Charter Day ’02
Costa Rican president to keynote campus’s 134th birthday fête

Miguel Angel Rodriguez Echeverria

06 March 2002 | On Friday, March 15, the campus honors the contributions of its alumni and faculty — and celebrates the university’s 134th birthday — at Charter Day. Costa Rican President Miguel Angel Rodriguez Echeverria will be the keynote speaker at the ceremony, which begins at noon, in Zellerbach Auditorium.

The day’s events celebrate the record of public service by generations of students and alumni who have passed through Sather Gate.

President Rodriguez, a 1966 economics alumnus, will receive the Elise and Walter A. Haas International Award, in recognition of his lifetime of service to Costa Rica.

During his career, Rodriguez has shown an “outstanding ability to apply economic knowledge to practical economic problems,” said Maurice Obstfeld, chair of the Department of Economics and Class of 1958 Professor of Economics.

The Peter E. Haas Public Service Award will be presented to alumna Joanna Lennon, founder and executive director of the East Bay Conservation Corps.

Chancellor Robert Berdahl will deliver welcoming remarks at the noontime ceremony. He will also present the Medal of California to longtime faculty member and alumna Maxine Hong Kingston for her numerous contributions as a writer and teacher.

Recipients of the Haas awards also deliver lectures on campus. Rodriguez’s will be the Charter Day keynote address. Lennon’s lecture will be at 3:30 p.m. in the Morrison Room of Doe Library.