The School of Molecular & Cellular Biology will celebrate the Class of 2023 with a convocation ceremony on Sunday, May 14, at the Krannert Center for Performing Arts. The ceremony will begin at 9:00 AM (CST) and is expected to conclude around 10:30.
Students who completed degree requirements in August 2022, December 2022, or who are concluding their studies in May 2023 or August 2023 will participate. The School of MCB is excited to recognize students who have earned bachelor of science degrees, master of science degrees, and doctors of philosophy.
Alumna Carole Stivers (née Carole Reeve, PhD, ’81, biochemistry) will deliver the convocation speech. Dr. Stivers, along with her husband, Alan (MS, ‘75; PhD, ‘79, physics), established the Drs. Carole and Alan Stivers BEST Scholarship Endowment Fund to support outstanding undergraduates in the School of MCB in 2019.
About Carole Stivers
Dr. Stivers completed her bachelor’s degree in chemistry at a small college in her home state of Ohio called Baldwin Wallace University. After meeting many successful University of Illinois alumni through an undergraduate research program at Argonne National Laboratory, she decided to pursue her PhD in biochemistry at the U of I. It was an auspicious choice. Her time at the university not only led to a more than thirty-year career in medical diagnostics, but she met her future husband Alan, a physics grad student, through a 1970s version of on-campus computer dating. After completing post-doctoral work at Stanford University, Dr. Stivers worked at a variety of Silicon Valley diagnostics companies, both large and small. She developed the first at-home test monitor for the diabetes marker hemoglobin A1c, and authored long-standing patents on technologies useful in point-of-care glucose and A1c testing. Later, she launched a lucrative consulting business, guiding clients in initial development, scale-up, and quality conformance for medical devices of all kinds. But in 2020 she followed a whole new path, combining her love of creative writing and her knowledge of the possibilities of science to publish her first science fiction novel, THE MOTHER CODE. Dr. Stivers now lives in California, where she continues to imagine new futures.