{"id":107036,"date":"2017-04-13T14:05:34","date_gmt":"2017-04-13T18:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=107036"},"modified":"2023-01-24T14:43:46","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T19:43:46","slug":"geoffrey-canada-2017-commencement-address-honorands-susan-collins-wanda-corn-patrick-dempsey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2017\/04\/13\/geoffrey-canada-2017-commencement-address-honorands-susan-collins-wanda-corn-patrick-dempsey\/","title":{"rendered":"Visionary educator Geoffrey Canada to deliver 2017 Commencement address, joining honorands Sen. Susan Collins, Wanda Corn, and Patrick Dempsey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Geoffrey Canada, a visionary American educator whose work has transformed the lives of thousands of inner-city youth, will deliver the Bates College Commencement address and receive an honorary degree on Sunday, May 28.
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<\/p>\n

Commencement 2017 livestream<\/p>\n

The 2017 Bates Commencement will be livestreamed<\/a> beginning at 10 a.m.<\/p>\n

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For its 151st Commencement<\/a>, Bates will welcome Canada and three fellow honorary degree recipients whose careers and achievements span politics and government, American art history, and entertainment and community philanthropy:<\/p>\n

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, Maine\u2019s senior senator whose power and influence derives from extraordinary diligence and steadfast bipartisanship;<\/p>\n

Wanda M. Corn \u201962, an innovative interpreter of American modern art and its role in our national identity; and<\/p>\n

Patrick Dempsey, an actor who has translated Hollywood success into hope and healing in Lewiston, Maine, the city of his birth.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOn a day that celebrates achievement, hope, and promise, we are proud to welcome four individuals who have brought enormous creativity and relentless dedication to their life\u2019s work,\u201d said President Clayton Spencer. \u201cWe are especially honored to hear from Geoffrey Canada, whose career embodies the very mission of a Bates education \u2014 the cultivation of intellectual discovery and informed civic action as we prepare leaders committed to the responsible stewardship of the wider world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Commencement concludes the undergraduate careers of the 460 members of the Bates Class of 2017, who represent 37 U.S. states, territories, and the District of Columbia, and 33 countries.<\/p>\n

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\"Canada-Geoffrey-2017-honorand-1736-150x\"

\n\t+<\/span>Geoffrey Canada, Doctor of Humane Letters <\/a>\n\t<\/h5>
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\u201cWhen I was in college, I was absolutely focused on only one thing: How could I improve the outcomes for these poor kids that I knew growing up?\u201d educator Geoffrey Canada told an interviewer in 2010. \u201cEvery single class I took, I was looking for the answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raised in a poor neighborhood in the South Bronx, Canada’s answer to this question has made him a leader in education and community development. From his early work with disadvantaged families, he determined that only a comprehensive approach to eradicating poverty could succeed \u2014 comprehensive in the services provided and the proportion of the community that is reached.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Commencement speaker, Geoffrey Canada will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.<\/p><\/div>\n

As the current president and former CEO of the Harlem Children\u2019s Zone, Canada has focused on education but brought a holistic approach \u2014 addressing not only academics but health and fitness and the cultures of community and family \u2014 to preparing thousands of young New Yorkers for success in college. Described by The New York Times<\/i> as \u201cone of the most ambitious social-policy experiments of our time,\u201d HCZ\u2019s array of programs support children and their families along the path to educational and economic achievement. It is \u201ccradle-to-career\u201d support, from The Baby College for new parents, through the Promise Academy K\u201312 charter schools, to the College Success Office for students in academe.<\/p>\n

The 2016 college acceptance rate for HCZ students was 96 percent. That same year, HCZ programs served 12,509 people up to age 23, as well as 12,498 adults. HCZ engages an expanse of Harlem totaling nearly 100 blocks.<\/p>\n

Canada became president of the Harlem Children\u2019s Zone in 1990, and served as CEO from that year until 2014. Under his leadership, HCZ has become a national model and the subject of considerable media attention. Fans of HCZ include former U.S. President Barack Obama, whose Promise Neighborhoods Initiative adapted aspects of the HCZ program in communities across the U.S.<\/p>\n

In 2008, Houghton Mifflin published Whatever It Takes<\/i> by Paul Tough, a close look at the work of Canada and HCZ. Two years later, Canada and HCZ figured in the documentary Waiting for \u201cSuperman<\/i>.\u201d<\/i> In 2011, Canada was named one of TIME Magazine<\/i>\u2019s 100 Most Influential People and in 2014, he was listed as one of the World\u2019s 50 Greatest Leaders by Fortune<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Canada received a bachelor\u2019s degree from Bowdoin College and a master\u2019s degree in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He has written two books: 1995\u2019s Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America<\/i> (reissued as a graphic novel in 2013) and, in 1997, Reaching Up for Manhood: Transforming the Lives of Boys in America<\/i>. He has written op-eds for The New York Times <\/i>and Daily News<\/i>, given a TED Talk on our failing schools that was broadcast on PBS, and has addressed audiences around the world about helping children succeed.
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\"Collins-Susan-2017-honorand-DSC1389-150x\"

\n\t+<\/span>U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, Doctor of Humane Letters<\/a>\n\t<\/h5>
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Maine\u2019s senior U.S. senator, Republican Susan Collins has a national reputation for achieving progress on important issues by working across party lines with a focus on results.<\/p>\n

Ranked as the most bipartisan senator by the Lugar Center\u2013McCourt School Index three years running, Collins is \u201cone of the crucially important (and increasingly rare) bipartisan players\u201d in the Senate, said Elle<\/i> magazine, which named her among Washington\u2019s most powerful women in 2014. In 2016, she received the inaugural Jacob Javits Prize for Bipartisan Leadership. Of the tumult that accompanies bipartisanship today, Collins told a Bates audience in November that \u201cyou can have vigorous arguments without insulting the integrity and intelligence of the person with whom you disagree. If we can\u2019t respect one another, it makes it far more difficult to solve problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

This exceptional approach has thrust her into the national spotlight at important times, including in 2010 when Collins was the lead Republican in the successful repeal of the discriminatory law banning gay Americans from serving openly in the military. \u201cShe was nothing short of heroic,\u201d recalled Joe Solmonese, then president of the Human Rights Campaign of the United States.<\/p>\n

\"U.S.<\/a>

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree at Commencement.<\/p><\/div>\n

Famously dutiful in the execution of her office, Collins has never missed a Senate roll call vote \u2014 more than 6,300 and counting \u2014 during her time in public service that began in the wake of defeat. After finishing third in her 1994 bid for Maine governor, Collins considered taking a pass on a run for senator in 1996. But as she has said, \u201cMy dream was to serve the people of Maine in elective office, and I didn\u2019t want to get to age 95 saying, \u2018If only I had believed in myself. If only I had been willing to take that risk.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Collins is the senior Republican woman in the Senate and ranks 15th overall in Senate seniority. Chair of the Senate Aging Committee, she is also a member of the Committee on Appropriations, chairing its Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development. She also serves on the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and the Select Committee on Intelligence. In 2004, Collins coauthored the landmark law overhauling the nation\u2019s intelligence community, improving its effectiveness while protecting civil liberties.<\/p>\n

Collins founded the Senate Diabetes Caucus in 1997 and has led the effort to more than triple federal funding for diabetes research. Senate co-chair of the Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer’s disease, she has worked to substantially increase Alzheimer\u2019s research funding.<\/p>\n

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of St. Lawrence University, Collins was raised in Caribou, Maine, where her family\u2019s fifth-generation lumber business was founded in 1844. \u201cCommunity, giving back, and public service were very much a part of my life from the very beginning,\u201d she said. \u201cMy parents taught me that you had no right to complain if you weren\u2019t willing to get involved.\u201d
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\n\t+<\/span>Wanda M. Corn '62, Doctor of Fine Arts<\/a>\n\t<\/h5>
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An author, curator, and scholar, as well as a teacher known for both the clarity and passion she brings to her subject, Wanda Corn \u201962 is a star among historians of American art. She\u2019s a \u201cnational resource,\u201d said art scholar Bryan Wolf, who described Corn as \u201cthe<\/i> teacher, the<\/i> mentor, the<\/i> organizer.\u201d Another Corn admirer, the art historian Elizabeth Hutton Turner, took a more personal view: \u201cShe is, quite simply, my hero.\u201d<\/p>\n

Focusing on art and photography from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries, Corn has played an important role in defining American art in the contexts of both international art and U.S. culture. One of seven books Corn has authored or co-authored, her award-winning The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915\u20131935<\/i> links emergent American modernism to transatlantic trends in history, literature, criticism, and popular culture \u2014 and to the energies of artists in Paris as well as New York City.<\/p>\n

\"Wanda<\/a>

Wanda M. Corn ’62 will receive an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree at Commencement.<\/p><\/div>\n

Corn, a Bates student for two years before studying abroad and then completing bachelor\u2019s, master\u2019s, and doctoral degrees at New York University, taught at Washington Square College, the University of California, Berkeley, and Mills College before moving in 1980 to Stanford University, where she held the institution’s first permanent appointment dedicated to the history of American art. Her record at Stanford includes service as chair of the Department of Art and Art History, director of the Stanford Humanities Center, and interim director of the Stanford Museum. In that role, Corn led a feasibility study for the museum\u2019s comprehensive renovation after it was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. In 2008, she retired from Stanford after eight years as the university\u2019s Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor in Art History.<\/p>\n

Exhibitions that Corn has curated include thematic surveys, such as a companion show to The Great American Thing<\/i>, and exhibitions focused on specific artists such as Grant Wood, who remains an active focus of her research, and Andrew Wyeth. Her curatorial efforts and advocacy helped to bring a collection of American art owned by Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, a body of 110 paintings described as the museums\u2019 \u201csingle most important gift of art.\u201d Corn has been lauded for inventive exhibitions that juxtapose material artifacts with art to establish context and richness of interpretation, hallmarks of her 2011 exhibition Gertrude Stein: Five Storie<\/i>s. In the current Brooklyn Museum of Art exhibition Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern<\/i>, Corn explores the artist\u2019s rigorous creation of a public persona by installing beautifully crafted garments from O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s wardrobe in conversation with artwork by and photographs of the artist.<\/p>\n

Corn\u2019s honors include the Archives of American Art’s Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History and the College Art Association’s Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award and Distinguished Scholar award.
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\n\t+<\/span>Patrick Dempsey, Doctor of Humane Letters<\/a>\n\t<\/h5>
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Patrick Dempsey is a household name, thanks to film and television roles that include his 11 seasons as Dr. Derek Shepherd on Grey\u2019s Anatomy<\/i>. Motorsports cognoscenti also recognize him as a race car driver. But people in Maine, especially Lewiston, know there\u2019s yet another Patrick Dempsey to admire.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the Lewiston native who responded to his mother\u2019s cancer diagnosis by co-founding a facility to support people living with cancer \u2014 the Dempsey Center \u2014 just blocks from the Bates campus. Patrick Dempsey makes headlines every autumn when he comes home for the Dempsey Challenge, joining participants for fund-raising walks and rides and lending his star power to the festivities. In 2016, the three-day event attracted nearly 4,000 participants and raised more than $1.2 million for the center.<\/p>\n

Raised in Buckfield and Turner, Dempsey did not thrive in school because of dyslexia that went undiagnosed until seventh grade. But it was a schoolteacher who introduced this born performer to juggling. \u201cLearning how to juggle,\u201d Dempsey told The New York Times<\/i> in 1987, \u201cchanged my life. It gave me a purpose. It led me toward performance.\u201d Embracing a mental and physical discipline in juggling that would serve him well in other pursuits, Dempsey went on to win the national Talent America competition in 1983.<\/p>\n

Patrick Dempsey will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree at Commencement. (Photo by Matthew Elsman)<\/p><\/div>\n

He was also acting by then, and success in the theater quickly led to film and television work: By the end of the 1980s, roles in romantic comedies such as Can<\/i>\u2019t Buy Me Love<\/i> had put Dempsey on the map. In 2005, following well-received recurring roles in television programs like Will & Grace<\/i>, the Emmy-nominated actor helped launch Grey\u2019s Anatomy<\/i> as neurosurgeon Derek Shepherd. The hit series, wrote an IMDb.com<\/i> biographer, was \u201cthe perfect vehicle to showcase his undeniable charisma and sharp talent for offbeat comedy.\u201d Dempsey, seen on screen last fall competing for Ren\u00e9e Zellweger\u2019s hand in Bridget Jones\u2019 Baby<\/i>, completed his directorial debut in 2017 with a Tag Heuer spot with Director of Photography Janusz Kaminski.<\/p>\n

An automobile collector, Dempsey began racing cars in 2004 and has driven more than 100 competitions, including the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans, placing second in class in 2015. That same year, Dempsey was part of the winning team in the Japanese round of the FIA World Endurance Championship.<\/p>\n

Amanda Dempsey, Patrick’s mother, was diagnosed with cancer in 1997 and succumbed to the disease in 2014. Six years earlier, partnering with Central Maine Medical Center, her children Patrick, Mary, and Alicia founded the Dempsey Center to provide education, wellness services, and other forms of support \u2014 free of charge \u2014 to anyone affected by cancer. Discussing fame in a 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter<\/i>, Dempsey said that \u201cwhen I can use it to accomplish something constructive \u2014 those are the moments that I actually enjoy being famous.\u201d
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Visionary American educator Geoffrey Canada gives the Commencement address, joined by fellow honorands Sen. Susan Collins, art historian Wanda Corn \u201962, and Lewiston-born actor Patrick Dempsey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":107695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[133,175,31,224,234,11009],"tags":[10935,10831,11340,11327,10073,8314,11328],"class_list":["post-107036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creativity","category-justice-poverty","category-lewiston-auburn","category-society-culture","category-teaching-education","category-the-college","tag-clayton-spencer","tag-commencement","tag-commencement-2017","tag-geoffrey-canada","tag-patrick-dempsey","tag-susan-collins","tag-wanda-corn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107036"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110370,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107036\/revisions\/110370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}