"...the most important year of my life" is how critically acclaimed poet Li-Young Lee describes the year he spent studying the writer's craft at SUNY Brockport. Lee will return to campus to receive the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters at the Undergraduate Commencement Ceremonies on Saturday, May 16, beginning at 1:00 p.m. in the Special Olympics Stadium on campus. The honorary degree is given to Lee in recognition of his contributions to poetry, for which he credits his preparation at SUNY Brockport during 1981.

Born in 1957 to Chinese parents living in Jakarta, Indonesia, Lee and his family fled the country that year, traveling to Hong Kong, Macao, Japan and finally the US. Although Lee is identified first and foremost as an American poet, his Asian upbringing and experience strongly influence his work. Among his many awards are fellowships from the Guggenheim and Whiting Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, and the Lannan Foundation. His book Rose won the New York University Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award (1988) and his collection The City in Which I Love You was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poetry. His prose work, The Winged Seed, received the 1995 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Lee is one of the youngest of contemporary poets to be included in the Norton Anthology of American Literature (4th Ed., Vol.2), a text commonly used throughout the country for the teaching of American literature.

Lee's nomination for the honorary degree also acknowledges the significant impact of the College's renowned Writers Forum on the development of new writers and on expansion of the intellectual offerings of the College.

Lee credits several faculty as among the most important influences in the development of his poetry, citing now-Professor Emeritus Anthony Piccione, Professor Emeritus Peter Marchant and Poet-in-Residence William Heyen. Lee has also studied at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Arizona. He has since taught at various universities.

Lee lives in Chicago with his wife Donna and their two children. He is currently working on poems, and "trying to live an authentic and serious life."

Garth Fagan will address undergraduates

Robert W. Strayer, history, will give the graduate commencement address at the College's Graduate Ceremony on Sat., May 16, at 10 a.m. in the Tuttle North Ice Arena. The title of the address is: "In Praise of Disciplines."

Strayer, a member of the College's history faculty since 1970, teaches courses in Soviet history, modern world history, and African history. He is the author of the widely used college history textbook, The Making of the Modern World: Connected Histories, Divergent Paths: 1500 to the Present. His other books include the recent Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse? (M.E. Sharpe, 1998), Kenya: Focus on Nationalism, and The Making of Mission Communities in East Africa. Strayer has been in the regional news recently as a speaker at Finger Lakes Community College, Roberts Wesleyan College, and the Linkages organization in Rochester, where he talked about the collapse of the USSR.