INFORMATION FOR
Arnold Speert, who has served as president of William Paterson University for 25 years and is retiring in July after forty years on campus, will give his final commencement address as William Paterson’s president on Wednesday, May 19, 2010 at 11 a.m. on Wightman Field as part of the University’s 187th commencement ceremonies. The event, previously scheduled for Tuesday, May 18, has been rescheduled due to the forecast for inclement weather.The graduate ceremony will be held on Tuesday, May 18 at 5 p.m. in the Recreation Center as previously scheduled.
Honorary degrees will be conferred on the Reverend Louis J. Scurti, director of Catholic Campus Ministry, and Leonard Zax, president of the Hamilton Partnership, which is spearheading the creation of the Paterson National Park in the city’s historic district.
At the undergraduate ceremony, Speert will be the commencement speaker and Father Louis Scurti will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree. Joseph Nyamwange, a graduating senior, will also address the graduating class. Nyamwange, a resident of Jersey City, will receive a bachelor of science degree in professional sales, magna cum laude. Virginia Overdorf, professor of kinesiology, will lead the procession in the role of University marshal.
At the graduate ceremony, Zax will be the speaker and will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree. President Speert will also address the candidates, along with Tashi Oyola of Hopatcong, who will receive a master of education degree in counseling.
Bachelor’s degrees will be conferred upon 1,656 undergraduates, all of whom have completed their degree requirements between August 2009 and May 2010. Master’s degrees will be conferred on 309 students who completed their degree requirements between August 2009 and May 2010. Alumni from the Class of 1960, who graduated when William Paterson was called Paterson State College, will be recognized at the morning ceremony and attend a 50th reunion luncheon sponsored by the Alumni Relations Office. The Alumni Association’s Young Alumni Chapter will host a Senior Send-Off reception on Monday, May 17 at 7 p.m. in the University Commons.
Speert became William Paterson University’s sixth president in September 1985. During his twenty-five-year tenure as president, he guided William Paterson University’s development into a comprehensive university with an increasing breadth of academic programs and a modernized campus. Under his leadership, the institution progressed from a college into a university, successfully completed its first major fundraising campaign, and upgraded and expanded its facilities. Speert has been a leader in the higher education community and in a wide variety of community service activities. He has served as chair of the New Jersey Presidents’ Council and as a member of the Commission on Higher Education and the Board of Examiners for the New Jersey Department of Education. A Phi Beta Kappa at The City College of The City University of New York, Speert graduated cum laude with honors in chemistry. He earned a doctorate in chemistry from Princeton University where he was a National Institutes of Health Fellow.
Scurti was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1973. For 31 years he has served William Paterson as director of the Catholic Campus Ministry, Bishop Rodimer Catholic Campus Ministry Center (CCMC), and Jesus Christ Prince of Peace Chapel. Scurti initiated numerous volunteer programs at the University, including the annual Thanksgiving Awareness and Shelter the Homeless programs, which have netted tens of thousands of dollars for county agencies that feed and house the poor. He is the host of “The Word: Alive and Well,” the ministry’s flagship television production, which airs on 30 cable networks throughout the country. Also an artist, he has worked as an adjunct professor both at the University and St. Peter’s College. A graduate of Seton Hall University with a bachelor of arts in philosophy, Scurti holds a master of divinity degree from St. Mary’s Seminary and University; a master’s degree in liberal arts from Johns Hopkins University; a master of fine arts from Montclair State University; and an educational specialist degree in marriage and family therapy from Seton Hall University; and a doctorate in family mediation from La Salle University.
Zax is the president of the Hamilton Partnership for Paterson, a nonprofit organization working to help create and maximize the public benefits of the new Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park. He has more than thirty years of experience in community development and historic preservation projects in large and small cities throughout the United States. Long active in the historic preservation movement, Zax has served as a trustee of the D.C. Preservation League and has done pro bono work for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He also has served as a member of the ULI Advisory Program panel assisting the Rebuild New Orleans Commission in the aftermath of Katrina. Until July 2008, Zax was a partner in the Washington office of the law firm of Latham & Watkins, where he was head of the real estate practice. Most of his work involved public/private partnerships for community development and historic preservation. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Zax earned both a master’s degree in city planning and a juris doctor from Harvard University, where he has served as a lecturer in urban planning.
William Paterson University, one of the nine state colleges and universities in New Jersey, offers 44 undergraduate and 21 graduate programs through five colleges: Arts and Communication, Cotsakos College of Business, Education, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Science and Health. Located on 370 hilltop acres in Wayne, the university enrolls nearly 11,000 students and provides housing for nearly 2,700 students. The institution’s 373 full-time faculty are highly distinguished and diverse scholars and teachers, many of whom are recipients of prestigious awards and grants from the Fulbright Program, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation.
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