Condoleezza Rice, who served as Secretary of State from 2005-2009, among other offices, will speak at the commencement for students of William and Mary University on Saturday, May 16, of this year at 10:00 a.m. She will be joined by Robert Gates, current Chancellor of William and Mary and former Secretary of Defense, alongside Rice.
According to My Fox DC, the commencement will take place at the William and Mary Hall. As part of the ceremony, Rice will receive an honorary doctorate in public service degree at the commencement.
“It will be grand to have Secretary Rice speak to the Class of 2015 at Commencement,” said President Taylor Reveley.
“Condoleezza Rice broke barriers of gender and race while serving at the most senior levels of our national government. She has also had a very distinguished career in the academy as a teacher, scholar and administrator. Few equal her experience in both public affairs and higher education.”
This is a departure for the university. The main commencement, as well as the departmental ceremonies, all took place on Sundays. This year, only the main commencement is moving to Saturday, May 16. Departmental ceremonies will take place the next day, Sunday, May 17.
According to the William and Mary website, Rice certainly brings a lot of experience and knowledge to the commencement. Currently, Rice holds the positions of the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, and a professor of Political Science at Stanford University. Rice is also one of the founding partners of RiceHadleyGates, LLC, an international strategic consulting firm based in the Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C.
Rice is also a proliferate author, having wrote numerous books, including two best-sellers; No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (2011) and Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family (2010). Rice can also claim co-writing credits on many other books, such as Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (1995) with Philip Zelikowand, and The Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin.
In 1991, Rice helped to create the Center for a New Generation (CNG) an after-school program designed to enrich students’ lives in East Menlo Park and East Palo Alto, California.
Rice also sits on the boards of numerous businesses, most notably the College Football Playoff Committee (CFPC), formerly known as the Bowl Championship Series (BCS).
After getting her Bachelor’s degree in political sciences, both Phi Beta Kappa and cum laude from the University of Denver, she went to the University of Notre Dame and earned her master’s degree. She then returned to the University of Denver to earn her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies.
[Image courtesy of ESPN]