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Barnard Commencement 2004
Sylvia Earle Citation
Sylvia A. Earle. Marine biologist. Pioneer of the ocean floor. Underwater navigator and explorer. Below sea level, you have found ongoing adventure. For over 7,000 hours, you have communed with the flora and fauna of blue-green waters. "Queen of the Deep" they have dubbed you.
Oceanographer, with a bachelor of science from Florida State and a masters and doctorate from Duke, you began your career at the Radcliffe Institute and as a fellow at Harvard. The Pacific drew you to its shores - research at Berkeley and the study of seaweed and algae at the California Academy of Sciences. It was meant to be your world. "Even as a child," you said, "I was lured into the sea by the creatures who live there... strange and wonderful forms of life that occur only underwater. It was and is irresistible."
Your service has been abundant - the President's Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere for four years, Chief Scientist of the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration for two. In 1992, you founded Deep Ocean Exploration and Research, which you now chair, with the goal of developing technology and innovative solutions for deep ocean exploration and research. And, you have been an Explorer in Residence at the National Geographic Society since 1998, the same year that Time magazine named you the first "Hero of the Planet."
Leader of over 60 expeditions, author of more than 130 publications, advocate for the current state of our oceans, tireless and devoted voice for the challenges ahead. Not to be outdone, you set the women's depth record for solo diving at one thousand meters.
We praise your lifelong curiosity, your explorer's reach and your pioneering spirit. We admire your extraordinary comfort with the aquatic world that lives below our experience.
Louise Glück Citation
Louise Glück . Poet. Teacher of the art. Our country's 12 th Poet Laureate. You earned the Pulitzer Prize for the voices you have made audible and the forms those voices take as your language moves across the page and finds the end of the poetic line.
New York City born, Long Island bred. You were educated at Sarah Lawrence and at Columbia, where your studies built the foundation for decades of writing and teaching to follow. A long tenure at Williams College refined your extraordinary methods of teaching.
Firstborn was published in 1968. The latest, October , has just emerged. They are evidence of a poetry of precision, observation, interiority, and what Aristotle described as the movement of the soul. In your own words, "...poems are autobiography and comment, the metronomic alternation of anecdote and response."
For thirty-six years your work has fascinated and profoundly influenced young poets. For twenty years Williams College has been fortunate to have you teach its students. As professor of English you share your exact intelligence and years of experience with the art. Devoted students long to know its secrets. And the fall of this year will find you at Yale, illuminating those secrets and giving your ear to a new group of students.
Your 1993 Pulitzer for "Wild Iris" stands beside myriad honors, medals, and awards - including Yale's Bollingen Prize of 2001. Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets since 1999.
We honor your commitment to the beauty of the written word. We learn from the honesty of emotion you project. We find our lives and spirits enhanced by your poetic genius.
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