President and CEO of L.L.Bean, Stephen M. Smith ’92 will deliver the 2018 Commencement ceremony address on Sunday, May 20 in front of Old West.

The college will also give out honorary degrees to Smith, co-founder of the World Blindness Outreach, Inc. (WBO) Dr. Albert Alley ’60, former Foreign Service officer and co-founding principal of Somerset Development Company, LLC, Nancy Hooff ’75 and curator at the National Gallery of Art and professor of art history at the University of Maryland Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.

The College will also award the Sam Rose ’58 and Julie Walters Prize for Global Environmental Activism, Dickinson College’s highest honor for environmental advocacy, to Our Children’s Trust, an organization that has supported the 21 youth plaintiffs who sued the federal government over climate action in Juliana v. United States.

Smith is the fourth president and CEO of L.L.Bean and the first person to hold the position without being part of the Bean family. Following his graduation from Dickinson College in 1992, Smith started his career at J. Walter Thompson. After several years, he moved into the retail industry and worked for several international supermarket companies, such as the Delhaize Group, a global Brussels-based business.

In 2011, Smith joined the team at Walmart International to work as senior vice president and general manager of Sam’s Club China and chief marketing officer for Walmart China in Shenzhen, China. In 2012, he moved on to become chief customer officer of ASDA at Walmart International. In 2015, Smith was promoted to work as chief merchandising and marketing officer for Yihaodian in Walmart’s Global Ecommerce sector in Shanghai, China.

Alley is set to receive a Doctor of Humanitarian Service Honorary Degree. A board certified ophthalmologist, Alley is the founder of WBO, a nonprofit working to alleviate preventable and treatable blindness for patients who cannot afford or do not have access to eye care. Alley also served two years as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force, obtaining the rank of captain and going on to become the director of aerospace medicine at Castle Air Force Base in California.

Hoof will receive a Doctor of Entrepreneurship honorary degree for her work as co-founding principal of Somerset Development Company, LLC, a real estate firm that aims to revitalize underserved urban areas via public-private financing and low-income housing tax credits. She also served 15 years as a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) with postings in Mauritania, Tunisia and Guatemala.

Wheelock is set to receive a Doctor of Art honorary degree. He works as curator of northern baroque painting at the National Gallery of Art and is professor of art history at the University of Maryland. In 2014, his expanded Dutch catalogue

received the George Wittenborn Book Award for best art publication in the United States.

This year’s $100,000 Rose-Walters prize will be awarded to Our Children’s Trust, the organization that supported the 21 young plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit Juliana v. United States against President Trump and several federal agencies in 2015. The group, including Sophie Kivlehan ’21, argued that the federal government violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional and public trust rights by supporting fossil-fuel development. The lawsuit hopes to convince the government to develop and carry out a science-based climate recovery plan to reduce fossil-fuel emissions and reduce carbon dioxide levels to under 350 parts per million by 2100. The prize will be accepted by Julia Olson, Our Children’s Trust’s founder, executive director and chief legal counsel.