Associate Professor of Biology Tiffany Frey will deliver Dickinson’s 2025 Commencement address, according to an announcement from the College today.
Typically, the speaker is someone outside the college community, but Frey’s selection comes after student protests last year led to Dickinson rescinding its invitation to planned speaker, CNN host and political pundit Michael Smerconish. The protesters took issue with anti-Arab comments Smerconish made in his 2004 book, “Flying Blind.”
Honorees at Commencement will also include Dickinson alumni Brian J. Dorfler ’97 and Dr. Jennifer Gass ’83, who will receive honorary degrees, and the non-profit Environmental Defense Fund, which will be presented with the Sam Rose ’58 and Julie Walters Prize for Global Environmental Activism.
A graduating senior will also be chosen by a committee of faculty, staff and fellow class members to speak at the ceremony. The selected student will be announced in the coming weeks.
Tiffany Frey – Commencement Speaker
Tiffany Frey, associate professor of biology, has been teaching at Dickinson since 2011. Frey is the most recent recipient of the Constance And Rose Ganoe Memorial Award For Inspirational Teaching, the only student-bestowed accolade for professors at Dickinson, which is voted on by graduating seniors each year.
Frey was instrumental in organizing the College’s “Human Anatomy” course, which allows students access to two human cadavers that provide a rare, firsthand exploration and study of the human body in the liberal-arts environment. She has also taken place in student-faculty research in the College’s biochemistry & molecular biology labs.
Frey’s research focuses on various forms of inflammation, including sepsis, lung infection, diabetes and autoinflammatory disease. Frey earned a bachelor’s degree from Penn State University and a Ph.D. from John Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Brian J. Dorfler ’97 – Doctor of Human Resource Management
Brian J. Dorfler, a U.S. Army veteran, has spent the last two decades in the media industry, managing human resources for some of television’s most well-known brands.
He was recently named the chief human resources officer of SpinCo, the planned Comcast spinoff that will include popular channels like USA Network, CNBC, and MSNBC.
An ROTC member during his time at Dickinson, Dorfler spent the first 5 years of his post-graduate life in Europe in the U.S. Army working on military intelligence, where he was involved in peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo.
He then earned his master’s degree in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University, before holding HR leadership roles with CNBC, NBC Sports, and NBCUniversal’s Global Advertising division.
Dorfler has been active in the alumni community in recent years, receiving the Alumni Council’s Career Champion of the Year award in 2018, and establishing the The Brian J. Dorfler ’97 and Christine M. Dorfler Scholarship along with his wife in 2021.
Jennifer Gass ’83 – Doctor of Medicine
Jennifer Gass, a leader in advancing the breast health of women, has been director of the Breast Health Center at Care New England in Providence, Rhode Island, since 2021.
In addition, Gass is also a professor of surgery and obstetrics and gynecology at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University, and she is the first woman to ascend to full professor of surgery on the teacher/scholar track at Brown University. She has also been the chief of surgery at Women & Infants Hospital in Providence since 2005.
Gass began her medical career as a trauma surgeon at Wayne State University in Michigan before serving as an HMO general/breast-cancer surgeon at Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare and attending physician in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at Rhode Island Hospital. She joined the Women and Infants Breast Health Center in 2001, and assumed the fellowship director role in 2003.
During her leadership, the Breast Health Center at Women & Infants was chosen as a site for a multi-institutional cryo-assisted lumpectomy trial. She was also a lead investigator on an innovative MRI-guided breast cancer surgery trial through a collaboration with Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical School. For her work, Gass has been recognized on Rhode Island Magazine’s Top Doctors list each year since 2010.
Gass graduated from Dickinson with a bachelor’s in chemistry, with honors. During her time as a student, she was a member of Delta Nu and involved with the College’s yearbook. She earned a master’s degree from the University of Maryland Baltimore in 1987, and completed her general surgery residency program at Temple University in 1992.
Environmental Defense Fund – 2025 Rose-Walters Prize Recipient
This year’s Rose-Walters prize will be awarded to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), an environmental advocacy non-profit based in the U.S.
Founded in the 1960s to combat the use of harmful chemicals in farming, the EDF is widely known for its work on environmental issues like green energy, forest restoration, and clean transportation.
Headquartered in New York City, the organization works in the public and private sector worldwide, including in China, India, and across the European Union. It specializes in corporate partnerships, including recent efforts with Walmart to cut climate pollution and General Motors to sell only zero-emission vehicles within the next decade. At times, the EDF has come under fire from environmental activists for these close ties to wealthy companies.
The EDF is composed of more than 500 staff and 3.5 million members worldwide.
