HARTFORD, Conn. – James F. Jones, Jr., President and Trinity College Professor in the Humanities, will deliver the main address during the College’s 182nd Commencement Ceremony to be held at 11 a.m. on Sunday, May 18. Jones has been President of Trinity since 2004.

“You have learned so much from our dedicated and talented faculty, as well as from one another – and we have, in turn, learned a great deal from you,” Jones wrote in a recent letter to graduating seniors. “You are the first class with whom I have spent all four years, and you will always remain special to me.”

More than 540 undergraduates and 50 graduate students are expected to receive their diplomas in a ceremony on the College’s historic Quadrangle. The school also will honor the recipients of the Trustee Awards for Faculty and Student Excellence as well as the Thomas Church Brownell Prize for Teaching Excellence.

Honorands include Douglas Joseph Bennet, former president of Wesleyan University, who will receive a Doctor of Laws degree; Robert B. Pippin ’70, the Evelyn Steffannson Neff Distinguished Professor at the University of Chicago, who will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters degree; and John Emmett Simmons, a well-respected neuroscientist, who will receive a Doctor of Science degree.

Bennet has had a remarkably diverse career. After graduating from Harvard with a Ph.D. in history, he was an economic adviser for the Agency for International Development and then special assistant to Chester Bowles, then U.S. Ambassador to India. Bennet returned to this country and served in various capacities for Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and U.S. Senators Thomas F. Eagleton and Abraham Ribicoff. Bennet then headed the Agency for International Development from 1979 to 1981 before becoming the first president of the Roosevelt Center for American Policy Studies, a Washington D.C.-based think tank.

In 1983, Bennet became president and CEO of National Public Radio and later served in the Clinton administration. In 1995, Bennet returned to his alma mater, Wesleyan University, as its 15th president, a job he held with distinction for 12 years.

Though a Trinity undergraduate, Pippin earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at Pennsylvania State University, where he began his teaching career. In 1974, he joined the faculty of the New College in Sarasota, Florida, before moving a year later to the University of California, San Diego. There, over the course of 17 years, he achieved the rank of professor and chair of the Philosophy Department.

In 1992, Pippin joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, where he has remained for 14 years, the past three of which he has been the Evelyn Steffannson Nef Distinguished Service Professor. He has produced more than 10 books and hundreds of scholarly articles and won numerous awards, including the Andrew Mellon Foundation’s “Distinguished Achievement Award” in 2002.

Simmons retired from Trinity in 1997 after joining the faculty in 1972 as a specialist in endocrinology and an Associate Professor of Biology. Before coming to Trinity, Simmons had taught at the University of Iowa; Albany State College in Albany, Georgia; Syracuse University; Rutgers University, the University of Cincinnati; Western College for Women; and Colorado State University. He also was the recipient of a Fulbright grant and has taught at universities abroad.

As a member of the Endocrine Society and The Society for Neuroscience, Simmons devoted his research to understanding the role that sex steroids and neurotransmitters play in sexual differentiation. At Trinity, he was a member of the committee that designed the College’s Neuroscience Program.

For a complete schedule of events, please go to the College’s web site at /AboutTrinity/commencement/schedule.htm.