WELLESLEY, Mass.-- Senior Class Dean
Pamela Daniels will address the Class of 2000 -- the
class she helped steward through three of its four years
at Wellesley -- at the College's 122nd Commencement
exercises May 26. In keeping with tradition, the senior
class officers announced the selection of the speaker to
their classmates before the choice was made public.
"It is a great honor and a great responsibility. It is
something to live up to," Daniels said of giving the
address. "I am looking forward to it very much."
Daniels graduated from Wellesley in 1959, receiving
her degree with honors in political science. She was a
Durant Scholar and had been elected Phi Beta Kappa. After
a year of study and travel in India and Southeast Asia,
Daniels went on to earn an M.A. in political science from
Harvard University in 1963. From 1962-70, she was a
teaching fellow at Harvard, first in the Government
Department and then in Erik Erikson's undergraduate
social science course on the human life cycle.
Before becoming a Class Dean in 1981, Daniels was a
Research Associate at the Center for Research on Women
for five years; in 1979-80, she was a Lecturer in the
Department of Psychology. In 1983 and '84, she taught a
course on the life cycle in the Writing Program. She is
co-editor of a feminist anthology of personal essays on
work and women's identity titled "Working It Out"
(Pantheon, 1977) and co-authored a book on family and
career timing patterns, "Sooner or Later: The Timing of
Parenthood in Adult Lives" (Norton, 1982).
Daniels will be retiring this summer after 24 years of
service to the College. She said that with her retirement
will come "a long-deferred sabbatical -- wide open time
to read and travel, to embark on new adventures with old
friends."
Wellesley College is a prominent liberal arts college
and has been a leader in the education of women for
nearly 125 years. The College's 500-acre campus near
Boston is home to about 2,300 undergraduate students,
close to 600 of whom will graduate in the May ceremonies.
Wellesley's distinguished alumnae include First Lady
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine K.
Albright, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, and journalists Cokie
Roberts, Lynn Sherr, and Linda Wertheimer.
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