This year's honorary degree recipients are known best as television anchors, politicians and heads of prestigious science institutions, but almost all the recipients also have ties to the world of academia. Some have served as professors, others as mentors and some even as university administrators.
Following a nationwide trend to "go green," this year's senior class gift will help make GW a more environmentally friendly campus. For its parting present, the Class of 2007 created the Campus Green Fund, an endowment that will fund projects to bring more greenery to campus, making it more environmentally friendly for current and future generations.
Though many graduating seniors spent their four years at GW studying international affairs, Iraq war veteran Catherine O'Connor learned from firsthand experience. O'Connor, a senior, will be the student speaker at Commencement this year. She returned from Iraq in Jan.
Some graduating seniors are still disappointed with GW's decision to make outgoing University President Steven Joel Trachtenberg the Commencement speaker. But while cries for protests and walk-outs found their way into the national media last month, students appear to have dropped their plans.
University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg is not the only administrator departing from GW at the end of this semester. Several other administrators including Executive Director of University Events Jim Hess, Assistant Vice President of Alumni Relations Scott Mory, Director of Housing Programs James Kohl and Vice President and General Counsel Dennis Blumer are also ending their careers in Foggy Bottom.
The end of the spring semester is normally a time to celebrate the departure of graduating students, yet this is also a time to commemorate professors retiring from their lives in academia at GW. For several of this year's retiring professors - namely John Ziolkowski and Gregory Ludlow - the decision to step down means an end to decades of scholarly work in the GW community.
While some of the seniors graduating Sunday may be the first in their families to ever step foot on the GW campus, there are others following in the footsteps of their parents or siblings. These are legacy students, people for whom spending four years in Foggy Bottom is somewhat of a family tradition.
University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg provides the answers to student questions in the final stretch of his presidency...
Commencement is a time for celebrating accomplishments, enjoying family and friends and looking to the future. Yet this year's GW Commencement ceremony has turned into a controversial and polarizing event with the initial announcement, and then eventual change, of University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg as the keynote speaker.
Gregory Camp, 22, came to GW thinking he was going to study cultural diplomacy, but then music just started taking over. "Music is more active and it's not boring," Camp said. "You can study and perform it at the same time and it requires working with a team.
Pisei Chea's passion for Cambodia was intensified by "Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors" by Dirth Pran. She picked it up during her freshman year, and its impact on her was so great that four years later, she decided to write a rhetorical analysis about the novel as her senior communication thesis.
When Kenan Cole was younger she watched NCAA games on TV. In her last four years at GW, she was a key player in women's basketball team's tournament games. Cole, the only senior on this year's squad, proved that anything is possible if you put your mind to it.
It was a twist of fate that got Zack Colonna, 22, to where he is today. He began as an electronic media major at GW, but after the University canceled the program he had to switch majors. He is now a theatre major and said he thinks it turned out to be one of the best decisions of his life.
Michael Fauver has always been a storyteller. Instead of his parents reading him bedtime stories, he made up his own. In the fourth grade, he attended writing conferences with his teacher and knew that one day he would be a novelist. After graduation, Fauver, 23, will be spending a month at Yaddo, a prestigious artists' community in upstate New York, where he can begin working on his first novel.
Rose Hickman studied African cultural identity, not in Africa, but in Ecuador and Mexico. She studied an Afro-Ecuadorian community in fall 2005, and then in the spring of 2006, she studied an Afro-Mexican community on the coast of Oaxaca. "I'm really interested in people living outside of their context," she said.
The District has been called many things: Divided City, Dank City, Diamond City. John Muller, 23, calls it DreamCity. Muller, who wakes up early and goes to bed late, spent most of his time at GW working with the city and starting his own non-profit. At first, he said he was frustrated that no one would listen to how he planned to confront the socio-economic hardships of the District, but then he started DreamCity Theater Group, which focuses on civic engagement.
Without Justin Neidig, the student body would have to work a little harder to get things done. Neidig, 22, has served on the senate rules and finance committees of the Student Association. He has been the chairman of the Joint Elections Committee, an independent body that administers student elections.
Arlington County, Courthouse Metro, affordable housing. All of these things seem so distant from Foggy Bottom and the collegiate experience, but for Kimberly Painter, these two different worlds blended together into an intricate balance. Painter, 23, has been working part-time at Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing, a nonprofit that works closely with the Arlington County government.
How does a girl from a small town in New Hampshire with a population of 2,000 mostly white Christians end up in San Antonio, a city with more than a million people, 12 percent black and 14 percent Hispanic? As someone who loves children and cannot wait to be pushed out of her comfort zone, Marilyn Petzy is a political communication major who will not be going on to a career in politics.
Vol. 106
An Independent Student Newspaper
Serving The George Washington University Community Since 1904
