Chandler to be joined by NYC mayor during 485th Convocation

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will join James Chandler, the Barbara E. & Richard J. Franke Professor in English Language & Literature and the College, in speaking at the University’s 485th Convocation.

Chandler will deliver the Convocation address and Bloomberg will be a distinguished guest speaker and deliver remarks at the Saturday, June 10 graduation ceremonies for the College. The ceremonies, to begin at 10 a.m., will be held on the Harper Quadrangle and will be one of four Convocation sessions.

Chandler’s Convocation address will be presented at each of the sessions except for the Graduate School of Business ceremony on Sunday, June 11. Speakers for that session are Kevin Murphy, the George Stigler Distinguished Service Professor of Economics in the GSB, and Mary Tolan, (M.B.A.,’92, X.P.,’61), chief executive officer of Accretive Health, Chicago.

The University will confer nearly 3,000 degrees to students graduating from its College and graduate and professional schools.

Bloomberg founded Bloomberg LP in 1982 as a financial information service. It has since grown to include a news service, radio, television, Internet and publishing operations. He was elected mayor of New York in 2001 and re-elected in 2005.

Among his reforms as mayor is the establishment of a city Department of Education to replace a former system of locally elected boards. The new arrangement was intended to increase accountability for the schools.

Bloomberg received a B.S. in 1964 from Johns Hopkins University in electrical engineering and an M.B.A. in 1966 from Harvard Business School.

Chandler is an expert on the romantic movement in England; 18th and 19th century poetry; the rise of historicism and the historical novel; and relations between politics and literature, and history and criticism. He also studies romantic fiction, the Scottish Enlightenment, Scottish and Irish literatures and cultures and film.

Chandler, who is Director of the Franke Institute for the Humanities, is currently writing Sympathetic Eye: Capra, Commerce, and the History of Sentiment, a book intended to set the work of Frank Capra and the “golden age” of Hollywood in much longer perspectives of cultural and intellectual history. He also is working on The New Cambridge History of English Romantic Literature, a 300,000-word edited volume of The New Cambridge History of Romanticism, its first revision since its publication in the early 20th Century.

Few non-University faculty members have addressed the University’s Convocation audiences in recent years. Exceptions include President Bill Clinton in 1999, who joined faculty member Elaine Fuchs, and Katharine Graham, who joined faculty member Cass Sunstein in 1996.

Session I will include the Law School, the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies and the School of Social Service Administration. The ceremony will take place Friday, June 9. Degree candidates will assemble at 8:15 a.m. in the Gerald Ratner Athletics Center. Faculty members who plan to march in the procession must arrive at the Ratner Athletics Center 30 minutes before the ceremony begins. Harper Quadrangle will open at 8:15 a.m., and the ceremony will begin at 9:30 a.m.

Session II will include the Graham School of General Studies, the Biological Sciences Division and the Pritzker School of Medicine, the Humanities Division, the Physical Sciences Division, the Social Sciences Division, and the Divinity School. The 2005 Faculty Awards for Excellence in Graduate Teaching will be presented at this session, and honorary degrees will be conferred on three scholars.

The ceremony will take place Friday, June 9. Degree candidates will assemble at 1:15 p.m. in the Gerald Ratner Athletics Center. Faculty members who plan to march in the procession must arrive at the Ratner Athletics Center 30 minutes before the ceremony begins. Harper Quadrangle will open at 1:15 p.m., and the ceremony will begin at 2:30 p.m.

Session III will be for students in the College. The Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching will be presented at this session. The ceremony will take place Saturday, June 10. Degree candidates will assemble at 8:45 a.m. in the Gerald Ratner Athletics Center. Faculty members who plan to march in the procession must arrive at the Ratner Athletics Center 30 minutes before the ceremony begins. The quadrangle will open at 8:45 a.m., and the ceremony will begin at 10 a.m.

Session IV will be for students in the Graduate School of Business. The ceremony will take place Sunday, June 11. Degree candidates will assemble at 11:45 a.m. at the Gerald Ratner Athletics Center. Faculty members who plan to march in the procession must arrive at the Ratner Athletics Center 30 minutes before the ceremony begins. The quadrangle will open at 11:45 a.m., and the ceremony will begin at 1 p.m.

All guests, including children, must have a ticket for the College and Graduate School of Business ceremonies. Tickets are not needed for Sessions I or II. For guests who need or wish to be indoors, a real-time broadcast of each ceremony will be shown in Mandel Hall, 1131 E. 57th St. Indoor seating will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.

For Sessions III and IV, for the College and the GSB, people wishing to be seated in Mandel Hall must have a ticket.