Educator, Skilled Administrator
1966
Citation:
Educator, skilled administrator, and the Scholarship Program Director of the Ford Motor Company, who has dedicated his life, with singleness of purpose and rare devotion, to giving youth with intellectual endowment but with limited financial resources, opportunities for college education, many of his scholarship protoges have risen to places of power and influence; through them his efforts and achievements have multiplied and he has exerted a lasting impression on the best of our nation's youth. Mr. Pine's talents have been freely given to many causes. He has been a member of the executive committee of the Governor's Committee on Higher Education and as one of the nation's outstanding educators, he visited several foreign countries and participated in the Cultural Exchange Program sponsored by the United States Department of State. He serves as a trustee of Monmouth College in Illinois, where he was a former administrator. As a charter lay member of the Board of Trustees of Mercy College of Detroit, he has lightened administrative stewardship by the soundness of his judgment and the dauntless expression of wise opinion. He has an abiding faith in the life of the mind and possesses the courage to state his convictions regarding the effectiveness of a sound education in these confusing days. A man of complete dedication, wise moderation, and quiet conciliation, who is a staunch friend of Mercy College of Detroit, by the authority vested in me as President, I now confer on William C. Pine the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. Commencement, Mercy College of Detroit, June 5, 1966.