|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mary Baldwin
College Commencement |
|
New A Special Thank You to Roseanne, USA for sharing the photo on the right with us
Actress, MBC grads celebrate success -- By Jamie Kennedy/staff -- Newsleader.com Website
Casey Templeton/The News Leader Acclaimed actress Dame Judi Dench helps to hand out diplomas at Mary Baldwin College as professors Kenneth Keller, college marshal, and Lundy Pentz, associate marshal, applaud. The college awarded Dench an honorary degree Sunday. Degrees Mary Baldwin College awarded 325 degrees Sunday, its second-largest total. STAUNTON -- As most do, the ceremony at Mary Baldwin College's commencement Sunday held an air of joy and relief. For some graduates, however, the challenges overcome to earn a diploma went beyond struggling through homesickness or seemingly endless hours of studying. When Angela Woolf came to Mary Baldwin four years ago she had just begun to lose her vision. Four years later and blind except for some peripheral vision, Woolf walked across the stage to accept a bachelor's degree in communication with Writer, her seeing-eye dog, by her side. "I'm just relieved," Woolf said afterwards. "I just thought it would never end." Woolf said when she began losing her vision, she thought "'It's either I'm just going to die or I'm going to live' ... I had to figure out how to do it so I went to college. "Everybody here was very supportive," said Woolf, a Culpeper resident. Writer, a black Labrador retriever who helped Woolf regain some independence lost along with her vision, also received recognition at commencement. Read to the raucous applause and laughter of the graduates, a certificate praised Writer for her "faithful navigation of the steps, slopes and corridors at Mary Baldwin College" and "for commenting on professors' lectures with either a 'happy growl' or a sigh." Internationally acclaimed Shakespearean actress Dame Judi Dench helped to award masters' degrees to students earning degrees in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature. The college awarded Dench an honorary degree, the first American college or university to do so, said George Graves, the school's director of strategic communication. "I have always been a big fan. ... she is my favorite actor by far, so I was ecstatic," said Laura Dansby, whom Dench gave a ceremonial hood, along with the other master of fine arts graduate at the ceremony. Dench helped to award degrees to 12 graduate students -- those receiving a master of fine arts or master of letters in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature in Performance. The program is offered in partnership with the Staunton-based Shenandoah Shakespeare. Dench was honorary co-chairwoman of the fund-raising effort to build the theater organization's home, Blackfriars Playhouse, and her husband, the late Michael Williams, served on the advisory board for construction. Dansby, Nancy Beall and Cathy A. Brookshire, who was not at the ceremony, were the first students to earn the Shakespeare master of fine arts degree at Mary Baldwin. Beall, who has been involved in community theater, said she is interested in how she can use Shakespeare to change peoples' lives and make them better citizens. "I just think there is a level of genius there that can teach us to be better humans," she said of the Bard's work. During the ceremony, held on the Barbara Kares Page Terrace in front of the Grafton Library, keynote speaker Louise Rossett McNamee told graduates, mostly women, to keep in mind how fortunate they are to have received the level of education they did. "You are an extraordinary privileged member of the universal community of women," said McNamee, a 1970 alumna and vice chairwoman of the college's Board of Trustees. "Please try in every way you can to give voice to those without a voice, and help to those without hope." At the end of the ceremony, the new graduates, dressed in black robes and mortar boards, filed out from the sunny terrace and up the hill, smiling and waiting to meet up with family and friends for photographs. "It feels great," said Tina Campbell Smith, 34, of Amherst, who spent seven years working toward a degree in history through the adult degree program. While taking classes, she worked full time for the administration office of the Lynchburg Police Department while taking care of three children with her husband. Smith, who wants to become a teacher, said her husband helped her keep going. Her children did also, she said. "I wanted them to see that they should accomplish this."
By George Graves 5/16/2004 Mary Baldwin College gave Dame Judi Dench, the acclaimed British actress who has won virtually every major award, her first American honorary degree at its annual Commencement. Dench, in turn, helped present the ceremonial academic hoods to the first three students to earn a master of fine arts in Shakespeare and Renaissance literature in performance. Dench, star of stage, screen, and television, won an Oscar for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love. She also has collected Broadway’s Tony, London’s Olivier, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globe. For her unsurpassed contributions to English theatre, Queen Elizabeth II made her a dame commander of the British Empire. In introducing Dench, MBC President Pamela Fox said: “Your roles have ranged, remarkably, from Shakespeare’s heroines, for which you consistently set the standard for interpretation, to the knowing Jean of British sitcom fame, to James Bond’s unforgiving boss, M. … Your support for young artists and for Shakespeare is evident in your willingness more than a decade ago to lend your name to a fledgling theatre company, Shenandoah Shakespeare, now Mary Baldwin’s partner in its master’s program. Shakespeare scholar Russ MacDonald, in his forthcoming book, includes you among the greatest Shakespearian actresses of the last three centuries.” Fox noted that Dench’s weekly comedy “As Time Goes By” has been “one of most enduring hits of the BBC and a public-broadcasting staple in America, as was your earlier series, ‘A Fine Romance,’ which you made with your late husband Michael Williams. Your work in the films Mrs. Brown and Iris earned you Academy Award nominations for best actress during a period when you were nominated four times in five years.” Receiving a master of fine arts degrees were Nancy Beall, Laura Dansby, and Cathy Brookshire. A year ago, they were among the first students to earn a master of letters in the unique program offered in partnership with Shenandoah Shakespeare and combining scholarship with performance, using Blackfriars Playhouse, the only authentic re-creation of Shakespeare’s indoor theatre, as both classroom and laboratory. Receiving their ceremonial hoods from Dench was a thrill, said graduates, who had a chance to talk with her. “She’s so down to earth,” said Beall, exuding what she described as “a happy sense of achievement.” A tribute to Dench and her late husband at Blackfriars drew fans from all over the country to Staunton Saturday, May 15, a day before the Mary Baldwin graduation.
162nd Commencement: Graduates Share Stage with Dame, Dog By Dawn Medley The clouds cleared after a rainy dawn in time for hundreds of family and friends to blanket Page Terrace to watch Mary Baldwin College grant 325 degrees — a near-record total — in Commencement ceremonies Sunday, Mary 16. The event was packed with highlights, including the presentation of an honorary degree — her first from an American college or university — to Dame Judi Dench, the accomplished British screen and stage actress. During the ceremony, the Oscar winner helped drape ceremonial hoods over the college’s first master of fine arts graduates in Shakespeare studies. The three women who earned MFA degrees, considered the final degree in the field, were among the first to receive master of letters degrees in the unique program a year ago. Claire “Yum” Lewis Arnold, chair of the college’s Board of Trustees and a prominent businesswoman who mentors young women, was also awarded an honorary degree — much to her surprise. “One of the greatest pleasures in my life, in addition to my family, is my relationship with Mary Baldwin,” said an emotional Arnold. “This means so much.” Among the more than 270 undergraduates receiving degrees was Angela Woolf, who walked with Writer, the seeing-eye dog that has been at her side for all four years at the college, to receive her degree. Woolf, a communication and sociology double major who graduated with distinction in communication, received her diploma and Writer was given a certificate of service, a bone, and a Mary Baldwin dog collar. A record 39 students earned a master of arts in teaching, Mary Baldwin’s other graduate degree. They included Andrew Frye, whose wife, Laurie, received her bachelor’s degree the same day. The largest total number of degrees, undergraduate and graduate, was 341 in 1999. On a more solemn note, many graduates pinned yellow and purple ribbons (senior class colors) to their robes in memory of classmate Grace Brooks, who died in a sledding accident on campus in December 2002. The school was devastated by her loss, and students, faculty and staff remembered her during a service in the days following the accident. The Commencement speaker, Louise Rossett McNamee ’70, urged the graduating class to continue to be kind — “You will be happier for it, and the world will be better for having you in it.” McNamee, a veteran New York advertising executive who is one of the most recognized women in her field, said she hoped it would not take graduates as long as it did for her to realize the true benefit of a Mary Baldwin education: “You haven’t been educated in order to have a successful career — although I’m sure you will — you’ve been educated so that you may have a successful life. And there is a world of difference.” “Yes, you’ve learned about many different and quite specific things, but what you’ve also learned is how to learn, how to analyze, how to evaluate, how to be engaged in the life-long adventure of the intellect — how to be your own person with your own point of view,” McNamee added.
A Special Thanks to Betty B, USA, for bringing these articles and photos to my attention
|
|
|
