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ASU Spring Commencement 2008
Honorary Degree Recipient
James J. Duderstadt
James J. Duderstadt is President Emeritus and University Professor of Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan. He is also founder and Director of the Millennium Project, a laboratory on the Michigan campus where new paradigms of learning institutions can be designed, constructed and studied. As a professor of science and engineering, Duderstadt’s teaching and research interests span topics in science, mathematics and engineering and include work in areas such as nuclear fission reactors, thermonuclear fusion, high-powered lasers, computers, science policy and information technology. As a leader in higher education, Duderstadt has helped to identify and address significant issues facing public research universities in a knowledge society and an information age. His work in this arena continues to be influential in the evolution of public institutions. He is widely acknowledged for his significant contributions to science, teaching and higher education.
Born December 5, 1942, in Fort Madison, Iowa, Duderstadt obtained his undergraduate education at Yale University, earning a baccalaureate degree in electrical engineering with highest honors in 1964. He began graduate education immediately thereafter at the California Institute of Technology and received his doctorate in engineering science and physics from that institution in 1967. Duderstadt spent the following year as an Atomic Energy Commission Postdoctoral Fellow at Caltech and then joined the University of Michigan faculty as an assistant professor of nuclear engineering. In 1981, he became Dean of the College of Engineering and in 1986, he was appointed Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. In that same year, he was awarded the E. O. Lawrence Award for Nuclear Technology in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of transport theory in nuclear systems and for applications to a variety of problems in both fission and fusion including major contributions to the training of future researchers. Duderstadt is also a recipient of the Arthur Holly Compton Prize for outstanding teaching.
As an administrator in higher education, Duderstadt maintained his commitment to and interest in research, scholarship and teaching even as his perspective broadened with his responsibilities. He served as President of the University of Michigan for nearly ten years (two as acting president and provost). In that position, he either met or exceeded the University goals of becoming a national leader in research activity; establishing the University among the financially strongest public universities in the nation; rebuilding, renovating and updating all of the buildings on the university’s campuses; and through his Michigan Mandate and Michigan Agenda for Women, achieving the highest representation of people of color and women among the University’s students, faculty and staff in the institution’s history. Duderstadt’s commitment and ability to make these changes especially as they related to engineering led to his receipt of the National Medal of Technology in 1991. As a whole, the University emerged stronger, more diverse, better endowed and more exciting academically as Duderstadt concluded his tenure as its president.
Across his years in academe, Duderstadt demonstrated also a strong commitment to service beyond his own university. He has served on numerous national boards and policy committees including the National Science Board; the Executive Council of the National Academy of Engineering; the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy of the National Academy of Sciences; and the Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee of the Department of Energy. Additionally, Duderstadt has chaired several major national study commissions such as a National Academy of Science task force that examined the impact of information technology on the future of the university, a National Research Council panel developing a guidebook addressing scholarship in the digital age, and a Department of Energy committee that is developing a long-range strategy for nuclear energy research in the United States. His commitment to the communal nature of scholarship and education is marked further by his publication of several influential works, many of which discuss the development of public research universities in their evolving economic and socio-historic milieu and all of which look to the changing needs of lifelong learners and societies in a knowledge age. Additionally, Duderstadt remains committed to his professorial role and is currently teaching a course on topical issues in science and technology policy in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.
See a listing of of all of ASU’s past honorary degree recipients