Mellody Hobson, a nationally recognized expert on financial literacy and chair of the Starbucks board of directors, spoke at W&M’s undergraduate Commencement ceremony Friday night in Zable Stadium.
Honorees from various segments of campus were recognized at Commencement May 20 and 21 as annual awards were presented to graduates, staff and faculty members.
The James Frederic Carr Memorial Cup
The James Frederic Carr Memorial Cup was established in honor of a William & Mary student who served with distinction in the First World War and lost his life before he could return to graduate. The award recognizes the student who best exemplifies character, scholarship and leadership.
The recipient of the 2021 Carr Memorial Cup is Abram Clear ’21. Clear will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in linguistics and anthropology and recently accepted an offer to pursue a fully-funded linguistics M.A. at University of Toronto.
A 2021 Rhodes Scholarship finalist, Clear distinguished himself as a true academic and campus leader. His senior honors thesis focused on the dialect of his family, based in the Appalachian Mountains, specifically on vowel production and perception.
Photo - of - by David Malmquist, VIMS | January 11, 2021
President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have named Ike Irby (Ph.D., M.P.P. ’17) as Policy Advisor in the Office of the Vice President. Irby, who earned joint graduate degrees from William & Mary and its Virginia Institute of Marine Science in 2017, previously served as a Senior Policy Advisor to Harris in the U.S. Senate, covering climate, environment, energy, transportation, and infrastructure.
Irby brings both a science and policy background to the nation’s capital, with a Ph.D. degree from the School of Marine Science at VIMS and a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the Public Policy Graduate Program at W&M. He responded to the announcement in a tweet, writing, “Truly honored to serve as Policy Advisor to the next Vice President, Kamala Harris. The climate crisis is the challenge of our time, and I look forward to