Richard S. Fuld Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of Lehman Brothers and a University of Colorado at Boulder alumnus, will give the commencement address during CU-Boulder's spring commencement on Friday, May 12.
The ceremony, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 8:30 a.m. in Folsom Stadium, where 5,610 degrees will be conferred. Guests are urged to be in their seats at the stadium well before 8:15 a.m.
Guests are asked not to bring large purses or bags to the ceremony, and people entering the stadium may be subject to search. The ceremony will be held outdoors in the stadium regardless of the weather. In the event of heavy rain, the ceremony will be held in abbreviated form.
Fuld has been chairman of the board of directors of Lehman Brothers since 1994 and CEO since 1993. He was recently featured in a Fortune magazine story that outlined his role and leadership in helping Lehman Brothers grow into a top-tier global investment bank. He graduated from CU-Boulder in 1969 with a bachelor's degree in business.
Each spring the commencement ceremony begins with a procession of faculty and all graduates from Norlin Quadrangle to Folsom Stadium beginning at 8 a.m. Graduating students are invited to attend a pre-commencement breakfast on Norlin Quadrangle on May 12 at 7 a.m.
Degrees to be awarded include 4,427 bachelor's degrees, 771 master's degrees, 251 doctoral degrees and 161 law degrees.
Following the commencement ceremony at Folsom Stadium, CU's award-winning Solar Decathlon home will be open for public viewing. Students will give tours of the home, which is located south of the Benson Earth Sciences Building, across the street from the stadium. The CU team of architecture and engineering students from the Boulder and Denver campuses won the international Solar Decathlon competition in Washington, D.C., in fall 2005.
The university will honor several people during the ceremony. Jim Collins, Gilbert White, Robert Graebner and Robert Gunning will receive honorary doctoral degrees, Thurston Manning will receive the University Medal and Mary Rippon will be honored posthumously.
Collins is the author or co-author of four business books including best sellers "Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies" and "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap 聟 and Others Don't." Collins founded a management laboratory in Boulder in 1995 to conduct research and teach executives from the corporate and social sectors. More than 20 CU-Boulder students have worked in Collins's laboratory.
A CU-Boulder distinguished professor emeritus of geography, White is known worldwide as the "father of floodplain management." His work in natural hazards changed the way people deal with nature and in 1976 he founded CU's Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center, the nation's leading repository of knowledge on human behavior in disasters.
Rippon, who joined the CU faculty in 1878, was the first woman ever to teach at CU-Boulder even though she never received a college degree. She taught French and German and has been recognized as a trailblazer for women in academia. The outdoor Mary Rippon Theater, most prominently used each summer for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, was dedicated in her memory in 1936.
A CU-Boulder alumnus, Graebner is best known for helping revolutionize the petroleum industry in the 1960s by championing the development of three-dimensional seismic imaging. He received a bachelor's degree in engineering physics in 1948 and a master's degree in physics in 1954 from CU-Boulder.
Professor Gunning of Princeton University is a mathematician widely known for his work in a field called complex analysis, which involves the study of functions of complex numbers. Born and raised in Longmont, he earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics from CU-Boulder in 1952, before moving on to Princeton where he earned his doctorate in 1955.
Manning is credited with helping CU-Boulder blossom into a major national research university. He was appointed vice president and dean of the faculties at CU-Boulder in 1964, and went on to become vice president for academic affairs and vice president for research and planning.
For more information about the commencement ceremony visit the Web site at . The ceremony also will be broadcast on the Web. To access the webcast visit the commencement Web site and click on the webcast link.