To conclude their undergraduate career, students now know who will speak at their commencement ceremony on May 4 — Jaime Escalante.
Escalante, a high school math teacher whose story became famous after the 1988 film "Stand and Deliver," was chosen as the speaker.
He became nationally renowned after his students at Garfield High School, an inner-city school in eastern Los Angeles, ranked at the top of national calculus testing. Officials, skeptical of the students' scores and suspicious of cheating, made them retake the test — which they passed again.
While Escalante's inspirational teaching skills are no doubt impressive, his relevance in speaking to a college graduating class, which is comprised mostly of students who were under the age of 5 at the height of his fame, remains to be seen.
According to MSU's guidelines for selecting commencement speakers, two of the criterion for selection are broad appeal and name recognition.
Escalante, who was famous in the '80s and now lives in Bolivia, possesses neither of these.
Carole Ames, an MSU professor of educational psychology and dean of the College of Education, said Escalante is an inspiration on the need for math teachers and for students to be better prepared in math.
While this is true, Escalante might be better suited to speaking at a high school graduation, where he can encourage the students to pursue a higher education in math.
As graduates here brush up on their calculus, our rival down the road, the University of Michigan, will entertain former President Bill Clinton as their commencement speaker. If you haven't heard, his wife is running for president in 2008.
In fact, Bill Clinton spoke at MSU's commencement in 1995.
Students at MSU constantly defend our school from ridicule by U-M students. Now, there is no contest in who has the better commencement speaker. They win.
But it hasn't always been like this. Past commencement speakers at MSU include Condoleezza Rice, Maya Angelou and Carl Levin.
Although Rice was controversial and Angelou was nonpolitical, their relevancy and name recognition alone justify them as qualified commencement speakers.
Julie Gerberding, who is speaking at the graduate student commencement ceremony, can relate more to both graduate and undergraduate students. As the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she currently is serving in the public eye. She also is in the sphere of scientific research, something our graduate students know firsthand.
Thinking back to last semester and our distinguished grand marshal for Homecoming, one must wonder what kind of speaker Kermit the Frog would have made.
Name recognition? Check. Relevance? Well, he is green.
