SIUC to honor four at commencement in May

A senior Afghan minister, the driving force behind the creation of the Special Olympics, and a film industry pioneer will receive honorary degrees at SIUC commencement ceremonies in May.

The SIU Board of Trustees on Jan. 17 also approved presenting former SIUC sociology instructor David L. Briscoe with an SIUC Distinguished Service Award during graduate school commencement ceremonies on May 10.

The SIU Board of Trustees approved the honorary degrees for Hedayat Amin-Arsala, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Walter Murch.

Amin-Arsala who earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees in economics from SIUC, will receive an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters during the College of Liberal Arts commencement ceremony on May 9.

Raised in Kabul Afghanistan, he came to the United States after high school and earned his degrees at SIUC in the late 1960s. He also completed requirements for doctoral candidacy in economics at George Washington University. In 2006, the SIU Alumni Association named Amin-Arsala an Outstanding Alumnus.

He left his professional career with the World Bank in 1987 to join the Afghan resistance against Soviet occupation. He served as senior adviser and as a member of the Supreme Council of the Afghan Unity of Mujahideen. In 1989, he became minister of finance for the Afghan Interim Government in exile. In 1993, he became foreign minister in post-communist Afghanistan.

Five years later, in 1998, he was a member of the executive council of the Afghan Grand National Assembly, the Loya Jirga. The group worked for a peaceful solution to internal conflicts in Afghanistan, seeking to establish a broad-based government. Former Afghan King Mohammed Zahir Shah appointed Amin-Arsala as a senior member of this peace effort.

In 2001, Amin-Arsala played a key role at the Bonn Conference, held after the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan. At that conference, Hamid Karzai became chairman of the interim administration and Amin-Arsala became vice chairman and minister of finance. The Loya Jirga met in June 2002 to create a transitional government to prepare the nation for elections. Karzai was president, and he appointed Amin-Arsala as vice president. He also headed the Independent Civil Services Administrative Reform Commission as well as serving on the National Census Commission, the Coordination Council and the National Security Council.

Amin-Arsala continues to represent Afghanistan at international conferences. He is married to Betsy Thomas Amin-Arsala, and has three children. Amin-Arsala met his wife – also an SIUC graduate – when she was serving in the Peace Corps.

Kennedy Shriver, long a champion of those with intellectual disabilities and the driving force behind the creation of Special Olympics, will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the College of Education and Human Services during its commencement ceremony May 10. The degree honors accomplishments benefiting a society or outstanding scholarship.

For Shriver, it will be a homecoming of sorts. Although the Massachusetts native earned her bachelor's degree from Stanford University during the 1960s, she attended summer courses at SIUC taught by the late William H. Freeberg, founder of an innovative camping program for the mentally challenged. Known these days as Camp Little Giant, this nationally recognized program provides such traditional camp experiences as boating, swimming, arts and crafts, and other outdoor activities to impaired children and young people with the aim of boosting both confidence and independence.

Now executive vice president of the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation, which focuses on helping people with intellectual disabilities, Shriver joined that organization in 1957. She and the Foundation played key roles in the creation of the President Kennedy Committee on Mental Retardation, the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, expanded research facilities and centers dealing with intellectual disabilities and medical ethics and, in 1968, the establishment of Special Olympics, which has become a year-round, world-wide sports training and competition program for athletes young and old.

Shriver's many honors include the Presidential Medal of Freedom (America's top civilian award), the Legion of Honor (France's highest honor), the Prix de la Couronne Français, and the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service. She has 14 honorary degrees, awarded by such universities as Yale, Princeton and Georgetown.

Murch, an Academy Award-winning and internationally acclaimed film editor and sound designer, will receive an honorary Degree of Fine Arts during the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts commencement ceremony on May 10.

Murch is the only person in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' history to receive an Oscar for both film editing and best sound (design) in the same year, 1997, for "The English Patient." He also shared an Oscar in 1980 for best sound (design) for "Apocalypse Now."

Murch's work covers more than 56 films over more than 30 years of filmmaking, and he is recognized as one of the "universally acknowledged masters" as an editor and sound designer.

Murch attended The Collegiate School, a private preparatory school in Manhattan, from 1949 to 1961, and Johns Hopkins University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in liberal arts in 1965. His introduction to filmmaking came as a student at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts.

He worked with Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas in launching American Zoetrope Studios in 1969; the studio was an early adapter of digital filmmaking and pioneered the earliest uses of HDTV, according to the nomination letter. Murch's work also includes editing sound for 1973's "American Graffiti," and 1974's "The Godfather Part II," and "The Conversation," for which he earned his first Oscar nomination for sound design in 1975.

Murch earned Academy Award nominations for his editing of "Cold Mountain," "Ghost," "The Godfather Part III," and "Julia." In 1997, Murch received the Eddie for Best Edited Feature Film from the American Cinema Editors for "The English Patient." He has received four other Eddie nominations for editing.

He is the author of the 1995 text on film editing, "In the Blink of an Eye,” and also the focus of two books, "The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film," by Michael Ondaatje, and "Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple's Final Cut Pro and What this Means for Cinema," by Charles Koppelman.

Briscoe is being honored for his work as a scholar and with the community. He is currently a tenured sociology professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Briscoe earned his doctorate in sociology in 1993 at SIUC. While at SIUC, Briscoe was a graduate dean fellow, won a dissertation research award and also served as an instructor and lecturer in the Black American Studies Program. The SIUC College of Liberal Arts in 2003 named Briscoe a Distinguished Alumni.

At the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Briscoe became the first African-American man to receive the rank of full professor. He also served as past director of that university's Gerontology Center, member of the graduate school faculty and as a faculty senator to the university general assembly. In 2005 he became the first African American in Arkansas named as a distinguished member of the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. He has published numerous research articles and papers, served on 70 doctoral dissertation committees and teaches a variety of graduate and undergraduate course in sociology.

Briscoe also has a long and avid devotion to community service, including the Boy Scouts of America and other organizations. He has worked with the Boy Scouts of America for more than 43 years, touching the lives of an estimated 20 million youths during the past four decades.

In 2000, the Arkansas House of Representatives appointed him to the Arkansas Martin Luther King Jr. Commission, where he helped plan the state's 2000 and 2002 National Youth Assemblies. Those events helped educate thousands of youths in Arkansas and across the country. He also helped organize the 2001 Arkansas Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Conference, which brought together 600 community leaders from Arkansas and adjoining states for discussions on civic, political, social and economic issues.

Briscoe continues his work with the Boy Scouts, presenting seminars and serving on staffs and committees and continuing his financial support, earning the titles of James E. West Fellow, Baden Powell Fellow, Bronze Member of the Order of the Condor. The United States Foundation for International Scouting also named him a World Scouter.

Briscoe remains active in many areas of scouting from the local to the state, national and international level. In 2005, Briscoe received the Volunteer Call to Service Award from President Bush in recognition of donating more than 4,000 hours of community service during his lifetime.