Honorary Degrees and Granite State Awards

Michael Brown (Doctor of Humane Letters)

Brown is the CEO and co-founder of City Year, Inc., a program considered to serve as an "action tank" for national service. City Year enlists hundreds of young adults from all backgrounds in a demanding year of full-time community service and leadership development. City Year corps members meet critical needs in their communities, serving as teachers' aides, running after-school programs and vacation camps, teaching violence and AIDS prevention, rehabilitating public-housing units, and building parks and playgrounds. From a 50-person pilot program launched in 1988, City Year has grown to involve more than 1,000 corps members serving in 11 cities across the United States.

UNH Professor Emeritus Charles Simic (Doctor of Letters)

Simic has recently been appointed U. S. Poet Laureate. As a poet, essayist, and translator, he has published nearly thirty books of poetry, eight volumes of non-fiction prose, and thirteen volumes of poetry in English translation.  Simic has edited or co-edited three anthologies: European and South American Poetry, Best American Poetry of 1992, and New British Poetry. To date, 38 volumes of his work have been published in other languages.

Daniel Mariaschin (Doctor of Humane Letters) 

Mariaschin, ’71, is the executive vice president of B’nai B’rith International. B’nai B’rith is a world-wide service organization that unites people of Jewish faith and enhances Jewish identity through strengthening family life, the education and training of youth, broad-based services for the benefit of senior citizens, and advocacy and action on behalf of Jews throughout the world. He has played an instrumental role at the European conferences on anti-Semitism in Vienna (2003), Berlin (2004), and Spain (2005), and works unceasingly with the United Nations to protect the rights of Jewish communities.

Joanne Lamprey

Lamprey is president of Lamprey Brothers, a fuel company servicing the state for more than 80 years. She has a considerable record of public service throughout the state of New Hampshire.  Lamprey serves as a member of the First Tee Advisory Board that teaches children from diverse backgrounds core values such as persistence, confidence, and judgment through the game of golf.  She has also been instrumental in transitioning the New Hampshire Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NHSPCA) from a small non-profit organization to a mature organization by leveraging resources critical to the organization’s ultimate success.  Lamprey supports a wide variety of local concerns, such as access to affordable health care, providing shelter for the homeless, encouraging better citizenship among youth, finding homes for abused and neglected animals, and energy conservation, among many others.