MEDIA RELEASES

Over 450 students will receive bachelor’s or master’s degrees from Dominican University during commencement exercises on Saturday, May 3. The undergraduate ceremony will be held at 11:00 a.m. and the graduate ceremony will be held at 3:00 p.m. Both ceremonies will take place in Lund Auditorium, 7900 W. Division Street, River Forest.

Acclaimed conductor Jane Glover will receive an honorary degree and serve as the commencement speaker for the undergraduate ceremony. The members of the internationally renowned Vermeer Quartet—violist Richard Young, violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi and Mathias Tacke, and cellist Marc Johnson--will receive honorary degrees.

Michael H. Moskow, recently-retired president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, will serve as speaker and receive an honorary degree from the university during the graduate ceremony.

The music director of Chicago’s Music of the Baroque since 2002, Jane Glover has conducted all of the major symphony and chamber orchestras in her native Britain, as well as orchestras in Europe, the United States, the Far East and Australia. Since her professional debut at the Wexford Festival in 1975, highlights of her concert career include her major South Bank series, “Mozart Explored;” “Music of Two Decades: the 1780s and the 1980s” and “Mozart to Strauss” with the London Mozart Players; her debut in New York with Jessye Norman and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s; her 1995 performances of Britten’s War Requiem at the BBC Proms and in Normandy; and the many concerts where she has premiered new works.

Also in demand on the international opera stage, Glover has appeared with numerous opera companies. She has conducted all of the Mozart operas, as well as numerous Handel and other operas. Along with an extensive recording and broadcasting career, she is the author of Mozart’s Women, a book published to great critical acclaim in 2005. Glover graduated from St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, where she also received her doctorate in philosophy on 17 ^th century Venetian opera. She is a fellow of the Royal College of Music.

Vermeer Quartet is one of the world’s finest string ensembles, having performed over 200 works throughout North and South America, Europe, the Far East and Australia. Based in Chicago and serving as resident artist faculty at Northern Illinois University, the four members have prepared scores of violinists, violists and cellists for successful professional careers. Nominated three times for Grammy Awards, their discography includes the complete quartets by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Bartok, plus works by Schubert, Brahms, Shostakovich, Mendelssohn, Schnittke, Verdi, Haydn and Dvorak. Since their first live radio broadcast in 1988 of The Seven Last Words of Christ, the Vermeer has collaborated with over a hundred different speakers, including some of the most renowned religious figures of our time. The quartet disbanded recently, after more than 35 years of ensemble performance.

Michael H. Moskow has made many, sustaining contributions to the Chicago business community. His career includes service in the public and private sectors as well as academia; he has been confirmed by the Senate for five United States government positions. At the time of his appointment as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, he was professor of strategy and international management at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University. He is now a senior fellow for the global economy at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs and vice chairman of the council’s board of directors. Moskow is a graduate of Lafayette College and received a doctoral degree in business and applied economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Founded in 1901, Dominican University is a comprehensive, coeducational Catholic institution offering bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Dominican offers 50 undergraduate academic programs in the Rosary College of Arts and Sciences and 15 graduate programs through the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, the Brennan School of Business, the School of Education, the Graduate School of Social Work, and the School of Leadership and Continuing Studies. In the 2008 issue of America’s Best Colleges, U.S. News & World Report again ranked Dominican University in the top tier of Midwest master’s level universities and as a “best value” for the tenth consecutive year.