BLOOMFIELD COLLEGE ANNOUNCES HONORARY DEGREE RECIPIENTS
April 30, 2002, Bloomfield, NJ -- Bloomfield College is pleased to announce that at its 129th Commencement ceremony on Thursday, May 23 at 9:30 a.m., it will award honorary doctorate degrees to Allen I. Bildner, former chairman and CEO of Kings Super Markets, Inc.; Joan Lebson Bildner, President of SME Co, Inc.; Dr. Antonia Pantoja, founder of ASPIRA, Inc.; and Neil de Grasse Tyson, astrophysicist and Executive Director of the Rose Center of the Hayden Planetarium.
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Allen I. Bildner served as Chairman and CEO of Kings Super Markets, Inc. before retiring in 1990. From 1987 to 1989, he was chairman of Food Market Institute (FMI), the supermarket industry’s national trade association. He currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and is an Executive Committee member of the New Jersey Nets and Devils Foundation. In 1995, he was appointed by President Clinton to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. |
Bildner has received numerous awards for his professional achievements and his community service. In 1985, he received the Fieldmark Award, the supermarket industry’s first annual award to a retailer responsible for long-term commitment and dedication to quality and innovation in the food industry. In 1988, New Jersey Business Magazine named him one of the 10 most admired business executives in New Jersey after polling 400 top business leaders in the state. He and his wife, Joan, received the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s First Annual Ray Chambers Award for Service to the Community and the Arts in 1998.
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Joan Lebson Bildner is president of SME, Co., Inc., a family management, investment and consulting company. She is a founding member of the Board of Directors for Prevent Blindness New Jersey, and has served as a national voting member and board delegate for the Society to Prevent Blindness. In 1997, she received the Salute to the Visionaries Award for her work with Prevent Blindness New Jersey. |
She also serves on the Board of Directors for the Paper Mill Playhouse and is a Commissioner of the New Jersey - Israel Commission. She was appointed by Governor Tom Kean as founding co-chair of the New Jersey - Israel Commission, and led Governor and Mrs. Florio and a delegation of 80 on the group’s first mission to Israel.
She is a member of the Board of Governors, Trustees and Overseers of Rutgers University, and received the Rutgers University Medal of Philanthropic Excellence with her husband, Allen, in 1999. She is a past president of Grotta Rehabilitation Center and has served on the Research and Advisory Board for PSE&G Co.
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Born in Puerto Rico and raised by her grandparents, Dr. Antonia Pantoja was a young teacher on her native island before coming to New York in 1944 and becoming one of the most important Puerto Rican organizers and activists in the city. After arriving in New York City, she supported herself by working as a welder in a factory. Despite her prior employment as a teacher in Puerto Rico, she was not accepted for any professional position in her field of work. She held fast to her ambitions and beliefs in education as the key for self-improvement, and completed her bachelor’s degree from Hunter College by taking night classes while continuing to work during the day. She completed a master’s degree from the Columbia School of Social Work and a doctoral degree from The Union Graduate School. |
She was a charter member of New York’s Commission on Intergroup Relations, one of the first multiracial task forces, in 1958. In the 1960s, she helped found the influential Puerto Rican Forum and ASPIRA (the Spanish imperative for “aspire”), a non-profit organization devoted to nurturing education and leadership among Puerto Rican youth.
Pantoja was awarded the prestigious Medal of Freedom in 1996 in recognition of her work in organizing Puerto Ricans to challenge the barriers of poverty, increase political involvement, and promote economic development.
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Neil de Grasse Tyson is the first occupant of the Frederick P. Rose Directorship of the Hayden Planetarium and is a Visiting Research Scientist in astrophysics at Princeton University, where he also teaches. Born and raised in New York City, Tyson went on to earn his BA in Physics from Harvard and his Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Columbia University. |
Tyson’s professional research interests include star formation, exploding stars, and the structure of the Milky Way galaxy. He obtains his data from telescopes in California, New Mexico, Arizona, and the Andes Mountains of Chile. His recent books include a memoir, The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist; and the companion book to the opening of the new Rose Center for Earth and Space, One Universe: At Home in the Cosmos. In 1995, he became a monthly essayist for Natural History magazine.
Tyson’s contributions to the public appreciation of the cosmos have recently been recognized by the International Astronomical Union in their official naming of asteroid “13123 Tyson.”
Bloomfield College is an independent, four-year, co-educational institution offering 1,800 full- and part-time students programs in the liberal arts and pre-professional studies. The College has earned a national reputation for its innovative academic and co-curricular programs and for its mission - to prepare students to attain academic, personal and professional excellence in a multicultural and global society.
