Good afternoon, Provost Brinkley, fellow deans, colleagues, alumni, doctoral candidates and your families and friends, and welcome to the year 2006 Doctoral Convocation. I am Henry Pinkham, the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. This year, for the fourth time, in order to keep the PhD ceremony in this beautiful space, we have divided the ceremony into two separate convocations. Today’s ceremony honors the PhD candidates from programs within schools of Architecture, Business, Journalism, Engineering, Teachers College, Physicians and Surgeons, Public Health, and Social Work. We also have doctoral candidates from the Law School and the School of Nursing. Given this, it is appropriate that the formal welcome be given by one of the school deans.

For today’s ceremony I have asked R. Glenn Hubbard, the Dean of the Business School, to deliver the welcome.

R. Glenn Hubbard was named Dean of Columbia Business School in 2004. A Columbia faculty member since 1988, he is also the Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics. Professor Hubbard received the BA and BS degrees summa cum laude from the University of Central Florida, where he received the National Society of Professional Engineers Award. He also holds AM and PhD degrees in economics from Harvard. Dr. Hubbard taught at Northwestern before he arrived at Columbia. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School, as well as the University of Chicago. He also held the John M. Olin Fellowship at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In addition to writing more than 100 scholarly articles in economics and finance, he is the author of two leading textbooks on money and financial markets, and co-author of Healthy, Wealthy, & Wise: Five Steps to a Better Health Care System. His commentaries appear in Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times, the Washington Post, Nikkei, and the Daily Yomiuri, as well as on television (on PBS’s “Nightly Business Report”) and radio (on NPR’s “Marketplace”). In government, Dean Hubbard served as deputy assistant secretary of the US Treasury Department for Tax Policy from 1991 to 1993. From February 2001 until March 2003, he was chairman of the US Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush. While serving as CEA chairman, he also chaired the Economic Policy Committee of the OECD.

This is a busy time for him, so I am grateful to him for coming today. Finally, I know from both the MBA and PhD students of Business how admired and respected he is by all the students. Let us welcome Dean R. Glenn Hubbard.

Please click here to read Dean Hubbard's speech

I now have the pleasure of introducing to you Kira von Ostenfeld, a doctoral student in the History Department and Chair of the Graduate Student Advisory Council, who will present the Faculty Mentoring Award to Professor Bjorn Jorgensen in the Business School.

This award is designed to honor excellence in the mentoring of PhD students; it is being given for the fourth time this year. Most importantly, recipients of the Faculty Mentoring Award are chosen by the PhD students themselves. This award is just one example of the wonderful work done by the Graduate Student Advisory Council.

The Faculty address will be offered by Professor Michael Gershon, Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology, who received the MD from Cornell. Professor Gershon’s teaching and research is focused on the enteric nervous system (ENS), the intrinsic innervation of the bowel. His recent book, The Second Brain, a groundbreaking new understanding of nervous disorders of the stomach and intestine, is now out in paperback. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and he received the Jacob Javits Award from The National Institutes of Health, the Henry Grey Prize, and the Medal of Francis I of Collège de France. Dr. Gershon was President of the American Association of Anatomists in 1995 and he is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the author of more than 300 scientific papers, chapters, and books.

Click here to read Dr. Gershon's speech

The Candidates’ Remarks will be offered today by Mary Grace Goll, PhD in Genetics and Development in the CollegePhysicians and Surgeons. Ms. Goll defended her dissertation with Distinction on February 8, 2006, on "The Biological Role of the DNA Methytransferase Homologue DNMT2 in Diverse Eukaryotes." Professor Timothy Bestor is her PhD sponsor and he is here today. She received the BA cum laude from Cornell in 1998, and the MA and MPhil from Columbia in 1999 and 2001, respectively. She published papers as first author in Science and the Annual Review of Biochemistry. She will be taking a research position as a Carnegie Collaborative Fellow at Carnegie Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, in June.

Click here to read Ms. Goll's speech

As you experience the next stages of your careers, we would appreciate feedback from you on what we could do even better to help you in your careers. Your continued involvement with Columbia is most welcome, especially through participation in the Alumni Association of GSAS. Laura Brown, the graduate school’s alumni relations officer, who is here today, can help you make contact. On Wednesday, following Commencement, you are invited to 301 Philosophy to receive your diploma and to be welcomed into Columbia’s Alumni Association. Besides your diploma you will also receive a few gifts from GSAS.

A word about the symbol on the alumni gifts that you will receive on Wednesday: the “Michelangelo symbol” has been in use by GSAS since the 1950s, when it was adopted by then-Dean Jacques Barzun, one of my intellectual heroes. Some of you may have recently seen his book: “From Dawn to Decadence: 500 years of Western Cultural Life.” The symbol was used by Michelangelo in his household and on many of his drawings to signify “excellence.” Hence it is an appropriate representation of the Graduate School’s motto of “excellence within,” which you know is embodied in each of the graduates present at the ceremony today. It is shown on the medal for the winner of the alumni award for distinguished achievement, and on the pin that I will hand to all the candidates as they come up.

Before closing this ceremony, I want to express my appreciation to Beatrice Terrien, Elizabeth Doran Keromytis, and Carmen Aragon Vilardi and the staff of the Graduate School, who worked very hard to organize and make this event possible, and to thank Dean Hubbard, Kira von Ostenfeld, Professor Michael Gershon, Ms. Goll, Professors Freeman and Tucher, for their contributions to this joyful occasion.

Congratulations to the candidates, and thanks to their families and friends for their support during their long and arduous studies for this degree.