University announces winter and spring commencement speakers

Collins (Photo courtesy Frances Collins)

Woodruff (Photo courtesy ABC News)

Bynum (Photo courtesy Carole Bynum)

Tilly (Photo courtesy Charles Tilly)

Wege (Photo courtesy Peter Wege)

The leader of the Human Genome Project and an ABC news anchor injured while covering the Iraq War will serve as main speakers for winter and spring commencement, President Mary Sue Coleman announced.

Francis S. Collins, noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes, will speak at the winter commencement and receive the honorary Doctor of Sciences degree while former ABC News Anchor Bob Woodruff, a Michigan native and 1987 Law School alumnus who has recovered from a serious head injury sustained in a roadside bomb attack in Iraq in January 2006, will address spring commencement.

"This year's commencement speakers have spectacular stories to tell, as well as strong connections to the University of Michigan," Coleman says.

"Francis Collins has revolutionized life sciences by his advocacy for and his leadership of the Human Genome Project. And Bob Woodruff, through his reporting, his personal experience and his reflections, has shown us the devastating impact of brain injuries wrought by the war in Iraq," Coleman says.

At the April 2008 ceremony, Woodruff will receive an honorary degree in laws.

Woodruff, who earned his undergraduate degree from Colgate University and his J.D. from Michigan Law, joined ABC News in 1996 and has covered major stories throughout the country and around the world for the network. He was named co-anchor of ABC's "World News Tonight" in December 2005. On Jan. 29, 2006, while reporting on U.S. and Iraqi security forces, a roadside bomb seriously injured Woodruff when it struck his vehicle near Taji, Iraq. In February 2007, just 13 months after being wounded in Iraq, Woodruff returned to ABC News with his first on-air report, "To Iraq and Back: Bob Woodruff Reports."

Chemist Francis S. Collins will receive the honorary Doctor of Science degree.

Collins joined the University in 1984. As a professor of internal medicine and human genetics, Collins developed a gene-hunting approach, which he named "positional cloning," which became a powerful component of modern molecular genetics. Collins's team at U-M, together with collaborators, applied this new approach in 1989 in their successful quest for the long-sought gene responsible for cystic fibrosis. Other major discoveries soon followed. In 1993 Collins became director of the National Center for Human Genome Research, which became National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in 1997.

Other honorees as approved by the Board of Regents for the December ceremony:

• Medievalist Caroline Walker Bynum will receive the Doctor of Humane Letters degree.

Bynum's research has transformed our understanding of Christianity in the Middle Ages, overturning centuries of assumptions regarding medieval culture. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University, then obtained her Ph.D. from Harvard in 1969 and taught there from 1969-76. Currently, she is Professor of Western European Middle Ages at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

• Historian and sociologist Charles Tilly will receive the Doctor of Humane Letters degree.

Tilly, a pioneering historian, social scientist and authority on European political change, is an internationally recognized authority on long-term social processes. He will receive his degree at Dearborn's commencement ceremony Dec. 16. He has examined military, demographic, economic, urban and political change in Europe and North America from the Middle Ages to the present.

After teaching at several universities, Tilly joined U-M as professor of history and sociology in 1969, becoming the Theodore M. Newcomb Professor of Social Science in 1981. He is the author or co-author of more than 20 books. He is now the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University.

• Industrial designer and environmentalist Peter Melvin Wege will receive the Doctor of Laws degree.

Wege is a native of Grand Rapids, Mich., whose father was the founder of the company now known as Steelcase Inc. Wege studied Industrial Design at the School of Architecture in the 1940s. In 1967, he established the Wege Foundation, which has made gifts to address environmental problems in the Great Lakes and western Michigan, and to U-M. The Wege Foundation was one of the main supporters of the Center for Sustainable Systems (CSS) and also funded the endowed Peter M. Wege Chair of Sustainable Systems, both at U-M.

Additional spring honorary degree recipients will be announced at a later date.