President Stephen Schutt opened the College’s 140th Commencement ceremony with a warm welcome and thank you to family, friends, and guests who joined faculty and staff as they celebrated the successful completion by the Class of 2018 of their academic program.

The College welcomed three renowned individuals to receive honorary degrees at this year’s ceremony. The first was Gary T. Johnson, president of the Chicago History Museum. He accepted a Doctor of Liberal Arts as the College recognized his passionate contributions to preserving the history of Chicago. Johnson believes that “history is made all around us—the history of today that is shaped by yesterday’s events and today’s people to create a future we can only dream of.”

President Schutt confers an honorary Doctor of Liberal Arts on Gary Johnson (standing, left). Teepu Siddique (seated, left) received a Doctor of Science.

Accepting an honorary Doctor of Science was Teepu Siddique, MD, an internationally recognized expert on ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig Disease. After earning a medical degree at the University of Karachi in his native Pakistan, Siddique came to the United States and studied at several universities, finishing up at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. There, he holds the Les Turner ALS Foundation/Herbert C. Wenske Chair and recently began serving as the Founding Director of The Laboratory of Neurogenomics and Novel Therapies. Also, he founded the Feinberg School’s Division of Neuromuscular Medicine, where doctors in the Chicagoland area now treat over 70 percent of its ALS cases. Siddique states that “the only way the human condition changes has to be by human effort. And the only way to overcome human suffering is through knowledge, new knowledge,” which reflects his ever-growing passion for science.

Notable American novelist Jane Hamilton was this year’s Commencement speaker. After finishing college at Carleton, she planned on going to New York City to pursue editing. Her path took a major turn when, on her way to Commencement 2018