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Syracuse University will bestow four honorary degrees in the upcoming Class of 2022 Commencement ceremony on May 15, according to an SU news release Thursday.

Nina V. Fedoroff, a geneticist and molecular biologist, will receive an honorary doctor of science degree during the ceremony.

After she graduated summa cum laude from SU in 1966, Fedoroff earned a doctorate in molecular biology from The Rockefeller University in 1972. She was a staff member at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and a faculty member of Johns Hopkins University’s biology department. She then joined Pennsylvania State University, where she founded and directed the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and was appointed an Evan Pugh Professor, the highest academic honor at Penn State.

Along with multiple honors she received throughout the years, Fedoroff also served as the science and technology adviser of former Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton, as well as to the U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Henrietta Fore.

Thomas Magnanti, a Syracuse native who served as the dean of the School of Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1999-2007, will also receive an honorary doctor of science degree.

Magnanti graduated from Syracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science. He received his master’s degrees in statistics and mathematics and a doctorate in operations research from Stanford University. He was recruited by MIT’s Sloan School of Management to join its faculty while he was still a student at Stanford.

Magnanti was a founding co-director of MIT’s Leaders for Manufacturing and System Design and Management programs, and was the founding director of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology. He also served as the founding president of the Singapore University of Technology and Design from 2009-17.

SU will also bestow two doctor of humane letters degrees to Howard “Howie” Phanstiel and Gloria Somolekae.

Phanstiel, an SU alumnus who holds a bachelor’s in political science and a master of public administration degree, was the chairman and CEO of PacifiCare Health Systems, one of the nation’s leading consumer health companies. He has served at various leadership roles on SU’s committees, andhe co-chaired the university’s second major capital campaign that raised over a billion dollars.

Somolekae received her Ph.D. in public administration from SU’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. She returned to her home country of Botswana and became a senior lecturer at the University of Botswana. She was appointed by the nation’s president to a position in the parliament and later became a deputy minister of finance and economic development — the first woman to serve in a senior position in the nation’s Ministry of Finance. She was awarded the Presidential Order of Honour — the highest honor in Botswana — in 2008.

Published on April 28, 2022 at 10:16 pm

Contact Francis: btang05@syr.edu | @francis_towne