Larry Faulkner, former president of The University of Texas at Austin, will give the 2006 commencement address on May 13.

Larry Faulkner, who recently stepped down as president of The University of Texas at Austin, will give the 2006 commencement address at Southwestern University. The ceremony will be held Saturday, May 13, at 2 p.m.

Faulkner left UT-Austin Jan. 31 to become president of Houston Endowment, a private philanthropy established by Jesse H. and Mary Gibbs Jones. He served as president of UT for seven years and nine months - longer than all but two predecessors in the school's 123-year history.

Faulkner's accomplishments as president of UT included leading a capital campaign that raised more than $1.6 billion and chartering the Commission of 125 to examine the university's future. Other significant achievements included developing the Blanton Museum of Art, the acquisition of the world-renowned Suida-Manning Collection of European Art and the Woodward-Bernstein Watergate archive, and the creation of innovative scholarship programs that helped restore UT's minority student enrollment.

A native of Shreveport, La., Faulkner earned a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from Southern Methodist University in 1966 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from The University of Texas at Austin in 1969. He served as an assistant professor of chemistry at Harvard University from 1969 to 1973 and joined the faculty of the University of Illinois in 1973, where he became a full professor of chemistry in 1979. He taught chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin for a year in 1983 before returning to the University of Illinois in 1984 as head of the chemistry department. He served as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois from 1989 to 1994, when he was appointed provost and vice chancellor. He was named the 27th president of UT in April 1998.

He is chairman of the Board of Trustees of Internet2 and also serves on the boards of Temple-Inland, Sandia National Laboratories and Guaranty Bank.

"Larry Faulkner is a strong proponent of liberal arts education and has acknowledged our importance in the higher education community," said Southwestern University President Jake B. Schrum. "We are pleased that an educator of his stature will address our graduating class."

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