Photo Courtesy of UR Communications
The University has selected educational strategist Deborah Bial as the Commencement Speaker at the 165th College Commencement, which will take place on Sunday, May 17.
Bial is the founder and president of the Posse Foundation, a New York City-based organization that sends outstanding high school graduates to top universities on scholarship.
The University of Rochester partnered with the Posse Foundation last year, making a commitment to provide full scholarships for 10 freshmen annually. Fifty-one other colleges and universities are a part of the Foundation’s network, graduating over 400 Posse scholars last year alone. A press release from UR Communications noted that over 2,600 students have graduated since the program’s inception in 1989.
The Foundation selects small groups of 10 promising freshman each year, focusing on public school students who show excellent motivation and talent but who might have been passed over by traditional college application processes. Each 10-student “Posse” attends one college, with the goals of campus involvement and mutual success.
Bial is a graduate of Brandeis University and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. In 2007, she was awarded a MacArthur Genius Fellowship for her work in the field.
UR President Joel Seligman praised the choice of speaker, saying, “Deborah Bial is a change agent in United States higher education … her development of the Posse Foundation to support highly-qualified urban students as they pursue higher education and beyond has had significant impact, both on the lives of individual students as well as on the colleges and universities they have attended.”
Passanisi is a member of
the class of 2017.
