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Bloomberg, Four Others Receive Honorary Degrees

Posted on April 30, 2012

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg advised Carolina’s class of 2012 to follow the lessons of Tar Heel basketball during Sunday’s Commencement ceremonies.

Bloomberg’s message for success: Teamwork is everything. Assist others. Risks are necessary. Hustle, always. Elbows occasionally have to be used. Education is a lifelong journey. Love what you do.

And if you put that list together, it, of course, spells “Tar Heel,” Bloomberg told the nearly 5,700 new graduates.

Bloomberg and four other luminaries received honorary degrees from Carolina during the Commencement ceremony.

Chancellor Holden Thorp ’86 presided at the ceremony in Kenan Stadium.

This year’s honorary degree recipients are:

  • Bloomberg, mayor of the city of New York, who received a doctor of laws degree;
  • David S. Ferriero, archivist of the United States, of Washington, D.C., who received a doctor of laws degree;
  • Thomas W. Lambeth ’57, retired executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, of Winston-Salem, who received a doctor of letters degree;
  • Branford Marsalis, world-renowned saxophonist, of Durham, who received a doctor of music degree; and
  • Katharine Lee Reid, retired director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, of Chapel Hill, who received a doctor of fine arts degree.

 

Michael R. Bloomberg

Bloomberg attended Johns Hopkins University and earned a master of business administration degree from Harvard Business School. He began his career on Wall Street with Salomon Brothers, where he eventually headed the firm’s information systems. After Salomon was acquired in 1981 and he was let go, Bloomberg went on to create Bloomberg LP, a company that now has about 15,000 employees worldwide and more than 300,000 subscribers to its global financial news and information service. In 2001, he was elected mayor just two months after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. He has helped build the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins into a leading institution of public health research and training.

 

David S. Ferriero

Ferriero is the first professional librarian to become archivist of the United States. He is charged with preserving the nation’s official permanent records, now estimated at about 9 billion pages of text, as well as many millions of maps, charts, drawings, photographs, digital data sets, films and videos. Before accepting the post in 2009, Ferriero was the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries, where he integrated the four research libraries and 87 branch libraries to create the largest public library system in the United States. He began his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Library, where he remained for 31 years, rising to the position of acting co-director of libraries. In 1996, he was recruited to Duke University to be university librarian and vice provost for library affairs.

 

Thomas W. Lambeth ’57

Lambeth, a native of North Carolina, received his bachelor’s degree in history from Carolina. He served as administrative assistant to N.C. Gov. Terry Sanford ’39 and to U.S. Rep. Richardson Preyer and later for more than two decades as executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation. During Lambeth’s tenure, the foundation awarded grants totaling more than $260 million to address many of North Carolina’s most pressing policy issues, particularly social justice and equity, governance and civic engagement, community-building and economic development, education and protection of the state’s natural environment. Lambeth has had a strong personal impact on many key public policy issues in North Carolina and nationally, including leadership of the Public School Forum of North Carolina, Leadership North Carolina, the N.C. Rural Center and a task force of the national Institute of Medicine on the problems of people who lack medical insurance. He also has been a national leader in improving the management and effectiveness of family philanthropic foundations themselves. Lambeth is a former chair of the UNC Board of Trustees and is a recipient of the GAA’s Distinguished Service Medal, the University’s Distinguished Alumnus Award and the Davie Award for service to UNC. He chairs the GAA-sponsored Tar Heel Network, which supports the University’s goals and priorities through advocacy with legislators. He also has been honored with the establishment of the Thomas Willis Lambeth Distinguished Professorship and the Lambeth Lecture in Public Policy.

 

Branford Marsalis

Marsalis is a member of one of New Orleans’ most distinguished musical families, which includes his father, Ellis, and his siblings Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason. In 2011, the Marsalis family was honored with the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award. Marsalis, a three-time Grammy recipient, is a keeper of the history of American jazz and has performed with major symphony orchestras. Marsalis has shared his musical knowledge in faculty positions at Michigan State University, San Francisco State University and currently at N.C. Central University, where his quartet serves as artists-in-residence. After Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans, Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr. conceived the New Orleans Habitat Musicians’ Village in the hard-hit Ninth Ward. The centerpiece of this effort is the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.

 

Katharine Lee Reid

Reid has had a 40-year career as an art museum curator, administrator and director. At a time when few women held leadership positions in large museums, Reid served as assistant and later deputy director of the Art Institute of Chicago (1982-91), director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (1991-2000) and director of the Cleveland Museum of Art (2000-05). She also was curator at UNC’s Ackland Art Museum. Reid held leadership positions with the Association of Art Museum Directors, was a presidential appointee to the U.S. Department of State’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee and participated in the Getty Leadership Institute at Claremont Graduate University.

Also during Commencement weekend, Carolina’s doctoral hooding ceremony will be held May 12 at 10 a.m. at the Dean E. Smith Center. No ticket is required to attend. Marc Levoy ’89 (PhD), whose career achievements include developing the cartoon animation system used in The Flintstones TV show and launching Google’s Street View project, is the speaker. (Levoy is featured in the May/June 2012 issue of the Carolina Alumni Review.) Levoy, who received his doctoral degree in computer science from Carolina, is the VMWare Founders Professor of computer science at Stanford University, with a joint appointment in Stanford’s electrical engineering department. He helped create the field of computational photography.

The undergraduate baccalaureate program took place at 3 p.m. May 12 in the Great Hall of the Student Union. Thorp, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Winston Crisp ’92 (JD), students and members of the Campus Ministers’ Association spoke.

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