Musicians, Law Scholar, Physician Among This Year's Honorary Doctorate Recipients
Old Dominion University will award six honorary doctorates during its commencement ceremonies on May 9.
Two musicians, a physician and a legal scholar will receive the designations, joining commencement speakers David Gergen and Lt. Gen. Kathleen M. Gainey in being honored.
At the 9 a.m. ceremony, Patricia A. King will receive a Doctorate of Humane Letters and Russell Stanger will receive a Doctorate of Music.
At the 2 p.m. ceremony, Frank Foster will receive a Doctorate of Music and Dr. Donald A.B. Lindberg will receive a Doctorate of Science.
Patricia King, originally from Norfolk, is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Medicine, Ethics and Public Policy at Georgetown Law Center. She is also the first African American woman to be elected to the Harvard Corporation.
King attended Norfolk's Booker T. Washington High School, where she was class valedictorian. A 1969 alumna of Harvard Law School, King has served on the Georgetown faculty for more than 30 years. She is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Johns Hopkins University.
King is a noted expert in legal and ethical aspects of biomedical science, and is co-author of "Cases and Materials on Law, Science and Medicine."
Her work in the field of bioethics has included service on the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare's Advisory Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, and the Ethics, Legal and Social Issues Working Group of the Human Genome Project.
King is a member of the board of trustees of her undergraduate alma mater, Wheaton College, and previously, she was the deputy director of the Office of Civil Rights and special assistant to the chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She has also served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Division of the Department of Justice.
Russell Stanger conducted his first ever orchestra at age 12 in his hometown of Newton, Mass. That was the start of a more than six-decade-long music career.
Stanger received his Master of Music degree from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1952. Four years later, he won the prestigious Eugene Ormandy National Conductors Competition in Philadelphia.
He served as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic and Minneapolis Symphony, before coming to Virginia in 1966 as music director and conductor of the Norfolk Symphony (now the Virginia Symphony). He directed the symphony for 14 years, and now serves as conductor laureate.
Stanger has served as guest conductor with some of the leading North American and European orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the National Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic and the Societe des Concerts du Conservatoire, Paris.
Stanger was a long-time friend of F. Ludwig Diehn, and a promoter of his music. Diehn died in 1995, leaving a bequest that would benefit Old Dominion University through the Norfolk Foundation. Stanger is an adviser to the F. Ludwig Diehn Fund.
He donated the Russell Stanger Collection to the Old Dominion University Libraries in 1994. The collection, which represents more than 50 years, includes memorabilia from Stanger's performances around the world, including original scores and parts of some of his compositions.
Frank Foster is one of the most prominent African American jazz composers and arrangers in the world of music today.
A native of Cincinnati, he began his musical career at 11, when he took up the clarinet. Two years later he began playing alto saxophone, and advanced so quickly that he was playing with local dance bands by age 14. He began to compose and arrange his own music the following year, and was leading a 12-piece band while still a senior in high school.
After completing military service in 1953, Foster joined Count Basie's Big Band. In addition to his distinctive tenor saxophone playing, Foster contributed original material to the band, including the standard "Shiny Stockings" and other popular songs.
Foster was leader of the Basie Band from 1986-95, and was awarded an American Jazz Masters Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has received two Grammy Awards for his arranging.
Foster has received commissions from the Jazzmobile Corporation, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra. He was personally commissioned by Jon Faddis and Dizzy Gillespie for significant works as well.
He currently resides in Chesapeake.
Dr. Donald Lindberg is a scientist who has been a pioneer in applying computer technology to health care, beginning at the University of Missouri in 1960. In 1984, he was appointed director of the National Library of Medicine, the world's largest biomedical library. In 1996, he was named by the secretary of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department to be the U.S. coordinator for the G-7 Global Health Applications Project.
In addition to an eminent career in pathology, Lindberg has made numerous contributions to information and computer activities in medical diagnosis, artificial intelligence and educational programs. He has current academic appointments as clinical professor of pathology at the University of Virginia and adjunct professor of pathology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Lindberg is the author of three books, "The Computer and Medical Care," "Computers in Life Science Research" and "The Growth of Medical Information Systems in the United States."
Lindberg graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College and received his M.D. degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University. He holds honorary doctorates from Amherst College, State University of New York at Syracuse, University of Missouri-Columbia and the University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, Innsbruck, Austria.