UMass Amherst

Commencement 2007

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21st Century Leaders Announced

Thirteen members of the Class of 2009 have been named winners of the 21st Century Leaders Award. The awards recognize students who are academically accomplished and who have contributed to the university through exceptional achievement or have enhanced the reputation of the campus.

The awards are designed to recognize students who are academically accomplished and who have contributed to the university through exceptional achievement or have enhanced the reputation of the campus. The recipients are nominated by faculty for strong leadership qualities, noteworthy original research, community service, the achievement of success by overcoming extraordinary personal circumstances, or public presentation through art, performance or athletic ability.

This is the seventh year the awards have been given. The awards are sponsored by the Chancellor’s Office and the UMassAmherst Alumni Association. “The presentation of these awards during the undergraduate Commencement helps focus the ceremony on the accomplishments of students,” says Robert C. Holub, UMass Amherst chancellor. “The awards also bring deserved recognition to the families who have supported this group of excellent students.”

Commencement Photos

Graduation Images is the official graduation photographer for your school and will be at your upcoming commencement to photograph you on this once-in-a-lifetime occasion. We would like to be able to contact you at your permanent email address with your graduation photo information. We have set up an easy registration site where you can provide us with your permanent email address as well as the email addresses of up to six relatives or friends who would also like to see your graduation images.

It's fast and easy - simply go to www.gradimages.com and click on the Pre-Event Registration. Completing this brief information will ensure that you and your loved ones receive emails regarding graduation photos in your permanent inbox.

That's all there is to it. Graduation Images will contact you just as soon as your photos are available for viewing. Enjoy the ceremony and Congratulations!

Graduation Images Customer Service staff is available to assist you:

Join the Celebration: Be a Commencement Volunteer

Share the joy of 4,000 graduating seniors with their 20,000 guests as they leave their UMass Amherst student days and launch their newly minted alumni lives.

To ensure smooth sailing on their departure date — Saturday, May 23rd — we need you to marshal, usher, and aide in the success of this important event.

You’ll see degrees conferred, flags unfurled, and mortarboards tossed into the air. In appreciation for your service to the university, you will receive a commemorative glass, snacks, lunch, and an opportunity to win fabulous prizes.

Have high school aged children? They can volunteer too!

First time and returning volunteers, mark your calendars:

Interested? Complete the Volunteer Registration Form.

Jackie Hai Will Be the Student Speaker for the Class of 2009

Alison C. Briggs, a Psychology/Sociology major from Sharon, Massachusetts, has been named the student speaker for the class of 2007.

Senior Jackie Hai of Lexington, Mass., who is graduating with dual majors in journalism and philosophy, has been selected to be the student speaker at the Undergraduate Commencement ceremony.

Hai was recently named one of the UWIRE 100, the best and brightest student journalists in the nation. They were selected from a pool of more than 825 nominations submitted by professionals, professors and peers and some parents from more than 135 schools.

She says, “Being chosen to be the student speaker at Commencement was a big surprise. What I’m going to say might be a little unconventional as far as commencement speeches go, but I’m grateful to have been given the opportunity to share it with my classmates. My greatest hope is that we walk out of UMass with optimism and confidence that we can tackle the world’s problems, equipped with solutions we’ve already discovered during our time here with each other.”

Hai is currently a teaching assistant in the UMass Amherst journalism program in lecturer Steve Fox’s multimedia journalism class. Fox is also the faculty advisor for The Amherst Wire, a student-run, online magazine that hosts local stories and multimedia features where Hai is co-founder and an editor. She manages a staff of six editors and more than 10 reporters. Hai is the Web editor for the Western Massachusetts Community Press, which publishes online material produced by college students in the Springfield Community Journalism Project.

This year, she produced two multimedia features looking at the economic crisis titled, “Market Meltdown 101,” and “Economic Stimulus 101,” which gained considerable attention, including in the mainstream press.

In keeping with her multimedia skills, Hai is also a program director at UVC-TV 19, the student-run television station on the UMass Amherst campus where she schedules daily programming, and produces and edits video for broadcast. She serves as the liaison for a partnership with Amherst Community Television, the local cable-access station, for development of the Open Media Project.

From 2005-07, Hai was a staff writer and photographer at the Massachusetts Daily Collegian, the student newspaper at UMass Amherst. She was a member of the editorial board, a columnist and a reporter.

During her first two years at UMass Amherst, Hai played trumpet in the Minuteman Marching Band and served on the band’s administrative staff. She was a resident assistant in Van Meter and Butterfield residence halls for two years. Hai also co-founded UMass Parkour, a registered student organization that promotes safe and accessible training in the physical discipline of the same name.

In 2004-05, Hai founded and was editor-in-chief of Polyph Webzine, a monthly online magazine for student musicians at Lexington High School where she managed the reporting staff, wrote stories and produced digital media.

After graduation she plans to stay in Massachusetts and work as a free-lancer and on community journalism projects.

Three to Receive Distinguished Achievement Awards; Alumnus Earl Stafford is Speaker

The University of Massachusetts Amherst will give three individuals Distinguished Achievement Awards at the Undergraduate Commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 23. Recipient and alumnus Earl W. Stafford will be the featured speaker at the event.

This year’s recipients are Stafford, an alumnus and Virginia businessman; Robert Barker Brack, an alumnus and businessman from Milford, and Aaron D. Spencer, founder, director and chairman emeritus of UNO Chicago Grill pizzerias. Distinguished Achievement Awards honor individuals from outside the immediate UMass Amherst campus community who have made significant contributions within a given profession, industry or creative domain.

Earl W. Stafford is the epitome of a self-made man and has found remarkable success while never losing his grace, humility and enormous capacity for hard work. One of 11 children born to a Baptist preacher and a homemaker mother in Holly Park, N.J., Stafford’s early life was materially modest but spiritually rich. He spent 20 years in the U.S. Air Force, rising from enlisted man to the rank of captain. He earned his bachelor's degree from UMass Amherst in 1976. He then earned an MBA from Southern Illinois University in 1984 and completed the OPM Executive Program at Harvard Business School. His ongoing loyalty to the campus is reflected in his service as a founding director of the board of the UMass Amherst Foundation.

After leaving the military, Stafford pursued his dream of starting a successful company. Despite years of setbacks and disappointments, he built Universal Systems and Technology Inc., better known as Unitech, into a success. Over a 22-year period it grew from a one-man shop into a 300-employee business with annual revenues of more than $150 million.

By 2008, Stafford was ready to sell the company and enjoy the company of his wife and three children. A life of ease in retirement, however, was not his style. Instead, he established The Stafford Foundation, dedicated to helping those less fortunate and in need. The foundation’s first act: creating and funding The People’s Inaugural Project, which hosted some 1,000 underserved citizens—including veterans and the poor and homeless—at their own ball in Washington, D.C., celebrating the historic inauguration of President Barak Obama on Jan. 20, 2009.

Robert Barker Brack is a business owner, mentor and philanthropist. He is chairman of the board of Barker Steel, a fourth-generation family business and New England’s largest fabricator of reinforcing bars for general construction. From its nine locations, Barker distributes more than a thousand products found in high-rise buildings throughout the Northeast and in many of the newer structures on the UMass Amherst campus. Brack earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from UMass Amherst in 1960 and has been a generous supporter of the department of civil and environmental engineering ever since. For more than a decade he has served on the department’s advisory board and has established an undergraduate scholarship endowment, graduate student fellowships, and a post-doctoral fellowship in structures and mechanics. Brack is a special champion of the Structural Engineering and Mechanics Group, to which he has donated materials for experimental research and otherwise helped increase its research capabilities and overall strength. He is president of the Concrete Reinforcing Steel Institute Foundation, which funds and administers graduate and undergraduate scholarships for architectural and engineering students and scholarships, or training programs at vocational/technical schools.

Brack has established two philanthropic initiatives in memory of his late wife—the Joan H. Brack Memorial Golf Tournament has raised more than $750,000 for the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Joan Brack Adult Learning Center, in Framingham, which graduates between 10 and 15 women each year.

Aaron D. Spencer is best known for creating the Pizzeria Uno restaurant chain (now called UNO Chicago Grill), but this salesman, inventor, entrepreneur and restaurateur is most honored at UMass Amherst as the unofficial “godfather of Commonwealth College.” Spencer, born in 1931, grew up outside Boston in a poor family, and from the first showed an entrepreneurial flair. When he graduated from Boston University he was earning more by selling baby furniture door-to-door than he could at his intended profession, insurance. He soon began accumulating a series of product and mechanical patents.

In 1966, while a national sales manager in the children’s furniture business, Spencer opened Boston’s first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. He eventually opened 33 in the area, becoming one of KFC’s top franchisees. After sampling deep-dish pizza on a trip to Chicago, Spencer spent three years winning licensing rights to franchise the product nationally. In 1979, he opened the first Pizzeria Uno. Within six years Spencer sold his KFC restaurants to become the new venture’s full-time developer. Today, it has over 200 restaurants worldwide.

In 1996, the first of his eight years on the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, Spencer proposed a public honors college for the state. He felt it should attract some of the state’s best students by matching the quality of the finest private liberal arts colleges while offering the opportunities of a large research university. The board unanimously chose UMass Amherst to house the new initiative, and Commonwealth College has gone on to exceed expectations in drawing exceptional students to this campus.

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