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William F. Baker Doctor of Humane Letters Dr. William F. Baker is president emeritus of Thirteen/WNET New York, the Public Broadcasting Service’s flagship station. Thirteen is the premier national producer of public television programs and the most watched public television station in the United States. It is also the largest producer of cultural and arts programming in America. Baker’s love of broadcasting dates to his early childhood in Cleveland, Ohio, where his mother would take him into town to watch the then new medium of television through a shop window. He began producing and hosting radio programs while still in his teens in Cleveland, where he earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from Case Western Reserve University. He joined Scripps Howard Broadcasting in 1971 and, the following year, created the highly innovative television program Morning Exchange, which established the format in wide use today by such daytime TV programs as ABC’s Good Morning America. Baker moved to Westinghouse Television in 1978, becoming president of that company within a year. In 1981, he also became chairman of Group W Satellite Communications. During his decade at Westinghouse, the company launched five cable television networks, including the Discovery Channel and the Disney Channel. His keen eye for emerging talent led him to urge a Baltimore-area TV news personality named Oprah Winfrey to try her hand as a talk show host. In 1987, Baker became president and chief executive officer of Educational Broadcasting Corporation, licensee of Thirteen and WLIW21 New York. As president of Thirteen, he helped stabilize the finances of the station, built the largest endowment in public television history, and led the station’s move to its state-of-the-art digital production and broadcast facility. Under his leadership, Thirteen began broadcasting around the clock and created award-winning new programs such as Charlie Rose and Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly. Baker was also responsible for launching new educational channels and on-demand program services for children, as well as establishing the station’s Educational Resources Center, which has become America’s most prolific trainer of teachers in multimedia techniques. He has won several Emmy Awards, is a member of the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame, received two Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Awards in Television and Radio Journalism, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. |
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Gwen Ifill Doctor of Letters Gwen Ifill is one of the nation’s preeminent broadcast journalists. She has earned both national and international respect and admiration for her work as moderator and managing editor of the Public Broadcasting Service’s long-running and highly acclaimed series Washington Week, a roundtable discussion and analysis of current events in the nation’s capital, and as senior correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, conducting interviews, discussions, and debates; reporting from the field; and serving as a backup anchor to Lehrer. In her career, she has frequently brought national attention to issues affecting women and the African-American community and, informed by painful personal experience, was a strong voice in support of the Rutgers women’s basketball team during last year’s controversy surrounding disparaging remarks made about the team by a talk radio personality. Her resolve to also bring to the forefront the broader issue of the de facto acceptance of offensive “trash talk” in the media, in sports, and in American society as a whole focused much needed attention on this disturbing and hurtful practice. Born in New York City, Ifill earned a degree in communications at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, and began her career in journalism working at the Boston Herald American. She later worked for the Baltimore Evening Sun and the Washington Post, covering such areas as the White House, Congress, presidential campaigns, and government. She became the White House correspondent for the New York Times in 1991. Her work in broadcast journalism includes five years with NBC News, where she covered politics, public affairs, and national trends for The Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, Today, and MSNBC. She joined the NewsHour in October 1999, and assumed her role at Washington Week that same month. She moderated the vice presidential debate of the 2004 presidential campaign, a role reserved for the most respected journalists. Ifill serves on the boards of Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, and the Newseum, an interactive museum of news and journalism in Washington, D.C. She has won many honors for journalistic excellence from groups including the National Press Foundation, Ebony magazine, the Radio-Television News Directors Association, and American Women in Radio and Television. She also served as the 2007 Senator Wynona Lipman Chair in Women’s Political Leadership at Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics. |
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Ivy F. Matsepe-Casaburri Doctor of Laws Dr. Ivy F. Matsepe-Casaburri rose from humble beginnings in South Africa to stand today as her country’s minister of communications. A former premier of Free State Province, the first woman to hold that position, she is known throughout Africa as a leader in the applications of communications technology to economic development, educational empowerment, and the advancement of the cause of democracy. Educated both in Natal Province and at the University of Fort Hare in Eastern Cape Province, she earned a doctorate in sociology at Rutgers University and later became an associate professor on the faculty here. During her student years at Rutgers, she was an active member of the African Students Union and was elected president of the organization in 1975. As a member of the African National Congress, she struggled against the apartheid regime that ruled South Africa, striving for the release of the then imprisoned Nelson Mandela and the development of democratic change in her home country. Her career included several years as a teacher in South Africa and Swaziland and later service as a senior lecturer and registrar at the United Nations Institute for Namibia. She was able to return to South Africa in 1990 and became active in economic development, gender issues, local government, and the information, communications, and technology sectors. Her leadership qualities and ability to “get things done” earned her both respect and notoriety. Immediately upon her return, she became executive director of the Education Development Trust and was the first woman appointed to the board of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. She served as chair of the board of the South African Broadcasting Corporation and was appointed minister of communications in 1999, applying her considerable talents to the development and availability of affordable information technology services. Matsepe-Casaburri has been widely honored for her accomplishments, including a special award from the African Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) Achievers Programme for her dedication to the proliferation of the ICT industry in South Africa and across the continent, and her promotion of the use of technology by governments to improve service delivery to citizens. She is one of the most successful, visible, and accomplished women in Africa. |
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Arthur F. Ryan Doctor of Laws Chairman and recently retired chief executive officer of Prudential Financial, Inc., one of the largest and most important corporate citizens of Newark, New Jersey, Arthur F. Ryan was one of the driving forces behind the significant corporate and philanthropic support provided for the revitalization of the city of Newark. Born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised on Long Island, Ryan graduated from Providence College in 1963. After military service, he began his professional career at Control Data Corporation. He joined the Chase Manhattan Bank in 1972, working at first as a project manager and then beginning his rise through the ranks. He served in a variety of executive positions at Chase and became the bank’s president and chief operating officer in 1990. In 1994, he became Prudential’s chairman and CEO, the first to be appointed from outside in the company’s history. Prudential faced a variety of financial and other challenges when Ryan took over. He moved to address the challenges by taking such steps as focusing on core businesses and establishing strong internal controls. Thanks largely to Ryan’s aggressive and disciplined management style, Prudential stands today as a leading international corporate citizen with over $600 billion in assets, and operations in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Ryan also built on Prudential’s reputation as a good corporate citizen during his tenure, playing a pivotal role in the revitalization of New Jersey’s civic culture. Most recently, under Ryan's leadership as chairman, Prudential made a generous gift to the Rutgers University business school to create an endowed chair and a center in Newark focused on leadership development, ethics, and entrepreneurship. He and his wife, Pat, championed the location of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) in Newark, and have been tireless in their support of the Newark Museum, the New Jersey Symphony, Branch Brook Park, and the recently opened Prudential Center. He has held many influential positions, including chairman of the American Council of Life Insurers, co-chair of NJPAC, membership on the Council on Foreign Relations, and trusteeships with the New York Presbyterian Hospital and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. He has been co-chair of the board of Achieve, Inc., an organization created by U.S. governors and business leaders to drive high academic standards for American public schools, and of the Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy. |
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Wolf Singer Doctor of Science A renowned neuroscientist whose work has shaped much of the current nature and direction of teaching and research in his discipline, Dr. Wolf Singer was born in Munich, Germany, in 1943. He studied in Munich and Paris, France, receiving his doctorate in medicine from the University in Munich inn 1968. Following postgraduate studies at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom and the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Frankfurt, Singer joined the Department of Neurophysiology at the Planck Institute in 1973. He held faculty positions at the Technical University in Munich from 1975 to 1982, when he was named director of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research. In 2004, he also became the founding director of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. Singer is an expert on the mechanisms of brain development, especially the development, structure, and functional organization of the cerebral cortex and the neuronal foundations of perception. Early in his career, and in the face of long-established and widely accepted beliefs about the nature of brain function, his experiments and the resulting theoretical framework he propounded both economized and simplified theories of perception and information storage in the brain. Today, Singer’s so-called “binding model” of brain function is the leading framework of perception in contemporary neuroscience. He has trained numerous students who have gone on to hold significant academic positions at leading institutions throughout the world and has visited the Newark Campus of Rutgers on several occasions, developing strong professional connections to many Rutgers faculty members and students working in his area of expertise. Singer’s work in neuroscience and in making science more meaningful in schools and to the general public has earned him such prestigious honors as the IPSEN Foundation Prize for Neuronal Plasticity, the Ernst Jung Prize for Science and Research, the Zülch Prize for Brain Research, and the Communicator Prize of the German Research Foundation. He has been widely published and is a member of numerous national and international academies, including the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He has served as president of the European Neuroscience Association, as chairman of the Board of Directors of the Max Planck Society, and as member of numerous advisory boards of scientific organizations and the editorial boards of leading journals. |
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