Honorary Degree Citations

Howard Gardner P‚94

It has been said that true discovery consists of seeing what everyone else has seen while thinking what no one else has thought. You, Howard Gardner, are an intrepid explorer of the mind, challenging long-held assumptions about human cognition.

As a Harvard undergraduate, you made a critical change in direction, eschewing a career in law for graduate study in cognition at Harvard, where you now teach and conduct your research. With your passion for art, music and science serving as personal compass points, you have inquired widely in your research. After receiving a MacArthur Fellowship in recognition of your willingness and ability to explore new frontiers, you staked out revolutionary terrain˜the theory of multiple human intelligences.

You have brought new horizons into view, in areas from education to business, through your many books and research projects. And you are still searching out new ground, most recently studying ethically and socially responsible work through the Good Works Project.
We join your family, including your son Jay Gardner, a graduate of Wheaton‚s Class of 1994, to salute you as a scholar who has pursued the study of development, creativity and intellectual enterprise with vigor and vision.

Trish Karter ‚77

Entrepreneurship is a lot like baking. Ingredients must be carefully considered and artfully blended; small details can produce a tremendous rising or a disastrous fall; and there‚s no substitute for rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty. Trish Karter, president and cofounder of Dancing Deer Baking Company, your recipe has been one of sweet success.

Take one fiercely independent spirit with deep Wheaton connections˜mother Bunt Whitman Karter ‚45 and sister Jean Karter Gulliver ‚74. Add a degree in art history in 1977 and a sizeable pinch of experience in the family‚s recycling business. Fortify with a master‚s degree from Yale School of Management. Mix. Combine all with a fledgling bakery and an uncanny business savvy. Bake in the white-hot intensity of the marketplace until done. Top with awards and praise from industry notables.

Trish, you nurtured Dancing Deer from modest beginnings to a nationally-recognized force in all-natural foods. You and the company share the success with your Roxbury neighbors and the homeless of Boston through the Sweet Home Project. For your leadership, your contributions to Boston‚s common good, and Dancing Deer‚s Molasses Clove cookies, we salute you today with this honorary degree.

David McCullough

History underscores the importance of the past and connects us to the people who formed our present. In your work, David McCullough, you demonstrate the power of the story-teller, making history ours.

You have said that you start, always, with the story: choosing to write about what you would like to read. Studying English at Yale and working as a journalist undoubtedly honed your instinct for great stories. Your Pulitzer Prize-winning success is founded not only on the appeal of John Adams and Harry Truman but also on exhaustive research. At a time when the integrity of thinkers and leaders is routinely questioned, you offer a thorough, careful and engaging reading of the past.

In telling history, you also shape it. Your book on the Panama Canal, The Path Between the Seas, appeared just as debate was intensifying over the canal‚s ownership. Your compelling presentation of the facts is said to have influenced President Jimmy Carter‚s policies. Who can say how the future may be influenced by your stories, which inevitably become best-sellers. None of your seven books has ever been out of print˜a rare and wonderful feat for any writer. And as host of „The American Experience,‰ you won many new fans of history.

For your truth-telling and your story-telling, we salute you. Most of all, David McCullough, we applaud you for using the past to inspire hope for the future with abundant grace and heart.

Andrew Wyeth

Most of us trace the arc of life in snapshots pasted in a photo album. You, Andrew Wyeth, record it in masterful artworks prized by museums and collectors alike. Through your work, you have given form to life.

It would be an understatement to say painting is your family‚s business: your father, the illustrator N.C. Wyeth, sketched the beginnings of an artistic dynasty that also includes your sisters, Carolyn and Henriette, and your son, Jamie. From your first solo exhibition at the age of 20, however, your work has displayed not simply superior skill, but also an awareness, integrity and sensitivity that is all your own.

While your art depicts the people and places of coastal Maine and of your beloved Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, they also reveal a deeper, universal reality. Through brush stroke, color and subtle editing, your watercolor, drybrush and tempera works touch on the joys and sorrows of your subjects, yourself and all of us as well. It is this depth that has made „Christina‚s World‰ an icon of 20th century art.

You have said that you are the illustrator of your own life. We are grateful for the honesty and insight with which you live and paint, and for sharing it with us. It is our great pleasure to present you with this honorary degree in recognition of your superb artistry.

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