Recent Commencement Speakers
- 2011 - Regina Benjamin, Surgeon General of the United States
- 2010 - Peter R. Orszag - Director of the Office of Management and Budget in President Obama’s Administration
- 2009 - Peter Schwartz ’68 - author and futurist.
- 2008 - David Gergen, former White House aide, author and Harvard professor.
- 2007 - Thomas L. Friedman, best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times.
- 2006 - Wesley Clark, former NATO commander
- 2005 - Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator from New York 2001 - 2009, former First Lady
- 2004 - Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet and 3Com founder
- 2003 - Ben Carson, neurosurgeon
- 2002 - Dennis Tito, space tourist
- 2001 - Bill Cosby, entertainer
- 2000 - Rodney E. Slater, U.S. Secretary of Transportation 1997–2001
- 1999 - Bill Nye, "The Science Guy"
- 1998 - Michael E. Herman, President of the Kansas City Royals 1992 - 2000
- 1997 - Roland W. Schmitt, former President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
- 1996 - Peter Eio, President of LEGO Systems, Inc. 1989 - 2001
- 1995 - G. David Low, NASA astronaut
- 1994 - William Mow, Founder of Bugle Boy
- 1993 - Robert Resnick, retiring RPI Physics Professor 1956 - 1993
- 1992 - Tom Clancy, author, Co-founder of Red Storm Entertainment
- 1991 - Peter Ueberroth, head of the United States Olympic Committee and former MLB commissioner.
Read more about this topic: List Of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute People
Famous quotes containing the words commencement and/or speakers:
“After that came commencement day—that great day for which all other days were made. And it went. And that night I felt of myself all over, and to my astonishment, I found ‘twas the same old Rud. Not a single cubit added to my stature; not a hair’s breadth to my girth. If anything, on the contrary, I felt more lank and gaunt than common, much as if a load were off my stomach.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The most striking aspect of linguistic competence is what we may call the ‘creativity of language,’ that is, the speaker’s ability to produce new sentences, sentences that are immediately understood by other speakers although they bear no physical resemblance to sentences which are ‘familiar.’”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)