Six to receive honorary degrees at commencement

Drawing from the fields of wildlife conservation, the Broadway theater, women’s studies, American Indian studies, medicine and business, UW–Madison will bestow six honorary degrees on Friday, May 14, at 5:30 p.m.

This year’s honorees are:

George Archibald, chair and founder of the International Crane Foundation board of directors. Described as the best friend that cranes of the world have ever had, Archibald founded the ICF in Baraboo in 1973. He served as its director until 2000, continues to play a pivotal role in saving cranes from extinction. Today, the ICF’s 40-member staff work on crane conservation and the conservation of their ecosystems, public education and involvement, professional training and global networking.

Archibald’s efforts on behalf of cranes have included international diplomatic missions resulting in conservation agreements between North and South Korea, Russia and China, Russia and Afghanistan, India and Pakistan, and more. He has engineered specific crane conservation initiatives in Russia, China, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Iran and other nations.

André De Shields, award-winning, internationally acclaimed actor and 1970 alumnus of UW–Madison with a B.A. in English and creative writing. As an undergraduate, De Shields performed in Stuart Gordon’s 1968 infamous production of “Peter Pan.” De Shields also joined the cast of “The Fantastics,” Madison Civic Repertory’s (now the Madison Repertory Theatre) inaugural production in 1969. He made his professional debut that same year in the rock musical “Hair” at the Schubert Theater in Chicago.

De Shields moved to New York in 1973. His Broadway credits include “The Wiz,” “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” “The Full Monty” and many others. He opens on Broadway May 5 in the new drama “Prymate,” about an aging gorilla that communicates with American Sign Language.

Described by journalist Linda Lee as “the hardest working actor-slash-song-and-dance-man in Manhattan on his day off,” De Shields also has appeared on television, most notably in a 1982 presentation of “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” for which he won an Emmy Award.

In recent years De Shields has turned some of his attention to the history of African Americans in musical theater. Among his literary canon are “Ambassador Satch: The Life and Times of Louis Armstrong”; “… Love, Langston,” a tribute to the American poet and playwright; “Let Me Sing”; and “Haarlem Nocturne.”

Florence Howe, pioneer in the field of women’s studies, founder and director for 30 years of the Feminist Press and a UW graduate student between 1951-54. Recognized round the world as “the Elizabeth Cady Stanton of women’s studies,” Howe worked against the scholarly grain of her era when academia largely ignored the work and experiences of women. Under her leadership, the Feminist Press introduced not only scholars but the general public to the now-classic stories, poems, essays and novels of such writers as Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Rebecca Harding Davis, Paule Marshall and many others.

About 25 years ago, Howe anticipated a new and global direction in publishing, and began internationalizing the Feminist Press. Publishing authors from across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and South America, she also has been central in bringing together women from these regions to work in producing these volumes.

Howe herself has authored more than a dozen books and almost 100 essays. Her most recent book is “The Politics of Women’s Studies: Testimonies from 30 Founding Mothers” (Feminist Press, 2000). In addition, she edited Women’s Studies Quarterly, the first national journal focusing on feminist teaching.

Howe retired from the faculty of City College of New York in 2001. She began her teaching career as a graduate student at UW, and has taught at Hofstra College, Queens College-City University of New York, Goucher College and the College at Old Westbury-State University of New York.

Nancy Oestreich Lurie, anthropologist, former curator of the Milwaukee Public Museum and a 1945 UW alumna with a B.A. in anthropology.

Lurie grew up in Milwaukee and says that she resolved to become an anthropologist after visiting the Milwaukee Public Museum when she was 6 years old. She served as the museum’s chief curator of anthropology between 1972 and 1992. Under her leadership the museum reinforced its efforts to reach out to citizens of the state and work closely with members of Wisconsin’s ethnic communities.

Her research focus is indigenous peoples; her first book, “Mountain Wolf Woman, Sister of Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography a Winnebago Woman” (University of Michigan Press, 1961), was the first autobiography of an American Indian woman and began a lifelong involvement with the Ho-Chunk nation. She went on to help the Ho-Chunk write their first grant to the federal government in 1963 to support higher education, health-care services and housing. Beginning in 1954, Lurie served as an expert witness to further cultural and political goals of the Ho-Chunk and eight other American Indian groups across the country from Washington to Michigan at the U.S. Indian Claims Commission hearings. In addition to her distinguished career at the Milwaukee Public Museum, she has served on the anthropology faculties at the universities of Michigan and Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

June Osborn, expert in virology and infectious diseases. Osborn served on UW–Madison’s medical microbiology and pediatric faculty between 1966-1984 and was an associate dean of the UW–Madison Graduate School beginning in 1975. During her years at Wisconsin she maintained a research program, funded by the National Institutes of Health, focusing on slow viral infections of the nervous system. She also embarked upon a career of national public health with her service as a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccine Advisory Panel and the Experimental Virology NIH Study Section.

In 1984 Osborn left UW–Madison to become dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan. Throughout her career she has served in a wide range of key public health areas, including the NIH, the FDA, the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control (now known as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), the Department of Defense, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trust, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Howard Hughes Institute, the Rand Corp. and more. She chaired the President’s National Commission on AIDS from 1989-93. She was appointed to the board of directors of the International AIDS Trust in 2003 and has been a member of the international advisory board if the National Academics since 2002.

Pleasant T. Rowland, founder of the Pleasant Company, which produced the American Girls Collection of dolls, books, magazines and accessories from 1986-98, until Mattel acquired the company.

The eight series that comprise the American Girl Collection, targeted at girls about ages 8 to 11, are renowned for their historical accuracy, covering America’s colonial era to the Civil War to the Victorian period to the Depression to World War II. Some characters are rich; others are desperately poor. The characters also represent the multi-ethnic face of America: African American, European immigrants, Hispanic, Nez Perce, Yankee. Readers of the American Girl books typically are struck by the similarities and the differences in the characters’ individual lives.

Rowland began her career as an elementary school teacher in 1962. Dismayed by the lack of creativity she encountered in the standard textbooks, she developed many of her own materials and sought to integrate other language arts with reading. From 1971-78 she served as a vice president of Boston Educational Research Co. In 1981 she became publisher of “Children’s Magazine Guide,” a library index to children’s magazines.

After selling the Pleasant Company, Rowland has focused her energy on the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation, a charitable organization supporting the arts, education and historic preservation. In 1999 she received the Governor’s Award from the Wisconsin Foundation for the Arts.

In addition to the commencement ceremony on Friday evening, four others will be held throughout the weekend of May 14. All are free and open to the public.