US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to be Saint Michael's College Commencement Speaker 2009

Arne Duncan, United States Secretary of Education, will be the 2009 commencement speaker at Saint Michael's College on Thursday, May 14, at 10 a.m. in the Ross Sports Center. Secretary Duncan will address the 516 graduating seniors earning bachelor s degrees and 50 graduate students who are present, earning master s degrees, and their families, together totaling some 3,000 people at the college s graduation ceremonies. U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, a graduate of the Saint Michael s College class of 1961, was instrumental in arranging for Secretary Duncan to speak at Leahy s alma mater.
Honorary Degrees:
Secretary Duncan will be awarded an honorary Saint Michael's College doctoral degree, as will Marcelle Leahy, wife of Senator Patrick Leahy; Sister Irene Duchesneau, RHSJ, executive director of the Fanny Allen Foundation, and Dr. Frederick Burkle (SMC 61), senior fellow of the Harvard School of Public Health and senior associate and researcher at the Johns Hopkins University Medical Institutes.
Secretary Duncan
Arne Duncan was confirmed as U.S. Secretary of Education on inauguration day Jan. 20, 2009, becoming the leader of President Barack Obama s historic agenda of support for America s education system. Secretary Duncan has seven years experience as chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools, the nations third-largest school district, where he has addressed such issues as how to raise teacher quality, how to transform weak schools, and when to shutter those that are irredeemably failing.
President Obama said, in announcing his choice of Arne Duncan for this position, We need a new vision for a 21st century education system one where we aren t just supporting existing schools, but spurring innovation; where parents take responsibility for their children s success; where we re recruiting, retaining, and rewarding an army of new teachers; where we hold our schools, teachers and government accountable for results; and where we expect all our children not only to graduate high school, but to graduate college and get a good paying job.
The President said further, These are the goals to which Arne Duncan has devoted his life from his days back in college, tutoring children here in Chicago; to his work at the helm of a non-profit remaking schools on the South Side; to his time working for the Chicago Public Schools, where he became Chief Executive Officer of this city s school system. President Obama credited Secretary Duncan with proven experience changing our schools from the bottom up.
Harvard & Basketball
Born in 1964, Mr. Duncan comes from a family of educators: his mother founded and has run a highly regarded Chicago tutoring program for 48 years. His late father was a psychology professor at the University of Chicago.
Mr. Duncan graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and sits on the Harvard Board of Overseers. He tutored Chicago children during a year he took off from studying sociology at Harvard. He and President Obama have played pick-up basketball together in Chicago since the early 1990s, having met through Michelle Obama s brother. Mr. Duncan was co-captain of the Harvard basketball team, and a professional player in Australia from 1987 to 1991 (he is 6 foot 5); from 1991 to 1998, he directed the Ariel Education Initiative, a program seeking better schooling for poor children on the South Side of Chicago.
At his confirmation hearing before the Senate, Mr. Duncan said he would work for real and meaningful change in the nation s schools and said he hoped that Mr. Obama s example as a model student could inspire millions of American children. He added, Never before has being smart been so cool.
Plan to increase student financial aid
On Feb. 26, Secretary Duncan highlighted education portions of the FY 2010 budget that would dramatically expand student financial aid for college. He said the budget calls for a historic investment to make college more affordable, and said, The new funding represents a significant expansion of our federal student aid programs providing more dollars to allow more students to attend more schools. Specifically, the proposal would provide an additional $17 billion for Pell Grants in FY 2009 and 2010. The current year funding is $16.2 billion with 6.1 million students participating.
By ensuring that higher education is affordable and accessible for all our young people, Mr. Duncan said, we will make certain that our nation is prepared to compete in an information-age economy.
Saint Michael s College, www.smcvt.edu, founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, is identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nation s Best 368 Colleges. A liberal arts, residential, Catholic college, Saint Michael s is located just outside of Burlington, Vermont, one of America s top college towns, and less than two hours from Montreal. As one of only 270 institutions nationwide with a prestigious Phi Beta Kappa chapter on campus, Saint Michael s has 2,000 full-time undergraduate students, some 500 graduate students and 200 international students. In recent years Saint Michael s students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Science Foundation and other grants, and Saint Michael s professors have been named Vermont Professor of the Year in four of the last eight years. The college is currently listed as one of the nation s Best Liberal Arts Colleges in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report rankings.