Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Chris Cox will deliver the keynote commencement address to Northeastern undergraduates, the university announced Friday.
Cox, who was described by Newsweek as “the enforcer in America’s corporate boardrooms,” served in Congress for 17 years before he was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005 to head the SEC. Following a decade in the majority leadership of the House of Representatives, Cox served in a leadership capacity as a senior member of every committee with jurisdiction over investor protection and US capital markets.
“I cannot imagine a more timely or important figure to address our graduate class during these historic times,” Northeastern President Joseph Aoun said in a statement.
Cox, who received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California and simultaneously received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, is set to receive an honorary degree of public service, according to university officials. Northeastern is scheduled to host its undergraduate and graduate ceremonies May 2, at 10:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., respectively.
Northeastern officials plan to present honorary degrees at the morning ceremony to two members of its board of trustees, Michael Cronin and Anthony Manganaro, as well as Nancy Zimpher, president of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, which claims to have founded the world’s first co-op program in 1906.
Cronin, who serves as vice chairman of the board, is chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Cognition Corporation, an engineering knowledge management company in Bedford.
Cronin is on the board of directors for EMC Corp., which was founded in 1979 by Northeastern alumni Richard Egan and Roger Marino, and has consistantly been one of the highest employers of Northeastern co-op students.
Manganaro, in February, donated $7.5 million to Northeastern to support the Torch Scholars Program, which awards full tuition, fees and room and board scholarships to low-income students who have overcome hard circumstances.
The program began in 2006, when Manganaro made his first contribution, which funded 10 students, and the current class includes more than two dozen spots. Permanent endowed scholarships can be established with a gift of $500,000, according to university officials.
Five years prior, the 1967-graduate, who was described in written accounts at the time as “a regular contributor to the university,” donated $300,000 to endow the Manganaro Family Presidential Scholarship and an additional $200,000 to the Siena Engineering Scholarship, named after a commercial real estate development company in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. corridor. Joining their colleagues in honorary academia, two additional members of the board of trustees, Henry Nasella and Katherine McHugh, will be presented with degrees at the afternoon ceremony.
Nasellas, a general partner of a New York-based private equity firm who has served on boards for companies like Denny’s and Au Bon Pain, pledged $5 million last November to create the Nasella Family Endowment Fund.
Both Nasellas and McHugh, who serves as vice chair of the Northeastern board of trustees and works as director of program development at MassINC, were members of the Presidential Search Committee that selected President Aoun in 2006.
Sylvia Hurtado, director of the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles, is scheduled to give the afternoon address and will be presented with an honorary degree. In recent years, speakers at the undergraduate ceremony have included Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the One Laptop Per Child initiative; Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of General Electric; and Leon Panetta, who served as chief of staff during the administration of former president Bill Clinton.
Nominations for commencement speaker are solicited by the President’s Office and are vetted by the Commencement Committee and the Board of Trustees, who have the final say on the selection.
In addition to the speaker, the university accepts suggestions for honorary degree candidates, which are also presented at each commencement ceremony.
