Queen Noor will be baccalaureate speaker
By: Jeff Milgram
About 1,130 undergraduates will receive their diplomas at Princeton University’s 253rd commencement on the lawn in front of venerable Nassau Hall at 11 a.m. Tuesday, May 30.
The processional will begin at 10:20 a.m.
University President Harold T. Shapiro will be the commencement speaker. The ceremony also will include presentations of honorary degrees, teaching awards for Princeton faculty and awards to outstanding New Jersey secondary-school teachers. Princeton has a policy of not naming the recipients of honorary degrees before the day of commencement.
On Sunday, May 28, Queen Noor, the widow of King Hussein of Jordan, will address the graduates at the interfaith baccalaureate service in the university chapel. Queen Noor, the former Lisa Halaby, graduated from Princeton in 1973.
Commencement follows the annual Reunions Weekend, which includes the famous “P-rade.” The parade of alumni begins at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 27 at the FitzRandolph Gates on Nassau Street and winds through campus, ending at Poe-Pardee Field.
Andrew Houck, whose research blends electrical engineering and physics, will be the commencement valedictorian.
The salutatorian, who will give his tongue-firmly-in-cheek address in Latin, will be classics major Kenneth L. Shaitelman.
An electrical engineering major, Mr. Houck plans to study physics at Harvard University next year. The Colts Neck resident has achieved a near-perfect grade point average. He has received the Freshman First Honor Prize and the George B. Wood Legacy Sophomore Prize for academic achievement. He also has received a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for the past two years and won a Hertz Fellowship and Van Vleck Scholarship to support his study at Harvard.
At Princeton, Mr. Houck served as tutor and lab assistant in electrical engineering courses. He also is an active member of the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship and was a residential advisor inWilson College.
He intends to pursue a teaching and research career at the university level.
Mr. Shaitelman, of Great Neck, N.Y., has studied Latin since the sixth grade. For his senior thesis, he explored the subject of Jewish acculturation and assimilation throughout history by examining case studies in Rome; Cordoba, Spain; and New York.
In addition to his major in classics, Mr. Shaitelman will receive certificates in Russian language and culture from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. As part of his studies, he has researched the Russian energy sector and interned at the U.S. Department of State.
A longtime musician who plays the viola in the Princeton University Orchestra, Mr. Shaitelman is a program host and classical music director at WPRB-FM, a
student-run commercial radio station. He also served as a peer academic adviser at Forbes College.
Mr. Shaitelman has won the Daniel M. Sachs Scholarship to study at Oxford University, where he will pursue a graduate degree in Russian and East European studies.