Baker to be Tokyo's Keynote Speaker

Howard Baker Jr.

By Bill Berglof
UMUC–Asia

Tokyo is the site of the first of seven UMUC commencement ceremonies to be held worldwide in 2002. Appropriately, this comes as UMUC–Asia has been commemorating its 45th year providing educational opportunities to U.S. military communities throughout East Asia and the Pacific, giving the 2001–02 graduating class even more cause for celebration.

Graduates will be honored, in fact, at three formal commencements—in Tokyo (April 27), Seoul (May 26), and Okinawa (June 15)—this year, as well as at less formal recognition ceremonies. The 2001–02 UMUC–Asia class (which includes enlisted personnel, officers, and civilians from locations in Australia, Guam, mainland Japan, Korea, the Marshall Islands, Okinawa, Singapore, and Thailand) is expected to comprise about 1,100 graduates, including approximately 460 recipients of associate's degrees and more than 600 recipients of bachelor's degree.

About 200 Asia graduates also studied with UMUC either in Europe or in the Maryland and Washington, D.C., area. More than one-third of this year's graduates have taken at least one distance education course offered by UMUC from Asia, Europe, or from UMUC stateside, illustrating the importance of UMUC's distance education programs to students in the military communities overseas.

The Honorable Howard Baker Jr., U.S. ambassador to Japan since July 2001, will be the keynote speaker at the Tokyo commencement ceremony, where he will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Ambassador Baker has had a distinguished career in public service, having served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1951 to 1964, and then, beginning in 1966, serving for 18 years in the U.S. Senate, representing the state of Tennessee. In the Senate, he was both Republican Minority Leader (from 1977 to 1981) and Senate Majority Leader (from 1981 to 1985) until he retired. Subsequently, Ambassador Baker was White House Chief of Staff under President Ronald Reagan in 1987 and 1988.

As an undergraduate, Ambassador Baker studied at the University of the South and Tulane University. He took his law degree at the University of Tennessee. Before his appointment by President Bush to his new position in Tokyo, Ambassador Baker had been in private law practice in Tennessee.

He has received many awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, in 1984, and the 1982 Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service Performed by an Elected or Appointed Official.