Jackson to serve as speaker
for fall commencement

Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the first African-American woman to head a national research university, will deliver the commencement address at NC State’s Fall Commencement on Dec. 17 at the RBC Center.

Jackson is one of four people who will receive honorary degrees from NC State during the ceremony. Also receiving honorary degrees will be Lt. Gen. Dan K. McNeill, an NC State alumnus who commanded American military forces in Afghanistan in the fight against terrorism; John P. Sall, co-founder and executive vice president of SAS Institute Inc., who developed and documented many of SAS software’s earliest analytical procedures; and E. Travis York, chancellor emeritus of the University of Florida System and former head of the agronomy department at NC State.

Jackson is the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. in any field from MIT, and in 1995 became the first African-American woman appointed to head the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the American Physical Society.

McNeill’s military career has included command of airborne infantry units at the company, battalion, brigade, and corps levels. He has commanded the 82nd Airborne Division and the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, a high honor for an army general. In 2000, under his command, Fort Bragg won recognition as one of the two top army posts in the nation.

Sall was principal designer and developer of JMP, a graphically oriented statistical package. He leads the JMP product team and is responsible for the SAS InSchool division. He was elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association. Sall has a master’s degree from Northern Illinois University, and has studied graduate-level statistics at NC State.

York began his career as an associate professor in agronomy at NC State before being named professor and department head. He answered the call to national service at the requests of U.S. presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Carter and Reagan. York is Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell.

Posted November 24, 2003

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