Former Skidmore president to keynote SUNY Cobleskill commencement

PHOTOGRAPHER: Erica Miller

Graduates receive their diplomas during the graduation ceremony from SUNY Cobleskill May 14, 2016.

Jamienne Studley, the first female president of Skidmore College, will be the keynote speaker at SUNY Cobleskill’s 100th Commencement ceremony next month, SUNY Cobleskill announced Monday.

Studley, who also was an associate dean of Yale Law School and general counsel of the U.S. Department of Education, will be awarded an honorary doctorate in law by SUNY Cobleskill at the May 12 commencement.

“Our mission of ‘calling all learners’ resonates with her long record of promoting opportunity,” SUNY Cobleskill President Marion Terenzio said in a prepared statement.

As a federal education official, Studley returned to the area in 2015 to deliver a commencement address to students at the Union Graduate College in Schenectady.

She was appointed Skidmore’s president in 1999 and left in 2003.

The Cobleskill graduation event begins at 11 a.m. on May 12.