Spring Commencement features two business leaders
| Published: 05/17/2007 |
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Spring Commencement will feature keynote addresses by two of Wisconsin's leading business people and supporters of education: George W. Mead II and Susan Feith. More than 300 undergraduate and 35 graduate students will receive their diplomas at the Saturday, May 26 ceremony at the Kern Center. Jared Riedl of Watertown, Wis., who is graduating with high honors with a bachelor's in electrical engineering, will be the class respondent.
Susan Feith, who will receive an Honorary Doctor of Business and Economics, is the vice chairperson of the Mead Witter Foundation, which supports higher education organizations.
She serves on MSOE's Board of Regents, the board of directors of the International Crane Foundation, and is a former member of the board of the UW-Stevens Point Foundation. She also has been active in the Nature Conservancy, United Way, Goodwill, Girl Scouts, Rotary and the River Cities Development Corp.
Feith earned master's degree in management from Purdue University and a bachelor of arts degree from UW-Stevens Point.
Her husband, Regent Emeritus George W. Mead II, will receive an Honorary Doctor of Engineering at the ceremony. Mead is former chairman of Consolidated Papers Inc., a leading paper manufacturing company that, under Mead's leadership, achieved technological advances, modernized and implemented environmental initiatives. The company sold in 2000 for $4.8 billion. Mead also is chairman of the Mead Witter Foundation, which was started in 1951 by his father. He is past chairman of the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, a former director of the American Forest & Paper Association and is past president of that organization's environmental and health programs. He received Gallagher Report's 10 Best Executives award and was twice named Papermaker of the Year.
Mead holds a master's degree in paper chemistry from the Institute of Paper Chemistry, Appleton, Wis., (now at Georgia Institute of Technology) and a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Yale University.