A Snowy Fall Commencement

Sunday’s snow did not deter approximately 148 graduates, along with their friends and family members, from celebrating the completion of their degrees at the university’s Fall Commencement ceremony in Lincoln Theater.

Robert Weisbuch, president of Drew University and former head of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, delivered the Commencement address and was presented with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters at the ceremony.

In conferring the honorary degree, Bobbi McNeil ’94, regent and past president of the Alumni Association, described Weisbuch as a national leader and passionate advocate for the liberal arts and sciences.

Weisbuch said he would like Drew University to become like the University of Hartford—a private university with a public purpose. “There is no other institution in the United States from which I would rather receive an honorary degree,” he said.

Under Weisbuch’s leadership, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation gave a $400,000 planning grant to the University of Hartford through its Early College High School Initiative, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That planning grant resulted in the establishment of the University High School of Science and Engineering, which is now in its second year.

Weisbuch headed the Woodrow Wilson Foundation for eight years, and became president of Drew University in Madison, N.J., in July 2005. Weisbuch joined the foundation after 25 years at the University of Michigan, where he served as English department chair, associate vice president for research, associate dean for faculty programs, and interim dean at the Rackham School of Graduate Studies.