Commencement 2005 - Bowdoin College

HONORANDS OF THE 2005 COMMENCEMENT
ELLEN BAXTER ’75
DOCTOR OF HUMANE LETTERS
A 1994 recipient of Bowdoin’s Common Good Award, Ellen Baxter has been a tireless advocate
for the homeless in New York City. As executive director of Broadway Housing, she has
been described as New York’s most accomplished not-for-profit entrepreneur. Baxter began
her work in the early 1980s with the Community Service Society. With two colleagues, she
formed Broadway Housing and raised money and public awareness with her renovation of a
building into 55 single-room occupancy units for those in need. The success of the program
has led to the renovation or construction of more buildings for housing and has brought
national attention and additional resources to bear on issues of homelessness.
JUNG CHANG
DOCTOR OF LETTERS
Jung Chang was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China. At the age of 14 she was a Red
Guard for a brief time. She subsequently worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker,
and an electrician. She entered Sichuan University, where she studied English and
became an assistant lecturer. In 1978 she left China and entered York University in Britain.
She received a Ph.D. in linguistics in 1982, and was the first person from the People's
Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British university. Her book, Wild Swans —
Three Daughters of China (1991), is an autobiographical look at twentieth-century China as
seen through the eyes of three generations of women within her family. The book has won
widespread acclaim — the NCR Book Award (UK), the UK Writers’ Guild’s Best Non-Fiction
Book, and the Book of the Year (UK) in 1993 — and has been translated into more than 30
languages. Her next book will be a monumental biography of Mao Zedong.
DONALD R. KURTZ ’52
DOCTOR OF HUMANE LETTERS
A 1952 Bowdoin graduate with an M.B.A. from Columbia University, Donald Kurtz has
provided wise leadership to Bowdoin in areas of vital importance to the College over a long
career, in which he drew on his years of executive experience with The Equitable Life
Assurance Society, Equitable Investment Management, and General Motors. He was elected
an Overseer of the College in 1984, and he chaired the Investments Committee during a
period of strong growth in Bowdoin's endowment. Elected a Trustee in 1997, Kurtz took
on the difficult task of chairing the Commission on Residential Life, which resulted in a
transformation of the College's residential life system. He received the 1997 Alumni Service
Award for leading the Bowdoin community through this difficult transition and for his selfless
efforts on behalf of the College. Most recently, Kurtz chaired the Board of Trustees from
1999 to 2002.