NOTE: This web page is archived for the Class of 2004. To see the Commencement site for this year's class, click here.

Three Honorary Degrees to be Awarded

The University of Massachusetts Amherst will award three honorary degrees during its graduate and undergraduate Commencement ceremonies on May 22-23.

Roberta Soolman, alumna and executive director of Literacy Volunteers of Massachusetts will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree at the graduate Commencement on Saturday, May 22 at 10:30 a.m. in the William D. Mullins Center. At the undergraduate Commencement on Sunday, May 23, at 10 a.m in Warren P. McGuirk Alumni Stadium, Walter Chesnut, professor emeritus of music and dance and Herald Trumpeter Emeritus for the University, will receive an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree. Also receiving an honorary Doctor of Laws degree will be Michael G. Philipp, an international banker who helped found the Center for International Securities and Derivative Markets at the Isenberg School of Management.

BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILES OF THE HONORARY DEGREE RECIPIENTS

Michael G. Philipp ’75, ’82MBA, is a renowned innovator in global financial services and a founding partner and chairman of Vision Fuel Capital, a Florida-based alternative-investments firm. He also serves on the advisory board of the Dubai International Financial Center. He began his career at Merrill Lynch, where he rose to become vice president of international fixed-income and derivatives sales, and Goldman Sachs, where he eventually headed the global securities financing group. During a subsequent tenure at Deutsche Bank AG, Philipp variously served as a board member, as chairman and CEO of Deutsche Asset Management, and as head of global equities, global markets sales, and global futures and options.

An alumnus of the Isenberg School of Management, his staunch support for the school has been demonstrated in the creation of the Michael and Cheryl Philipp Professorship in Finance and in his financial and practical contributions to the Center for International Securities and Derivatives Markets. He and his wife, Cheryl Edmonds Philipp’76, have two sons, Kyle and Trent, and live in Amelia Island, Florida.

Walter Chesnut, has been a member of the music faculty of the University of Massachusetts Amherst since 1967. Professor emeritus, he has taught many students who have gone on to be professional performers and music educators. He is a beloved figure on campus, thanks in part to his long service as University Herald at commencements and other important ceremonies. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Chesnut is an accomplished performer on brass instruments, an expert in their history and literature, and a gifted singer. He has a loyal following among his former students and countless others who relish his and his ensembles’ performances on a variety of modern and historical instruments. In 1993 a spinal condition left Chesnut unable to walk or perform. He regained his mobility and musical mastery only by way of the most arduous and protracted effort. In so doing he became an inspiration for all of those who face physical challenges. Chesnut has performed with many orchestras, including the Springfield Symphony, with which he has been principal trumpet. He was named as one of the Outstanding Educators of America in 1973 and has received this campus’s Chancellor’s Medal and Distinguished Teaching Award.

Roberta Soolman ’79. Armed with the B.A. in English she earned at UMass Amherst in 1979, Soolman has gained a national reputation for her success in fighting adult illiteracy. For the past two decades she has served as executive director of Literacy Volunteers of Massachusetts (LVM), the commonwealth’s largest volunteer tutoring program, whose roughly 900 volunteers provide services to more than 1,000 adults each year. In representing LVM statewide, Soolman works with community, education, and government leaders, provides technical assistance, and develops staff and curricula to assure that all 12 of the regional programs she oversees satisfy national accreditation standards. She also plans and implements such LVM resource-development initiatives as annual professional golf tournaments and wine auctions.

Soolman is a former president and the current Public Policy Committee chair of the Massachusetts Coalition for Adult Education, which, thanks to her advocacy, saw its public funding increase sevenfold between 1995 and 2003. She first taught adults to read in 1975 as a volunteer tutoring inmates in the Hampshire House of Corrections, and has been honored by the New England Dyslexia Society, the Women’s National Book Association, the Boston Jaycees, and the Massachusetts Association for Adult and Continuing Education.