Commencement Speaker

Douglas "Doug" B. Hall '81 is the founder, chief inventor and CEO of Richard Saunders, International Eureka! Ranch.  The company specializes in creating new products and jump-starting old ones.  Corporate clients included: American Express, Ford, Nike and Walt Disney.  1981 to 1990 he was a master marketing inventor for Proctor & Gamble.  In 1990, Procter & Gamble asked Doug to head up their invention team. Surveys indicate that the average American home uses 18 products or services that Doug and his team have invented or re-invented.  In March 2006, he became a panelist for a new television show called "The American Inventor."  He has been named by Inc. Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, A&E Top 10 and Dateline NBC as "One of America's Top Innovation Experts."  Doug and Dr. Russ Quaglia write a nationally syndicated column called Great Aspirations by Two Dads.

Honorary Degrees

Douglas B. Hall, Honorary Doctor of Engineering (biography above)

Celeste Roberge, Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters
Celeste Roberge was born in Biddeford, Maine in 1951. She graduated from the University of Maine with a BA in Sociology in 1975.  She was an exchange student from 1973-74 at the Universite de Sherbrooke in Sherbrooke, Quebec on a Travelli Scholarship from the University of Maine.  The exchange experience was pivotal in her decision to study art upon completing her degree in sociology.  In 1979 she received a BFA in Sculpture from the Maine College of Art and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture on a Bernard Langlais Fellowship.  Her MFA in Studio Art was completed at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax.  From 1988-89 she was a Bunting Fellow at the post-doctoral Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. 

Celeste Roberge is Professor of Sculpture at the School of Art & Art History, College of Fine Arts, University of Florida. Prior to teaching at the university level, she taught art at Cape Elizabeth High School from 1986 to 1993.