A List 5/6/02 ST. LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY COMMENCEMENT MAY 19 CANTON - St. Lawrence University's Commencement will be held on Sunday, May 19, at 10 a.m. on the Owen D. Young Library Quadrangle. In the event of bad weather, the ceremony will be held in Appleton Arena. As part of Commencement weekend activities, the Class of 2002 will present their gift to the University, a memorial to the alumni victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City, with a dedication ceremony on Saturday, May 18, at 1:30 p.m. The memorial and dedication ceremony will be near Richardson Hall, facing the University Quadrangle. Three people will be awarded honorary degrees at Commencement, along with the awarding of a North Country Citation. Receiving honorary degrees this year are: - E.B. Wilson '53, of Chathamport, Massachusetts, chairman emeritus of the Board of Trustees. A private investor and consultant, Wilson holds an M.B.A. from Harvard University and served as chairman of the Board from 1995 through 2001. He has been a University trustee since 1985. - Luis Eduardo Luna, an anthropologist and ethnobotanist specializing in the investigation of psychointegrator plants. He is a senior lecturer at the Swedish School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland, and is engaged in the creation of a research center on the study of psychointegrator plants - sacred plants, often called hallucinogens and psychedelics, that have played important roles in ancient and contemporary societies - in Florianópolis, Brazil, and in the organization of special experiential and theoretical seminars in the Brazilian Amazon. He is co-editor with St. Lawrence Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures Steven F. White of Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Amazon's Sacred Vine, and the author of several books. - Gloria Naylor, author of The Women of Brewster Place, Linden Hills, Mama Day and Bailey's Cafe, among other works. Naylor won the National Book Award for first fiction in 1983 for The Women of Brewster Place, which was also adapted for television, starring and produced by Oprah Winfrey. She has participated in the St. Lawrence Writers Series. Bill McKibben, the author and environmentalist from Johnsburg, New York, whose writing appears regularly in The New York Times and Adirondack Life, among other publications, will receive the North Country Citation. The author of The End of Nature, The Age of Missing Information and Long Distance: A Year of Living Strenuously, McKibben has been a frequent visitor to St. Lawrence over the years, contributing to the environmental studies program and the Writers Series. St. Lawrence annually awards the North Country Citation to individuals from the region who, through their professional and volunteer endeavors, have improved the quality of life in the North Country.-30- Back To News Releases Back to St. Lawrence Homepage