President Ruth Simmons is one of four people who will be awarded an honorary degree from Wesleyan University May 23, according to an e-mail sent to the Wesleyan community.
"Wesleyan is an important institution, widely respected for its excellence and unique approach to education," Simmons wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. "I am proud to receive an honor from an institution that I respect so much."
Recipients of honorary degrees are chosen by a committee, said David Pesci, director of media relations at Wesleyan. Students, faculty, staff and alumni nominate people whom they consider "trailblazers" and "outstanding citizens," and then the decisions are made through a closed committee process, he said.
"We try to select people that we think are representative of the values we hold here at Wesleyan," Pesci said.
Simmons "is in very good company," he added. This year, Wesleyan will also award commencement speaker Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, who was selected as one of Time magazine's top "big-city" mayors in 2005. Stanley Cavell, professor emeritus of philosophy at Harvard, and Richard Winslow, professor emeritus of music at Wesleyan, will also be honored, according to the Wesleyan community e-mail.
The four recipients are all distinguished in their fields for contributions to public policy or scholarship, Pesci said.
Simmons "has the respect of just about anyone in academia for her leadership," he added.
This is not the first honorary degree that Simmons has received. She has been the recipient of honorary degrees from over 25 institutions, including Harvard, Princeton and Amherst College, according to her biography on the Brown Web site.
Still, Simmons wrote that she considers this and "any such award" to have meaning because it serves as recognition of Brown's excellence.
"Just as Brown often honors individuals for the success of the institutions they lead, so do others," she wrote.
Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron wrote in an e-mail that she was "thrilled" her undergraduate alma mater was celebrating Simmons. "It seems just right that Wesleyan should honor a woman who has stood for the same kind of free and freeing liberal education that Wesleyan itself has fostered through many years in its history," she wrote.
