COLUMBUS -- Is a star-studded spring 2001 commencement at The Ohio State University. Six individuals -- an actor-comedian, a former NBA basketball player, a world-renowned landscape architect, an environmental activist and a Columbus businessman -- will be honored by the university on June 8 at 9:30 a.m. on the Oval.

Honorary doctorates will be presented to Lester E. Brown, president and senior researcher with the Earth Policy Institute; Bill Cosby, actor, comedian and educator; Daniel Kiley, one of the most significant landscape architects in the world; and Raymond E. Mason Jr., founder and chairman of the Columbus Truck & Equipment Co. Inc.

The Distinguished Service Award will be presented to Clark Kellogg, former Buckeye and NBA basketball player and a college basketball analyst for CBS; and Thekla Reese Shackelford, educational consultant and founder of School Selection Consulting.

Lester E. Brown is president and senior researcher with Earth Policy Institute, a private, nonprofit research institute devoted to the analysis of global environmental issues. He also is chairman of the board and past president of the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C.

Brown earned a B.S. degree in agricultural science from Rutgers University in 1955, an M.S. in agricultural economics from the University of Maryland in 1959 and an M.P.A. in public administration from Harvard University in 1962. In 1959, he joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service as an international agricultural analyst.

In 1964, Brown became an adviser on foreign agricultural policy to Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman, who appointed him administrator of the department’s International Agricultural Development Service in 1966. In 1969, he left government service to help establish the Overseas Development Council. In 1974, Brown founded the Worldwatch Institute with funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

In May 2001, Brown founded Earth Policy Institute to provide a vision of an environmentally sustainable economy and to help set public agenda on environmental issues.

Described by The Washington Post as “one of the world’s most influential thinkers,” Brown has been the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the 1987 United Nations Environment Prize, the 1989 World Wide Fund for Nature Gold Medal and the 1994 Blue Planet Prize.

One of the most influential performers of our time, Bill Cosby also has a lifelong commitment to education and to achieving a better world.

The Philadelphia native is a self-confessed “late bloomer,” who did not realize the value of a formal education until the first days of boot camp in the U.S. Navy. After completing his four-year stint in the Navy, he enrolled at Temple University in Philadelphia on an athletic scholarship. He later attended the University of Massachusetts, where he received a master’s degree in 1972 and a doctorate in education in 1977.

His early ambition to become a physical education teacher changed when he discovered his gift for stand-up comedy. He toured the United States and Canada during the early 1960s, establishing his trademark relaxed comedic style. In 1965, he received his first acting assignment on “I Spy,” becoming the first black actor to perform in a starring dramatic role on network television and winning three Emmy Awards. His subsequent television projects included a number of specials, a variety show, a situation comedy, a cartoon and appearances on children’s shows, such as “Sesame Street” and “Electric Company.”

His most successful work, “The Cosby Show,” appeared on NBC from 1984 to 1992, becoming one of the most popular comedies in television history. He is also the author of two best-selling books, Fatherhood and Time Flies, and his recordings have earned eight Gold Records and five Grammy Awards.

Cosby also is the commencement speaker for the spring ceremony.

During a career that has spanned more than half a century, Daniel Kiley has become one of the most significant landscape architects in the world. He has worked on some of the most important commissions in the United States and 16 foreign countries along with many of the 20th and 21st century’s most distinguished architects and firms.

The Boston native attended the Harvard Graduate School of Design from 1936 to 1938. He served in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during World War II and was responsible for designing and constructing the Nuremberg Courtrooms, for which he received the Legion of Merit in 1945 – the first of numerous awards for his work through the years. In 1997, he received the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor that can be awarded an artist in the United States, presented by President and Mrs. Clinton.

Kiley’s work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and in traveling national exhibitions. Among the many sites he has helped design are the Washington Mall and Tidal Basin, Dulles Airport, Lincoln Center, the National Gallery of Art East Wing, the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the National Sculpture Garden, the Chicago Navy Pier, Fountain Place in Dallas and the United States Air Force Academy, as well as numerous private residential landscapes and gardens.

He served on President Kennedy’s Advisory Council for Pennsylvania Avenue, the National Council for Arts and Government, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority, the Washington, D.C., Redevelopment Land Agency and the Vermont Council on the Arts. He has been a Landscape Architect in Residence of the American Academy in Rome. In 1995, he became the first landscape architect to be awarded the Arnold W. Brunner Prize in Architecture by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Following graduation from Ohio State in 1941, Mason was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army, serving in the Fourth Armored Division under Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army in Europe. After World War II, he began an active career in the reserves, including service as special assistant to the army deputy chief of staff for logistics. He is a graduate of the U.S.A. Command and General Staff College and the Army War College Senior Officers course.

In 1949, Mason purchased Columbus Truck & Equipment Co. and began a distinguished career in the transportation industry. Time magazine named him Truck Dealer of the Year in 1972, and he has received two awards from Mack Trucks. He is a member and past chairman of the Mack Trucks National Distributor Advisory Council and founder and former member of American Truck Dealers Committee.

His community service included service on the boards of Franklin University; the Mershon Center at Ohio State; the Ohio Historical Foundation; the Freedom Foundation in Valley Forge, Pa.; the Columbus Symphony Orchestra; Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla.; and the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce. At Ohio State, he is a former member of the National Campaign Committee, the Max. M. Fisher College of Business Campaign Committee and the Humanities Development Council. He has established the Raymond E. Mason, Sr. Professorship in Transportation and Logistics at the Fisher College of Business.

Clark Kellogg, former Buckeye basketball star forward who went on to the National Basketball Association (NBA), is a college basketball analyst for CBS. He provides commentary for the network’s regular season college basketball broadcasts and serves as lead studio analyst with host Greg Gumbel during broadcasts of the NCAA basketball championship.

Kellogg joined CBS Sports full time in 1997, after having served as a studio and game analyst for ESPN from 1990 to 1997. He had previously worked for CBS since 1993 covering the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship. He began his broadcasting career in 1987 as an analyst for the Pacers’ radio broadcasts and continues as their television analyst.

A three-year starter, Kellogg played 86 games for the Buckeyes from 1979 to 1982, averaging 15 points and 10 rebounds per game. In 1982, he was named All-Big Ten and Most Valuable Player and was voted The Chicago Tribune Silver Basketball Award Winner. Kellogg led the Buckeyes in both scoring and rebounding as a sophomore and junior, ranking 19th in career scoring and fifth in career rebounding at Ohio State. He also ranks fifth in career rebounding average and sixth in blocked shots.

He left Ohio State after his junior year to enter the NBA draft and was selected eighth in the first round by the Indiana Pacers. He was named to the NBA All-Rookie team in 1983, finishing second in the Rookie of the Year competition. He played for five seasons before retiring with chronic knee problems.

Kellogg continued to pursue his college degree, returning to Ohio State part time in 1983 and earning his bachelor’s degree in business management in 1996. He has remained active with his alma mater, delivering the commencement address in autumn 1998. He has been a featured speaker at the University Medical Center’s Black History presentation and has addressed students during Homecoming on diversity and undergraduate education.

Thekla Reese “Teckie” Shackelford is an educational consultant, founder of School Selection Consulting and a past president of the national professional association for educational consultants.

A director of The Ohio State University Foundation Board since 1994, she served as its chair from 1997 to 1999. She was co-chair of the university’s goal-surpassing “Affirm Thy Friendship” campaign and served on the National Campaign Executive Committee. She has served as a member of the College of Veterinary Medicine’s Development Advisory Council and has assisted the College of Education in numerous initiatives in the Columbus community.

Shackelford earned her bachelor’s degree from Denison University in 1956 and became a junior high school teacher and admissions counselor. In 1978, she transformed her talent for guiding students toward college into a successful educational counseling business, School Selection Counseling. She is a founding board member and chair of “I Know I Can,” an initiative launched in 1988 to encourage and assist Columbus school children on the path to college. More than 1,000 of these students have subsequently attended Ohio State. The Columbus area League of Women Voters honored the program with its Democracy in Action Award in 1997.

In 1986, she became the first woman to be named chair of the board of The Columbus Foundation. She also served as director of development for The Buckeye Ranch School and has served on the corporate boards of Wendy’s International, Banc One, H&R Block and Fiserv Inc.

Together with her husband, Don, Shackelford has created the Donald B. and Thekla R. Shackelford Medical Research Fund and the Thekla R. and Donald B. Professorship in Small Animal Medicine. In addition, they have created the Everett Reese Chair in Banking in the Fisher College of Business in memory of her father.

Her civic and community involvement has been recognized with numerous awards, including the M. E. Sensenbrenner Award for Community Service, the Christopher Columbus Achievement Award, the Temple Israel Humanitarian Award, the YWCA Woman of Achievement Award, the Ronald Reagan Award for Voluntary Excellence and the Ohio Chapter of the National Society of Fund-Raising Executives’ Outstanding Philanthropist Award. She has been inducted into the Ohio Foundation of Independent Colleges’ Hall of Excellence, the Central Ohio Business Hall of Fame and the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame.

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