Pacific to award honorary degrees to banker, writer
University of the Pacific will bestow one of its highest awards, an honorary degree, on two distinguished alumni during its May 14 commencement ceremony.
The honorees are Douglass Eberhardt ’59, a successful Stockton banker, community leader, alumnus and regent, and Kate Moses ’84, an award-winning writer and founding editor of Salon.
Eberhardt, CEO and chairman of Bank of Stockton and for 12 years a member of Pacific’s Board of Regents, will receive a Doctor of Business Administration degree.
“Throughout his career, Doug Eberhardt has been an exemplary member of the Stockton and university communities, embodying the Pacific values of leadership, student success and giving back,” Pacific President Pamela A. Eibeck said. “He has been a wise and deeply committed Regent, and a devoted advocate for providing experiential learning opportunities for students, including providing the start-up funds for the innovative Student Investment Fund (SIF) in the Eberhardt School of Business.”
The SIF routinely outperforms Wall Street indicators and is one of the largest student-run funds in the western United States. Other examples of the Eberhardt family’s leadership and deep commitment to the university include the Eberhardt Teacher-Scholar Award given for exemplary teaching and scholarship, and substantial time and expertise generously devoted to various committees, functions and campaigns at Pacific.
Eberhardt earned a bachelor’s degree in business at Pacific. In 1995, the School of Business and Public Administration was renamed the Eberhardt School of Business in recognition of the Eberhardt family’s legacy of leadership, friendship and giving to the university.
After graduating, Eberhardt continued his family’s tradition of community involvement. He served on Pacific’s Board of Regents from 2000-09 and again from 2010-13, one of three family members who have sat on the board. In all, nine members of the Eberhardt family across three generations have graduated from Pacific. In 2014, the family received the Alumni Association Outstanding Family Distinguished Alumni Award.
Eberhardt’s most recent professional recognition came earlier this month when the Western Independent Bankers named him the 2016 Community Banker of the Year.
Moses will deliver the University Commencement Address and receive a Doctor of Fine Arts honorary degree.
She recognized the importance of excellent faculty in her 2010 book, “Cakewalk, A Memoir.” In the book, Moses recounted her time at Pacific and credited her mentor, the late Professor Arlen Hansen, with promoting her intellectual awakening.
“Moses’s account of how Arlen Hansen’s mentoring changed her life is emblematic of what makes Pacific special: the strong connection between faculty and students, the heartfelt investment faculty make in their students, and the difference Pacific can make in the direction of a life,” Eibeck said. “With great intention, Kate now brings Hansen’s spirit, energy and commitment to her own teaching. We are so very proud of Kate and what she’s accomplished. It gives our graduating students a clear glimpse at what they can do with a Pacific education.”
As a founding senior editor and contributing writer for the groundbreaking website Salon from 1997-2001, Moses co-edited the popular, pioneering daily feature “Mothers Who Think.”
That website inspired the American Book Award-winning anthology “Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood” in 1999 and, in 2005, “Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race & Themselves.”
Her first novel, “Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath,” was published in 2003 and has won several awards and been translated into 17 languages. Besides contributing to numerous anthologies, Moses is finishing a second novel, “The Fayum Portraits,” and a multi-genre work about Emily Dickinson.
She taught creative writing at the University of San Francisco and San Francisco State University. In 2013 she joined the faculty at SUNY Plattsburgh where she is an assistant professor of English.
Media contact:
Claudia Morain | cmorain@pacific.edu | 209.946.2313 (office) | 209.479.9894 (cell)
