College Announces 2005 Graduation Speakers
April 2005
The College of Arts and Sciences has selected alumnus Michael Feinberg and senior Justin Pines to speak at its 2005 graduation ceremony.
Feinberg is the cofounder of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), an innovative network of public middle schools that aims to prepare economically disadvantaged students for success in college. The widely acclaimed program requires long school days and Saturday and summer sessions; contracts signed by teachers, parents and students; and teachers on call for homework help 24 hours a day. At a time when only one out of five low-income students attends college, KIPP alumni have earned $21 million in scholarships to top high schools, and more than 85 percent who were high school seniors in 2004 were accepted to college. Since its founding in 1994, KIPP has grown to include middle schools across the country and recently launched its first elementary and high school programs.
A 1991 graduate of the College, Feinberg received a bachelor’s degree in international relations and served as vice chair of the Undergraduate Assembly and president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. He launched KIPP after participating in Teach for America in Houston, where he felt the public education system was failing to provide quality education to children of low-income families. He has received the Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Service for the Houston Metropolitan Area, Houston Chronicle and Dillard’s Crystal Award for Outstanding Teaching, the Heritage Foundation’s Salvatori Prize for American Citizenship and a fellowship from Ashoka: Innovators for the Public.
Pines is a communication major with an English minor from Livingston, N.J. A graduate of Solomon Schechter Day School in West Orange, N.J., he has been included on the dean's list in all four of his years at Penn. He is the executive chair of Penn Hillel and a board member of the Undergraduate Communications Society and the Class of 2005 Class Board. He will enter Harvard Law School in the fall of 2006.
The ceremony will take place on Sunday, May 15, at 7 p.m. at Franklin Field.