EAST LANSING, Mich. — Jaime Escalante, a mathematics teacher whose life inspired the movie “Stand and Deliver,” and Julie Gerberding, who played a major role in leading the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s response to the anthrax bioterrorism events of 2001, will be Michigan State University’s spring commencement speakers.
MSU’s spring 2007 commencement ceremonies will be held Friday, May 4, and Saturday, May 5. Convocation is the one central ceremony for all undergraduates who will be graduating this spring at MSU. For additional commencement information, including a list of individual college ceremonies, visit the Web at www.commencement.msu.edu.
Escalante, whose East Los Angeles teaching career was depicted in the popular 1988 movie, will address undergraduate candidates for degrees at the 1 p.m convocation on May 4 at the Jack Breslin Student Events Center, One Birch Road. He will receive an honorary doctor of humanities.
Gerberding, CDC director, will address candidates for advanced degrees at the 7 p.m. advanced degree ceremony, also on May 4, at the Breslin Center. She will receive an honorary doctor of science.
MSU’s ties to the CDC are many and varied.
The CDC funds a number of MSU research projects, ranging from the prevention of blood disorders to better methods of treating knee injuries to searching for ways to prevent premature births.
Lonnie King, former dean of MSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine, currently serves the CDC as director of its National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne and Enteric Diseases. Also, MSU professor of pediatrics and human development Roshni Kulkarni is currently on leave from the university, working as director of the CDC’s Division of Hereditary Blood Disorders.
“Our speakers have devoted their lives to the pursuit of knowledge for the betterment of students and for the public good,” said MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon. “They both know well the commitment and dedication it takes to advance knowledge and transform lives.”
Biographies of the speakers follow.
Jaime Escalante
Jaime Escalante immigrated to the United States from Bolivia, where he taught mathematics and physics for 14 years. He studied science and mathematics in Puerto Rico in preparation for his return to teaching in the United States, and earned degrees from Pasadena City College and California State University-Los Angeles.
He started his teaching career at Garfield High School in Los Angeles in 1974, teaching students, mostly underprivileged Hispanics, who were deemed unteachable. Through a combination of dedication, gentle persuasion and deft showmanship, Escalante lifted his students to the top ranks in national calculus testing. Suspecting cheating, officials made the students retake the test, and again, students surpassed the school’s expectations.
His students continued to set standards in mathematics that were all but unequaled in American education. In 1999, he was inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame. Escalante, who says he is “just a math teacher,” challenged his students to find their “ganas” (the Spanish word for desire), and push themselves to levels they did not think they could reach.
In 1988, he was awarded the Presidential Medal for Excellence in Education from President Ronald Reagan, and was a Hispanic Heritage Award nominee. Among his other honors and awards, Escalante was honored by the International Astronomical Union with the naming of the asteroid number 5095 to Escalante in 1993. He retired from teaching in 2001, and moved back to Bolivia where he teaches at a university in Cochabamba.
Julie Gerberding
Julie Gerberding’s leadership as acting deputy director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases during the 2001 anthrax scare propelled her into the position of CDC director and administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in 2002.
She joined the CDC in 1998 as director of the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, where she developed the CDC’s patient safety initiative and other programs to prevent infections, antimicrobial resistance and medical errors in health care settings.
Prior to joining the CDC, she was a University of California-San Francisco faculty member and directed the Prevention Epicenter, a multidisciplinary research, training and clinical service program that focused on preventing infections in patients and their health care providers.
Gerberding also serves as an associate clinical professor of medicine (infectious diseases) at Emory University and as associate professor of medicine (infectious diseases) at the University of California-San Francisco.
She has served as a peer-reviewer for numerous internal medicine, infectious diseases and epidemiology journals, and authored or co-authored more than 140 publications and textbook chapters.
She has been a consultant to numerous health-related organizations including the National Institutes of Health, the American Medical Association, the National AIDS Commission and the World Health Organization.
Gerberding earned her bachelor of arts and medical degrees at Case Western Reserve University, and her master’s of public health degree at the University of California-Berkeley.
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Michigan State University has been advancing knowledge and transforming lives through innovative teaching, research and outreach for more than 150 years. MSU is known internationally as a major public university with global reach and extraordinary impact. Its 16 degree-granting colleges attract scholars worldwide who are interested in combining education with practical problem solving.