FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- 8/16/02 | Contact: Diana Smith, 719-389-6138  

COLORADO SPRINGS -- The academic year at Colorado College officially begins at 9 a.m. on Monday, September 2, with the opening convocation held in Shove Chapel, located at 1010 N. Nevada on the east side of campus.

Margaret Liu ’77, consultant in vaccinology at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will give the keynote speech, “Colorado College: A Beginning, a Means, or an End?”

Liu is involved in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s efforts to expand access to existing vaccines and to support research for new vaccines. She is vice-chairman of Transgene, a cancer gene therapy company in Strasbourg, France. She will also be a visiting professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Liu is chairman of the Scientific Advisory Group of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, South Korea, a member of the board of directors of the American Society of Gene Therapy, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Liu served as senior director at Merck Research Laboratories in the department of virus and cell biology, vice-president of vaccines research and gene therapy at Chiron Corporation, and as an independent vaccines and scientific consultant.

Liu, as well as Delwin Michael Hunt ’79 and Michael Nava ’76, will be presented with honorary degrees. Hunt is an emergency room physician at Denver’s Swedish Medical Center and a nationally recognized expert on emergency response to chemical and biological terrorism. He served as the civilian medical director for “Operation Safe Removal” in Washington, D.C., the project to remove buried WWI era chemical munitions. In 1997, he was invited to be one of the first three physicians in the U.S. trained as part of the Domestic Preparedness Program, and has since helped train thousands in more than 40 cities in the recognition and treatment of chemical and biological injuries from terrorist attacks. Hunt was appointed to the State Emergency Medical and Trauma Services Advisory Council by Governor Bill Owens in 2000, and is a member of the National Association of Emergency Medical Services Physicians and the Colorado Medical Society.

Nava is the author of seven novels, several autobiographical essays, and the non-fiction Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America. His novels have been translated into German, French, Japanese, and Spanish. He has also been featured in several anthologies, including Contemporary Gay American Novelists and Something Inside: Conversations with Gay Fiction Writers. He has received several fellowships and awards, including a Watson fellowship, a Chicano Literary Prize, Lambda Literary Awards, and the Charles Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement in Gay and Lesbian Literature.

Opening convocation is free and open to the public. Limited seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Read a transcript of Margaret Liu's remarks.

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