Seven honorary degree recipients will be recognized at Dartmouth College’s 2010 Commencement on Sunday morning, June 13, on the Dartmouth Green. The academic procession begins at 9:30 a.m., and visitors are advised to be in their seats by that time. Commencement ceremonies begin at 10 a.m.

Those receiving honorary degrees include (extended biographical information below, or click on each name):

• Regina Benjamin, MD, MBA, 18th Surgeon General of the United States, Vice Admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps
• Agnes Binagwaho, MD, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health of Rwanda
• Arthur Irving, Chairman, Irving Oil Company and other energy firms
• Stephen Lewis, former Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations and former UN Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa
• Barry MacLean ’60 and Thayer School of Engineering ’61, President and CEO, MacLean-Fogg Company
• James Nachtwey ’70, award-winning photo journalist
• Jodi Picoult, best-selling novelist

Stephen Lewis will deliver the main address, and Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim will deliver the Valedictory Address to the senior class. A valedictorian from the undergraduate senior class will also speak at the event. The College typically awards approximately 1,000 bachelor’s degrees and approximately 600 master’s and doctoral degrees in the arts and sciences and from the College’s three professional schools: Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business.

Saturday, June 12: Speakers for Dartmouth professional schools’ Class Day and Investiture ceremonies; and for Baccalaureate Service

A variety of ceremonies take place the day before Commencement, including Class Day and Investiture ceremonies for Dartmouth’s three professional schools, and Baccalaureate, a multi-faith service open to all graduates and their guests. Those events, in chronological order, and their speakers are:

* 9 a.m., Dartmouth Medical School, under the tent on the corner of Maynard Street and Rope Ferry Road. Speaker: E. Albert Reece, MD, Ph.D, MBA, Acting President, University of Maryland (Baltimore); the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and Dean, University of Maryland School of Medicine; Chair of the Council of Deans of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

* 10 a.m., Thayer School of Engineering, Spaulding Auditorium, Hopkins Center. Speaker: Dr. Robert S. Langer, biotechnology entrepreneur and the David H. Koch Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

* 3 p.m., Tuck School of Business, Tuck Circle. (In case of rain, Thompson Arena, same time.) Speaker: David Wessel, economics editor of The Wall Street Journal

* Also 3 p.m., Baccalaureate, Rollins Chapel. Speaker: Rabbi Ellen Dreyfuss, rabbi of the merged B’nai Yehuda Beth Sholom in Homewood, Illinois, and president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the international organization of nearly 2,000 Reform rabbis.

Further information on commencement activities in general is available at www.dartmouth.edu/~commence.

Biographical information for honorary degree recipients:

Regina Benjamin, Honorary Doctor of Science

Regina M. Benjamin, MD, MBA, is the 18^tth Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service. As America’s Doctor, she provides the public with the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and the health of the nation. Benjamin also oversees the operational command of 6,500 uniformed health officers who serve in locations around the world to promote, protect, and advance the health of the American people.

Benjamin is founder and former CEO of the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in Alabama, former Associate Dean for Rural Health at theUniversity of South Alabama College of Medicine in Mobile, and immediate past chair of the Federation of State Medical Boards of the United States. In 1995, she was the first physician under age 40 and the first African American woman to be elected to the American Medical Association Board of Trustees. She served as President of the American Medical Association Education and Research Foundation and Chair of the AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs(CEJA). In 2002 she became President of the Medical Association State of Alabama, making her the first African American female president of a State Medical Society in the United States.

She has a BS in chemistry from Xavier University, New Orleans; an MD degree from the University of Alabama, Birmingham; an MBA from Tulane University; and 5 Honorary Doctorates. She attended Morehouse School of Medicine and completed her family medicine residency in Macon, Ga. Benjamin is a member of the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians. She was a Kellogg National Fellow and a Rockefeller Next Generation Leader. Some of her numerous board memberships include the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured,Catholic Health Association, and Morehouse School of Medicine.

She established a clinic in a small fishing village in Alabama to help its uninsured residents. Benjamin persevered through Hurricane Georges in 1998, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and a devastating fire, in 2006, often putting up her own money to cover expenses. She also became nationally prominent for her business acumen and humane approach to preventive medicine.

In 1998 Benjamin was the United States recipient of the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights. She was named by Time Magazine as one of the “Nation’s 50 Future Leaders Under Age 40 and Under.” She was featured in a New York Times article, “Angel in a White Coat,” “Person of the Week” on ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, “Woman of the Year’ by CBS This Morning, and in People Magazine. She was featured on the December 1999 cover of Clarity Magazine, received the 2000 National Caring Award which was inspired by Mother Teresa, was on the January 2003 cover of Reader’s Digest, received the papal honor Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice from Pope Benedict XVI and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

Agnes Binagwaho, Honorary Doctor of Science

Agnes Binagwaho, MD, is the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health of Rwanda. She obtained her medical training in Belgium and France. She is a pediatrician specializing in emergency pediatrics, neonatology, and the treatment of HIV/AIDS in children and adults. She is the Chair of the Rwandan Pediatric Society.

Binagwaho worked as a pediatrician in France and Rwanda before accepting an appointment in 2002 as the executive secretary of Rwanda’s National AIDS Control Commission, the national body that oversees the planning, monitoring, and evaluation of activities to fight HIV and AIDS. She left that post in October 2008 to take her current position.

She has served four years as the Chair of the Rwandan Steering Committee for the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and was responsible for the management of the World Bank MAP Project in Rwanda, while also serving on the country’s High Commission on Aid Policy. She is the current chair of the Rwanda Country Coordinating Mechanism of The Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

She co-coordinated the United Nations Task Force of Millennium Development Goal Project for HIV/AIDS and Access to Essential Medicines, under the leadership of Professor Jeffrey Sachs, for the Secretary-General of the United Nations. From 2006-2009, she co-chaired the Joint Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS, an independent alliance of researchers, implementers, policy makers, activists, and people living with HIV. She is a member of several boards and foundations and journals combating AIDS and infant mortality, including the Health Advisory Board for Time magazine. She is a member of the editorial board of the Public Library of Science, and the advisory board of the Friends of the Global Fund Africa. She is also a member of the advisory committee of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and of the steering committee for the Multi-Country Support Program on SSR/HIV/AIDS, an advisory body of the Royal Tropical Institute of Amsterdam, Netherlands. She is a founding board member of the Tropical Institute of the Community Health and Development in Africa, based in Kisumu, Kenya.

”Dr. Agnes,“ as she’s known, actively pursues an agenda in favor of children and women in Rwanda and in the world. She has authored more than 100 presentations and articles for international conferences and journals on pediatrics, HIV/AIDS, and program management.

Arthur Irving, Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters

Arthur Irving is Chairman of Irving Oil Company and other energy firms headquartered in New Brunswick, Canada. Born in 1930, Irving grew up in Saint John, New Brunswick, and attended Acadia University in Nova Scotia.

From a young age, Irving worked with his father, K.C. Irving, the founder of Irving Oil. He became President of Irving Oil in 1972. Under his leadership, the business grew. Irving Oil is a family-owned and privately held oil company supplying wholesale, commercial,, and retail customers throughout Eastern Canada and New England. The Irving Oil Refinery, with a production capacity of more than 300,000 barrels a day, is Canada’s largest refinery.

In 2008, Irving was inducted into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame, recognizing business excellence, outstanding achievements, and enduring contributions to Canadian society. He received the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003, one of a few Canadians nominated by Ducks Unlimited Canada. Also in 2003, Irving was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest civilian honor recognizing lifetime achievement. Irving Oil was named North American Refiner of the Year in 2004 by Hart Publications, an annual award to a refiner for achievements such as producing clean fuels, investing in both its facilities and employees, and consistently enhancing its environmental performance. In 2003, Irving Oil became the first oil company to win a United StatesEnvironmental Protection Agency Clean Air Excellence Award for producing low-sulfur gasoline three years ahead of regulation, contributing to improved air quality, vehicle performance, and added health and environmental benefits.

Irving has long supported both academic institutions and environmental causes. He is past Director and President of Ducks Unlimited Canada, a wetland and wildlife conservation organization. Since 1996, Irving has served as Chancellor of Acadia University, his alma mater. In 2002, he established the K.C. Irving Environmental Science Centre and the Harriet Irving Botanical Garden at Acadia University, named in memory of his father and mother. Acadia University is also home of the Arthur Irving Academy for the Environment, a center of scholarship on environmental issues, including holistic, trans-disciplinary approaches to environmental management, conservation, and sustainability.

As the parent of Sarah ’10 and an adopted member of Dartmouth’s Class of 1972, Arthur and his wife Sandra Irving have been ardent supporters of Dartmouth, helping fund scholarships and course development in the business field. Irving is also father of Kenneth, Arthur, Jennifer, and Emily.

Stephen Lewis, Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters

Stephen Lewis is former Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations and former UN Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa. He is currently the co-director of AIDS-Free World, an international advocacy organization he co-founded in 2007 on the heels of his tenure as UN Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa. The organization works to promote more urgent and more effective global responses to HIV/AIDS. Lewis is also a professor in Global Health at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, and he serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Clinton Health Access Initiativeand of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.

Lewis spent time in Africa in the early 1960s during a break from undergraduate studies, a trip that influenced his future career. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 1963, at the age of 25. In 1970, he was elected the leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party, a role he held until stepping down in 1978. Lewis was a noted radio and television commentator on public issues and became a prominent labor relations arbitrator before his appointment as Canadian Ambassador to the UN in 1984. As Ambassador, Lewis chaired the committee that drafted the Five-Year UN Programme on African Economic Recovery, and he chaired the first International Conference on Climate Change in 1988.

He served as Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund from 1995-1999. In 1997, in addition to his work at UNICEF, Lewis was appointed by the Organization of African Unity to a panel of Eminent Personalities to Investigate the Genocide in Rwanda. He served as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa from 2001-2006.

Lewis is the author of Race Against Time (San Val, November 2005), a book that outlines how the international community is falling desperately short of meeting the Millennium Development Goals. Lewis has received numerous honorary degrees and awards, most notably the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest civilian honor recognizing lifetime achievement.

Barry MacLean, Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters

Barry MacLean joined MacLean-Fogg Company in Mundelein, Ill., in 1961 and became President and CEO in 1972. MacLean-Fogg is a global provider of automotive and truck components and devices for the power and telephone utilities with 4,000 workers in Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

MacLean is a member, director, and former chairman of various businesses and professional organizations. His civic interests include: Trusteeships atNewberry Library, Museum of Science and Industry, University of Chicago Hospitals, and U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association. He is former Chairman of the Board of The School of the Art Institute and Vice Chairman of the Art Institute. He served for 35 years as elected trustee of the Village of Mettawa and 14 years as mayor.

MacLean graduated from Dartmouth in 1960, and earned a master’s degree from Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering in 1961. He is a former chair and current member of the Thayer School Board of Overseers, originally elected in 1974. He was also a Trustee of Dartmouth College from 1991 – 2001. And he was chairman of the Thayer School portion of the Will to Excel fundraising campaign in the 1990s, and a member of the executive committee for the recent Campaign for the Dartmouth Experience, which successfully raised $1.3 billion and ended in December, 2009. MacLean was named a Sylvanus Thayer Fellow in 1979 and was awarded the Robert Fletcher Award in 1989, and received the Dartmouth College Alumni Award in 2007.

MacLean and his wife, Mary Ann, live in Mettawa, Ill. The couple has five children, Elizabeth, Margaret ’87, Duncan ’94, Gillian ’95, and Adrian, and ten grandchildren.

James Nachtwey, Honorary Doctor of Arts

James Nachtwey grew up in Massachusetts and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1970, where he studied art history and political science. Images from the Vietnam War and the American Civil Rights movement had a powerful effect on him and were instrumental in his decision to become a photographer. He has worked aboard ships in the Merchant Marine, and while teaching himself photography, he was an apprentice news film editor and a truck driver.

In 1976 he started work as a newspaper photographer in New Mexico, and in 1980, he moved to New York to begin a career as a freelance magazine photographer. His first foreign assignment was to cover civil strife in Northern Ireland in 1981 during the IRA hunger strike. Since then, Nachtwey has devoted himself to documenting wars, conflicts and critical social issues. He has worked on extensive photographic essays in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, South Africa, Russia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Romania, Brazil, and the United States.

Nachtwey has been a contract photographer with Time Magazine since 1984. He was associated with Black Star from 1980-1985 and was a member of Magnum from 1986 until 2001. In 2001, he became one of the founding members of the photo agency, VII. He has had solo exhibitions at the International Center of Photography in New York, the Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris, the Palazzo Esposizione in Rome, the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, Culturgest in Lisbon, El Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Fahey/Klein Galleryin Los Angeles, the Carolinum in Prague, and the Hasselblad Center in Sweden, among others.

Nachtwey’s work is included in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Bibliotheque nationale de France, and the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts. He has written two books, Deeds of War (Thames & Hudson,1990) and Inferno (Phaidon Press, 2000).

He has received numerous honors such as the Common Wealth Award, Robert Capa Gold Medal (five times), Henry Luce Award, the World Press Photo Award (twice), Magazine Photographer of the Year (seven times), theInternational Center of Photography Infinity Award (three times), the Leica Award (twice), the Bayeaux Award for War Correspondents (twice), the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award, and the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Grant in Humanistic Photography. He has been named recipient of the TED Prize, the Heinz Foundation Award for Art and Humanities, and the Dan David Prize. War Photographer, a documentary about his work, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2002. His website is www.jamesnachtwey.com

Jodi Picoult, Honorary Doctor of Letters

Jodi Picoult is one of the top-selling novelists in the world with #1 bestsellers in the United States, the United Kingtom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. She has written 17 novels: Songs of the Humpback Whale (1992), Harvesting the Heart (1994), Picture Perfect(1995), Mercy (1996), The Pact (1998), Keeping Faith (1999), Plain Truth(2000), Salem Falls (2001), Perfect Match (2002), Second Glance (2003),My Sister’s Keeper (2004), Vanishing Acts (2005), The Tenth Circle (2006),Nineteen Minutes (2007), Change of Heart (2008), Handle With Care(2009), and House Rules (2010) — the last four of which debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

Picoult studied creative writing at Princeton, and had two short stories published in Seventeen magazine while still a student. Realism, and a profound desire to be able to pay the rent, led Picoult to a series of different jobs following her graduation: as a technical writer for a Wall Street brokerage firm, as a copywriter at an ad agency, as an editor at a textbook publisher, and as an eighth grade English teacher, before matriculating at Harvard to pursue a master’s degree in education.

In 2003 she was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for Fiction. She has also been the recipient anAlex Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association, sponsored by the Margaret Alexander Edwards Trust and Booklist, one of 10 books written for adults that have special appeal for young adults; the Book Browse Diamond Award for novel of the year; a 2009 Latino Book Award for best novel, a lifetime achievement award for mainstream fiction from the Romance Writers of America; Cosmopolitan magazine’s ‘Fearless Fiction’ Award 2007; Waterstone’s Author of the Year in the UK, a Vermont Green Mountain Book Award, a Virginia Reader’s Choice Award, the Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award, a NH Flume Award, and a Maryland Black-Eyed Susan Award. She wrote five issues of the Wonder Woman comic book series for DC Comics. Her books are translated into 34 languages in 35 countries. Three – The Pact, Plain Truth, and The Tenth Circle, have been made into television movies. My Sister’s Keeper was a big-screen movie released from New Line Cinema, with Nick Cassavetes directing and Cameron Diaz starring, and is now available on DVD. Picoult and her family live in Hanover, N.H.