Ralph T. Perry – News

Actress Davis, other honorands emphasize theme of change

Doug Hubley — Sun, 31 May 2009 12:40:38 +0000

People like to believe that positive change just happens, Academy Award-winning actress Geena Davis told the �ֲ��ý College Class of 2009 during its Commencement ceremony May 31.

But with so many aspects of our society, Davis said, “change must be firmly and continuously pushed in order to be effected.”

The actress was one of five figures prominent in their fields to receive honorary degrees in a morning ceremony on May 31. Joining Davis in addressing the 472 graduates and their families were the Rev. Robert M. Franklin Jr., president of Morehouse College; biomechanics researcher Mimi A.R. Koehl; Maine philanthropist and 1951 �ֲ��ý graduate Ralph T. Perry; and columnist and CNN host Fareed Zakaria.

There was a celebrity of sorts among the graduates, too. Fifty-five years after leaving �ֲ��ý to join the army, of Salem, Mass., was among the graduates receiving a �ֲ��ý diploma. Harris, 75, returned to �ֲ��ý to complete his degree and is the second-oldest person (after an 83-year-old graduate in 1931) to earn a bachelor’s degree from �ֲ��ý.

Reflecting the nation’s new political reality, the theme of change amidst trying times dominated the advice offered graduates during the two-hour ceremony on �ֲ��ý’ Historic Quad.

In her opening, �ֲ��ý President Elaine Tuttle Hansen recalled the historical context distinctive to the Class of 2009. While its members were arriving at �ֲ��ý amidst “sunshine and beginnings,” the Gulf Coast was reeling under the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina. Four years later, the class began its senior year just as the subprime mortgage crisis touched off our current economic woes.

“�ֲ��ý people neither ignore nor dwell on the worst. They ask what they can do to make things better. You will confront difficulties by rising to the occasion and being the very best that you can be,” Hansen said.

Geena Davis, joking at the top of her speech that “hereafter, I’d like to be referred to as Dr. Davis,” deftly wove humor and a call to action together in her talk. She described the work she is doing, through the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, to research the disparities between Hollywood’s depictions of women and of men, especially in programming for children.

Looking more broadly at gender inequality in America, Davis noted that only 16 percent of the members of Congress are women, and if women supplant men at the current rate, it will take 500 years to even things up.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here,” Davis said. “I say that that’s too slow.”

A Maine businessman whose success engendered a remarkable record of philanthropy, of which �ֲ��ý has been a major beneficiary, Ralph Perry asked the graduates to consider the very notion of success.

Too often, he said, our society takes wealth, accolades and occupation as measures of success — but, he asked, “when we are near the end of life’s journey, will the greatest satisfaction be from the accumulation of wealth and honors, or will it be the memories of our good deeds?”

Perry, a retired president of Maine-based Progressive Distributors and senior vice president of Hannaford Bros. supermarkets, went on to offer some of his own measures of personal success — self-knowledge, habitually treating

others with dignity and respect, having high expectations of oneself and others.

As for the rewards of philanthropy, Perry concluded by sharing excerpts from letters he had received. One came from a student attending �ֲ��ý on a scholarship he endowed — a scholarship, she wrote, that has “launched [her] into a career at a college I have fallen in love with.”

Franklin prefaced his talk by reaffirming the long, strong relationship between �ֲ��ý and Morehouse. He said, “Morehouse thanks �ֲ��ý for our greatest president, and �ֲ��ý alumnus, Benjamin Elijah Mays,” a member of the �ֲ��ý Class of 1920 who drew to Morehouse students of the caliber of Martin Luther King Jr.

In essence, Franklin called his advice to the graduates “become, beware and be.”

“Become renaissance women and renaissance men, with social conscience and global perspective,” he urged. In a reference to Mahatma Gandhi, he told the graduates to beware of the deadly sins of modern life, such as commerce without morality and pleasure without conscience.

Finally, citing civil rights leader King, he told the graduates to be “transformed non-conformists” — the people who turn their differences with society into a different, and better, society.

Looking back at her own undergraduate conversion experience from an art to a science major, Koehl implored her

listeners not to fear crossing boundaries, in learning and in life. “Problems facing the world today are so complicated that it’s going to take people who can talk across boundaries and work across boundaries to solve them,” she said.

“You’ve learned how to learn here,” she said. “And my challenge to you today is: At the end of every day as you go forward from here, ask yourself, What did I learn today? And if you didn’t perceive enough to learn anything new, then live tomorrow differently.”

Zakaria told the graduates that “you are the change you seek. You are the agents of change in this world.” Pointing to the effective global response to the H1N1 virus, he reminded the gathering that while challenges are easy to predict, it’s much harder to predict “how the collective human response will change history.”

Zakaria was reluctant to suggest career fields to the graduates, he said. But, echoing Perry, “it is likely that human beings will be rewarded for the same qualities that have been rewarded for the past 5,000 years: intelligence, hard work, honesty, a sense of character, loyalty to your family and friends, love and faith,” he said. “Perhaps above all, love and faith.”

Drawing what appeared to be a substantially larger crowd than past years, the ceremony filled the leafy Historic Quad. As the occasional clouds gave way to brilliant sun, bursts of maple seeds glittered down onto the gathering like confetti.

Of the 472 seniors that �ֲ��ý graduated Sunday, 253 are women and 219 are men. Fifty-five graduates come from

Maine and 26 members of the class come from other countries.

Political science was the most popular major for members of the class of 2009, with 63 graduates. Second place went to psychology, with 57, followed by economics with 56. Thirty-five women and 21 men took double majors, with French and Spanish (tied for first place), economics and history being the most popular second majors.

Seventy-three members of the class of 2009 earned bachelor of science degrees, with the remaining 399 earning bachelor of arts degrees.

— Doug Hubley, Office of Communications and Media Relations

Commencement outdoors, luncheon in Gray Cage, Alumni Gym

�ֲ��ý News — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:52:07 +0000

[Please note: Commencement will be held outdoors on the Quad in front of Coram Library. The luncheon following Commencement will be held in the Clifton Daggett Gray Athletic Building and Alumni Gymnasium.]

An actress, educator, biomechanics researcher, Maine philanthropist and CNN host will receive honorary degrees and speak at �ֲ��ý College’s 143rd Commencement ceremony at 10 a.m. on Sunday, May 31.

The ceremony takes place on the Historic Quad, where Coram Library provides the striking backdrop for the tradition-rich event.

The 2009 �ֲ��ý honorands:

Academy Award-winning actress Geena Davis, best-known for starring performances on television and in film, including the iconic movie Thelma and Louise;
The Rev. Robert M. Franklin Jr., nationally known educator, author and president of Morehouse College;
Mimi A.R. Koehl, Gill Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and recipient of a MacArthur “genius award”;
One of �ֲ��ý’ most generous philanthropists, Ralph T. Perry ’51, a retired president of Maine-based Progressive Distributors and senior vice president of Hannaford Bros. supermarket chain;
Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, world affairs columnist and CNN host.

Davis supports research into the disparities between Hollywood’s depictions of women and of men.

Geena Davis will receive the Doctor of Fine Arts degree. Watching children’s television one day with her daughter, the actress noticed that far fewer women than men appeared on the screen. This observation inspired the Academy Award-winner to assume an important new off-screen role. As founder of the , Davis supports research into the disparities between Hollywood’s depictions of women and of men. In 2008, the institute published a study by Stacy Smith of the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, which found male characters outnumbering females nearly threefold in a broad sampling of films. Even in scenes of crowds or animated schools of fish, Davis told the GDIGM Conference in 2008, “the worlds that kids are seeing are really bereft of a female presence overall.”

Born Virginia Davis in Wareham, Mass., Davis earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in drama at Boston University. A role on the critically acclaimed sitcom Buffalo Bill (for which she would write an episode) in 1982 launched a film and television career whose many highlights include the films The Fly, A League of Their Own, Thelma and Louise and the Stuart Little series. Davis won an Academy Award for her performance in 1988’s The Accidental Tourist and, more recently, the 2005 Golden Globe for leading actress with her portrayal of the American president in the TV series Commander in Chief.

She is a member of Mensa and tried out for the U.S. archery team bound for the 2000 Olympics, placing 24th out of 28 women in a qualifying competition.

Robert Franklin will receive the Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Cornel West calls Franklin “one of the most prophetic leaders and visionary thinkers of his generation.” An educator and author of national stature, Franklin is the , a historically black institution and the nation’s largest liberal arts college for men.

Franklin’s major fields of study include social ethics, psychology and African American religion. A native of Chicago, Franklin has served on the faculties of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, where he received his doctorate, and the Harvard Divinity School, where he received his master’s, as well as Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School and the Candler School of Theology, where he gained a national reputation as director of black church studies. As program officer in human rights and social justice at the Ford Foundation, he served as adviser on issues related to future funding for religion and public life initiatives. A frequent commentator for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Franklin has built a national platform on social ethics and community values.

Franklin has built a national platform on social ethics and community values.

In his latest book, Crisis in the Village: Restoring Hope to African American Communities, Franklin identifies crises in three anchor institutions that have played key roles in the black struggle for freedom — black families, the black church and historically black colleges and universities — and how they must address the rising rates of father absence, births to unmarried parents, divorce and domestic abuse or relationship violence. Franklin “exemplifies the best qualities of a Morehouse man,” says Morehouse Chairman of the Board Trustees Willie Davis.

Mimi Koehl will receive the Doctor of Science degree. The way a poet seeks an apt metaphor, this biomechanics researcher finds poetry and truth in the physical structures of living things. The at the University of California, Berkeley, Koehl once said that the organisms she studies “are beautiful if you simply look at them — but even more beautiful when you understand how they work.” A past recipient of a MacArthur “genius award,” Koehl combines techniques from fluid and solid mechanics with those from biology, working in the laboratory and, famously, the field, because to understand how form affects function, “you need to know what [an organism] does in nature.”

Koehl’s work has yielded important clues about how, for example, crustaceans pluck odors from the water and how sea anemones withstand crashing waves. In theorizing how insects developed wings, she conducted experiments deemed “elaborate and elegant” by the late evolutionary theorist Stephen Jay Gould.

This biomechanics researcher finds poetry and truth in the physical structures of living things.

Appreciating the natural world’s uncanny ability to solve problems, Koehl is a co-founder of CiBER, a Berkeley research and teaching center focusing on the new field of bio-inspired design of man-made devices. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Koehl won the 2002 Borelli Award for outstanding career accomplishment in biomechanics, the 2008 Martin Award for research that created a paradigm shift in aquatic sciences and the 2009 Muybridge Award, the highest honor of the International Society for Biomechanics.

Initially an art major at Gettysburg College, she switched to biology and earned a doctorate in zoology at Duke University. In 2006 she published Wave-Swept Shore, a book that explains the challenging lives of sea creatures along a stretch of Pacific coast through a simple lens called “How?”

Ralph Perry ’51, a resident of Orrs Island, Maine, will receive the Doctor of Humane Letters degree. As one of �ֲ��ý’ most generous philanthropists, Perry has supported programs and priorities that reflect his identity as a Maine citizen and businessman, his personal history and his devotion to his alma mater. “In �ֲ��ý, we alumni have something that deserves to be preserved and strengthened with our generous financial support,” he once said.

A retired president of Maine-based Progressive Distributors and senior vice president of the Hannaford Bros. supermarket chain, Perry began his philanthropic commitment to �ֲ��ý with a significant gift in 1979 to help fund the Charles Franklin Phillips Professorship in Economics, honoring �ֲ��ý’ fourth president. In 1992, he endowed a major scholarship fund for Maine students who persevere in pursuit of their goals. “Young Maine people with high aspirations must be provided equally great opportunities,” he said.Following the death, in 1994, of his first wife, Joan Holmes Perry, �ֲ��ý Class of 1951, he made a gift in her memory to create a three-story, 8,000-square-foot atrium within Pettengill Hall.

“Young Maine people with high aspirations must be provided equally great opportunities.”

In 1999, Perry and his second wife, Mary Louise Seldenfleur, endowed a professorship in the biological sciences in honor of their friend, Dr. Helen A. Papaioanou ’49, and made further gifts to support scholarships and academic programs. Three years later, the couple helped �ֲ��ý establish the Mount David Summit, an annual student academic celebration held in Perry Atrium. “Athletes get recognition in various ways. Scholars deserve recognition too,” said Perry, a 1951 �ֲ��ý history major who played varsity football, baseball and basketball and was, in 2005, the inaugural alumni inductee into the �ֲ��ý Scholar-Athlete Society.

Of his and his wife’s philanthropy, which has also supported Maine cultural, conservation, and healthcare institutions, Perry said, “We try to improve the quality of life for Maine people.”

Fareed Zakaria will receive the Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Zakaria, described by Esquire magazine as “the most influential foreign policy adviser of his generation,” is widely respected for his ability to spot economic and political trends around the world. Zakaria’s cover stories and columns on subjects from globalization and emerging markets to the Middle East and America’s role in the world — reach more than 25 million readers weekly. He also is the host of a weekly international news program, , that airs on CNN worldwide.

His national bestseller, The Post-American World is about the “rise of the rest” the growth of China, India, Brazil and many other countries — and what it means for the future. His previous bestseller, The Future of Freedom, has been translated into 20 languages and was called “a work of tremendous originality and insight” by The Washington Post. Born in India, he earned his bachelor’s degree at Yale and his doctorate in political science at Harvard. He has served as an analyst for ABC News, a roundtable member on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and host of Foreign Exchange on PBS.

He is described by Esquire magazine as “the most influential foreign policy adviser of his generation.”

At age 28, he became the youngest managing editor in the history of Foreign Affairs. One of Jon Stewart’s favorite guests on The Daily Show, Zakaria has appeared on Charlie Rose, The NewsHour and BBC World News and written for such publications as The New Yorker and The New York Times.

Papaioanou professorship honors ‘relationships that give so much to the world’

�ֲ��ý News — Tue, 17 May 2005 17:50:33 +0000

One champion of �ֲ��ý philanthropy honored another on May 16 as the college inaugurated the Helen A. Papaioanou, M.D. ’49 Chair in the Biological Sciences.

The chair was established as part of a multimillion gift several years ago by Ralph T. Perry ’51 and his wife, Mary Louise Seldenfleur.

“The establishment of this chair honors the value of relationships that begin at �ֲ��ý and give so much to the world,” said President Elaine Tuttle Hansen.

At the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall event, Pamela J. Baker ’70, the first Helen A. Papaioanou Professor of Biological Sciences, offered her inaugural lecture, “Immunology in the Liberal Arts and Sciences.”

Helen Papaioanou, the chair’s namesake, and donor Ralph Perry shared the �ֲ��ý campus for two years as students, but their close friendship blossomed in more recent times as they emerged as the two highest-profile leaders of �ֲ��ý philanthropy.

On May 16, 2005, Papaioanou Professor of Biological Sciences Pamela Baker ’70 (right) poses with the chair’s namesake, Dr. Helen A. Papaioanou ’49 (left) and Ralph Perry ’51 (center), who, with his wife Mary Louise Seldenfleur, made the gift establishing the professorship. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“When we were students, I think I was aware that Helen was the one who spent her time in the labs, and she was aware that I was the one who spent my time on the athletic fields,” Perry said. “Over the last 10 years, we have become real friends as we are now on the same life path.”

Papaioanou, a retired Detroit-area pediatrician who specialized in allergy and immunology, served as a �ֲ��ý trustee for 34 years. Chair of the 1991-96 �ֲ��ý Campaign, she earned an honorary Doctor of Science degree in 1997 and received the highest alumni honor, the Benjamin E. Mays Medal, in 2003.

“After Milt Lindholm,” Perry said, referencing the revered dean emeritus of admissions, who was in the audience Monday, “no other �ֲ��ý graduate is held in higher esteem than Helen Papaioanou.”

As an undergraduate, Perry honed his amore ac studio spirit in �ֲ��ý athletics, earning nine varsity letters while majoring in history. An entrepreneur, he is the retired founder of Progressive Distributors in Winthrop, now a subsidiary of the Hannaford grocery chain. During the 1990s, Perry donated more than $6.5 million to �ֲ��ý to support financial aid and the academic program, $1.5 million of which established the permanently endowed Papaioanou chair.

“Your gift is now living and breathing for �ֲ��ý,” Papaioanou said. “Ralph and Mary Louise: We celebrate you, we honor you and we cherish you.”

Jill Reich, dean of the faculty and vice president for academic affairs, introduced Baker, who is also an associate dean of the faculty, by describing one of the professor’s “typical” days.

“She begins her day doing research, perhaps with a student in Carnegie,” Reich said, noting Baker’s eminence as a researcher of alveolar bone loss in periodontal disease. Baker might then head back to Lane Hall to discuss a major foundation grant proposal, followed by a search-committee meeting for a new hire in the English faculty. Then she might work on a report outlining needed financial support for faculty research.

Then comes a conference call discussing initiatives among Maine’s biomedical research centers and a lecture to students in the famous Short Term biology unit, “Cell Hell,” followed by a meeting with an architect designing a new digital imaging center. “Then it’s off to the Den for lunch,” Reich said to laughter from the audience.

“That may be an exaggeration,” continued the dean. “But Pam certainly excels as a scholar, teacher and leader. She puts her mind and heart into everything she does.”

Baker discussed both her research and the value of pursuing scholarship within a liberal arts community, where interaction with colleagues across the academic spectrum keeps a scholar’s mind alive.

Baker focuses on periodontal (gum) disease and the complex relationship between the immune systen and susceptibility to this disease. Contrary to conventional assumptions, Baker’s research shows that a healthy immune system can trigger resorption (the removal of bone tissue) in the jaw, a common result of periodontal disease.

Also, she has found that the presence of certain genes and whether or not they are in use affect predisposition to the disease.

In her talk, Baker also noted the continuous and invigorating overlap between teaching and research, and “the pleasure of working with a wonderful group of thesis students over the years.”

“It is a real honor to be chosen for a distinction that pays tribute to such a wonderful person as Helen, who embodies the best of our mission at �ֲ��ý,” says Baker. “She has had a distinguished career as a doctor, and is a warm and generous person who has always taken the time to get to know faculty and staff and support their work.”