In its largest graduating class ever, Binghamton University conferred approximately 3,351 degrees for bachelor's master's and doctoral candidates during the the 2003 Commencement ceremonies Sunday, May 18 in the Broome County Veteran's Memorial Arena. The ceremonies marked the University's 57th commencement.

At Harpur College's ceremony, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Dr. Alan MacDiarmid received the honorary Doctor of Science and director and producer Sydney Pollack received the honorary Doctor of Human Letters.

Chemist MacDiarmid was honored with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000, which he shared with fellow researchers Dr. Alan Heeger of the University of California and Dr. Hideki Shirakawa of the University of Tsukuba in Japan. The award was based on their 1977 discovery of a polymer that could conduct electricity like a metal while retaining the properties of a plastic. Today, thousands of scientists around the world are working on new materials and applications based on the work of MacDiarmid and his collaborators. The technology derived from their studies is being used to make anti-static coating on photographic film and is expected to find its way to energy-saving light devices, LED displays and flexible "plastic" transistors and electrodes in the next few years.

MacDiarmid told Harpur College's class of 2003 that with the explosion of new knowledge, today's graduates will have to keep up or be left behind. "Nothing in life that is worthwhile is easy," he said. "I have a saying on my study wall to remind me. It says, 'I am a very lucky person, and the harder I work, the luckier I seem to be.'"

As the award-winning director of such films as They Shoot Horses Don't They?, Out of Africa, Tootsie, The Way We Were and The Firm, Polack has explored human conduct, human ethics and values, all while featuring such outstanding performers as Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Dustin Hoffman, Barbara Streisand, Paul Newman and Burt Lancaster. Winner of Oscars for both directing and producing Out of Africa, Pollack has in recent years acted in Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives, Robert Altman's The Player and Robert Zemckis' Death Becomes Her.

In his speech, he said he couldn't think of a more difficult and complex time to move into the world, but the new graduates are needed to interpret the world through their compassion. "How do you get ready for that, to deal with it, to understand it?" he asked. "I'm someone who has spent my life avoiding jobs and spent my life in an imaginary world. There are fictional worlds in the liberal arts, which is the gymnasium for your emotional muscles. As graduates, you've equipped yourself to be our interpreters and we've been waiting for you."

Harpur College's student speaker, History major Ariella Duker, joked that she had never before seen so many of her classmates "happy to be awake and somewhat functioning at 8:30 in the morning." She asked her classmates to reflect on their personal and academic achievements. "Some of us have soared academically far beyond what we thought were our limits. Others have undertaken social action projects that have changed the lives of people in our community and will continue to do so even after we leave."

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