetta, where she worked,
Sima Samar founded her own hospital for the care of refugee women and children.
The nonprofit, nongovernmental and nonpolitical Shuhada Organization and its
Shuhada Clinic have subsequently become models for health care in developing
countries and a testament to the power of one woman with tenacity and a dream.
At present, the Shuhada
Organization operates 12 clinics and three hospitals along with training
programs for community health workers, nurses and birth attendants. With her
focus squarely on the sick, the poor and the marginalized, Dr. Samar’s
organization has expanded into education and self-empowerment as well. The
organization currently oversees 71 schools for boys and girls and 34 for Afghan
refugees, while also offering computer, English and literacy programs for adult
women.
The establishment of
shelters for vulnerable females dealing with violence and abuse offers a safe
haven where women receive—in addition to food and shelter—the tools necessary
for future self-sufficiency, education, jobs training, and programs to teach
women how to generate income.
Dr. Samar was one of
only two female cabinet ministers in Afghanistan’s interim administration,
during which she established the first-ever Afghanistan Ministry of Women’s
Affairs. She currently serves as chairwoman of the Afghanistan Independent
Human Rights Commission.
Among
numerous awards recognizing her worldwide activism on behalf of health and
human rights, Dr. Sima Samar has received the John F. Kennedy Profile in
Courage Award® (2004), the Order of Canada (2009), the Mother
Theresa International Memorial Award for Social Justice (2012), and Sweden’s
Right Livelihood (the alternative Nobel Prize) Award (2012) for “outstanding
vision and work on behalf of our planet and its people.”