Pardee RAND Celebrates Commencement

The Pardee RAND Graduate School recently hosted a weekend of festivities in honor of Commencement. The school welcomed more than 60 new members to the alumni community, awarding 31 doctoral degrees and 32 master’s degrees at the graduation ceremony on Saturday, June 16.

Innovator John Seely Brown, the longtime chief scientist of Xerox Corporation and director of its Palo Alto Research Center, delivered the Commencement keynote address in the courtyard of RAND’s Santa Monica headquarters campus. He was also awarded an honorary degree, along with RAA president Natalie Crawford, a senior fellow and Distinguished Chair in Air and Space Policy at RAND; economist Anne Case, the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs Emeritus at Princeton University; and narrative designer Alex McDowell, professor of practice at the USC School of Cinema, where he directs the World Building Media Lab and World Building Institute.

The weekend’s events kicked off on Thursday, June 14, with a networking mixer connecting alumni with new graduates. The school also hosted a policy dialogue and a dinner, where the fourth biennial Alumni Leadership Award was presented to Sharon Arnold (cohort ’85), associate deputy assistant secretary for science and data policy in the Department of Health and Human Services.