NASA administrator and retired major general in the U.S. Marines Charles Bolden Jr. is scheduled to deliver the keynote address for the University of Michigan's 2014 2 p.m. Winter Commencement ceremony on Dec. 14, at the Crisler Center in Ann Arbor.
Bolden is NASA's 12th administrator - the first African-American to serve in that role - and has been aboard four space flights, including two missions he commanded. One of those two missions was the first U.S. space shuttle with a Russian cosmonaut as a crewmember.
'He has excelled at the forefront of America's space program for more than three decades,' according to a U-M news release.
'He also piloted the space shuttle Discovery, which deployed the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990.'
Bolden was born in Columbia, South Carolina and he earned a bachelor's degree in electrical science from the U.S. Naval Academy. He flew more than 100 combat missions in Southeast Asia in 1972-73, earned a Master of Science degree in systems management at the University of Southern California and was a naval pilot before becoming an astronaut in 1980.
After serving in several roles at NASA, he returned to active duty with the Marine Corps, where he ultimately served as commanding general of 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in California. He received the Defense Superior Service Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross, among other honors, and was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2006.
Bolden was appointed NASA administrator in 2009. Under his leadership, NASA has landed a Mars rover, launched a spacecraft to Jupiter, and enhanced Earth-observing satellites.
If approved by the Board of Regents, Bolden will be one of four people who will receive an honorary degree from Michigan during the commencement.
Also slated to receive honorary degrees are Susanne Baer, Doctor of Laws; Ralph J. Cicerone, Doctor of Science; and Dr. Hamilton O. Smith, Doctor of Science.
Baer is a Federal Constitutional Court of Germany justice and professor of public law and gender studies at Humboldt University of Berlin. She earned a master of laws degree in from U-M in 1993 and has taught comparative constitutional law in Austria, Hungary and Canada.
She chairs public law and gender studies at Humboldt and co-founded the university's Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies.
Cicerone, who served as a U-M researcher in electrical engineering from 1970-78, is the president of the National Academy of Sciences and one of the world's foremost atmospheric scientists.
'He has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of greenhouse gases and ozone depletion in the Earth's stratosphere,' the news release said.
Cicerone led the 2001 NAS climate study confirming the role of human activities in global warming, and was elected NAS president and chair of the National Research Council in 2005. His honors include the World Cultural Council Albert Einstein World Award in Science, and the United Nations Environment Program Ozone Award.
Smith is a distinguished professor at the J. Craig Venter Institute, adjunct professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, and winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize in medicine.
He and two colleagues received the Nobel Prize for discovering restriction enzymes and their application to problems of molecular genetics, enabling researchers to pursue treatments for genetic illnesses.
Smith began his research career as a postdoctoral fellow in U-M's Department of Human Genetics, working with the late professor Myron Levine. In 1965, they discovered the gene controlling prophage attachment. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and was inducted into U-M's Medical Center Alumni Society Hall of Honor in 2006.
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