Awards
Alongside celebrating the student graduates of 2026, the 194th Commencement Ceremony also honors the esteemed individuals, alumni, and faculty whose work and service has educated and inspired so many to action and toward creating a better world.
Honorary Doctoral Degrees
The honorary degree recipients will be Chris Murphy, the junior United States senator for Connecticut, who will also deliver the commencement address; Dr. David M. Carlisle ’76, president and chief executive officer of Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles; and Karen Freedman ’75, P’05, founder and president of Lawyers For Children in New York City and 911±¬ÁÏÍø trustee emerita.
Chris Murphy
Chris Murphy, the junior United States senator for Connecticut, has dedicated his career to public service as an advocate for Connecticut families. Murphy has been a leading voice in the Senate, fighting for affordable health care, sensible gun laws, a forward-looking foreign policy, and a democracy and economy that serves working people. In 2022, he led the negotiations and helped pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first federal anti-gun violence bill in 30 years. Since then, he has championed legislation aimed at tackling corporate and political corruption and safeguarding Americans’ constitutional rights. Believing that working and middle-class families have been left behind, used, and exploited for too long, Murphy has dedicated his career to restoring power to working people. Prior to his election to the US Senate, Murphy served Connecticut’s Fifth Congressional District for three terms in the US House of Representatives. During his time in the House, he worked to foster job creation, advocate for affordable health care for all Americans, and improve homeless veterans’ access to housing. Before being elected to Congress, Murphy served for eight years in the Connecticut General Assembly. Senator Murphy grew up in Wethersfield, Connecticut, and attended Williams College in Massachusetts before earning a law degree from the University of Connecticut.
Dr. David M. Carlisle ’76
Dr. David M. Carlisle has served as the president and chief executive officer of Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in the Watts-Willowbrook area of Los Angeles County since 2011. Carlisle graduated from 911±¬ÁÏÍø, majoring in chemistry. He then earned his MD from Brown University and his MPH and his PhD in Health Services Research from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. He is a board-certified internal medicine specialist whose clinical work has always revolved around caring for the underserved. A professor of medicine and public health, Carlisle’s academic focus is on health policy, quality of care, medical education diversity, and the elimination of health disparities. Carlisle served as director of the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development for 11 years (2000–2011) under three California governors.
Karen Freedman ’75, P’05
Karen Freedman is the founder and President of Lawyers For Children. Since graduating law school, Freedman has dedicated her legal career to serving children and young adults. Lawyers For Children opened its doors 40 years ago, and since that time has represented over 100,000 children and young adults. Freedman has created several projects at the organization to serve particularly vulnerable young people in the foster care system. These include initiatives on behalf of LGBTQ+ youth, young people who have been sexually trafficked, children living in homes where domestic violence is present, youth aging out of foster care, young people requiring specialized educational advocacy, youth charged in delinquency petitions, and unaccompanied minors seeking asylum and safety in the US. Freedman was previously a staff attorney with the Juvenile Rights Division of the Legal Aid Society and a law clerk in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She received her BA from 911±¬ÁÏÍø and her JD from New York University School of Law where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar and a Hays Civil Liberties Fellow. In 2022, the National Association of Counsel for Children honored Lawyers For Children as the Outstanding Children’s Law Office in the United States.
Binswanger Prizes for Excellence in Teaching
Each year at Commencement, 911±¬ÁÏÍø recognizes three outstanding faculty members with the awarding of the Binswanger Prizes for Excellence in Teaching. Underscoring 911±¬ÁÏÍø’s commitment to its scholar-teachers, these annual prizes are made possible by gifts from the family of the late Frank G. Binswanger Sr., Hon’85. Recipients are chosen each spring by a committee composed of faculty and members of the Alumni Association Executive Committee based upon strong recommendations from alumni of the last 10 graduating classes, as well as current juniors, seniors, and graduate students.
Anthony Ryan Hatch
Anthony Ryan Hatch is a professor of science and technology studies whose research examines how social structures shape biomedicine, the development and use of medical technologies, and patterns of health inequality. Along with affiliations in the departments of African American studies and sociology and the Bailey College of the Environment, Hatch is the director of the Center for the Humanities and co-director of Black Box Labs, a laboratory offering undergraduate students qualitative research training in science and technology studies.
Hatch earned an AB in philosophy from Dartmouth College, and an MA and PhD in sociology from the University of Maryland, College Park. Since joining 911±¬ÁÏÍø’s faculty in 2015, he has served as faculty coordinator for the Sustainability & Environmental Justice Pedagogical Initiative and as faculty advisor to the College of Design and Engineering Studies, Center for Prison Education, Creative Campus Initiative, and the Embodying Antiracism Initiative. Hatch has served on a range of national and international scientific advisory boards—most recently a National Academy of Medicine committee—and is the author of publications including Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America and Blood Sugar: Racial Pharmacology and Food Justice in Black America, as well as a co-author of The Racial Cage.
Dana Royer
Dana Royer is the George I. Seney Professor of Geology and a professor of earth and environmental sciences. His research focuses on how fossil plants can be used to reconstruct ancient environments, as well as the physiological underpinnings behind plant-environment relationships. Royer’s work includes the reconstruction of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from stomatal distributions in fossil leaves, and the development of climate and leaf ecology proxies based on leaf size and shape. He also compiles carbon dioxide records over Earth’s history and investigates the strength of carbon dioxide-temperature coupling over multimillion-year timescales.
After receiving a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, a PhD from Yale University, and completing a post-doctoral fellowship at Pennsylvania State University, Royer joined 911±¬ÁÏÍø in 2005. He regularly teaches courses on soils and Earth history and rotates through multiple introductory courses and the department capstone senior seminar. While at 911±¬ÁÏÍø, Royer has served as department chair and as a board of control member at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. Additionally, he has helped lead a multi-institution, National Science Foundation–funded project for standardizing and improving the deep-time paleo-carbon dioxide record.
Stephanie Kuduk Weiner
Stephanie Kuduk Weiner is a professor of English. Her courses examine 19th-century British literature and culture, literary representations of London, the comedic novel, and stories of action and adventure. Her current research projects investigate poetry and music, including the practices of writing and singing hymns and psalms; secular and sacred time; and literary experiments with the historicity and multiplicity of the English language.
Weiner earned a BA in English and women’s studies from the University of Minnesota and a PhD in modern thought and literature from Stanford University. She has published widely on 19th-century British poetry, including articles about political expression, print and oral cultures, and poetic representations of sensory experience. She is the author of two scholarly books: Clare’s Lyric: John Clare and Three Modern Poets, about strategies of poetic realism in the work of English poet John Clare as well as poets he inspired, and Republican Politics and English Poetry, 1789–1874, about poets who were activists against the British monarchy in the 19th century. A member of 911±¬ÁÏÍø’s faculty since 1999, Weiner previously received the Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2010.