EARL LESTER COLE HONORS COLLEGE NAMES HONORARY MEMBER

 
By JESSICA WRIGHT
GSU Media Bureau

John Sibley Butler, Earl Lester Cole Honors College honorary memberJohn Sibley Butler has been inducted into Grambling State University’s Earl Lester Cole Honors College as an honorary member, only the third honorary member in the college’s history.

“He has a great interest in Grambling and we wanted to make sure that he was affiliated and aligned with the university,” said Rory Bedford, director of the university’s service learning program and coordinator of the Sept. 22 convocation at the Fredrick C. Hobdy Assembly Center where Butler was inducted. “We hope that he will be an ambassador not only for the Honors College but for the university as well.”

Noting how few honorary members the college has, Ellen Smiley, interim provost and vice president of academic affairs said the selections are few, and specific. “You can’t just get in,” she added.

A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, Butler earned a bachelor’s degree from Louisiana State University in 1969 after serving in Vietnam.He continued his education at Northwestern University as a Fellow of Social Change and received a doctorate in sociology in 1974. Butler was the founding editor of the National Journal of Sociology, serving as editor for 15 years. In 1988, the University of California at Berkeley sought Butler for a think tank on Testing and American Organizations. Butler has authored several books, published numerous journal articles and he has been recognized with several awards. Butler was one of the distinguished professors selected for the election committee advisory board under former Texas governor George W. Bush in 2000.

Butler became the chair of the Department of Management in the Graduate School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin in 1999. In 2002, he became the director of the IC2 Institute, where he also held the Herb Kelleher Chair for Entrepreneurship and Business and was the Sam Barshop Research Fellow. Butler served on the board of directors for Morehouse Research Institute in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Langston University National Institute for the Study of Minority Enterprise. In 2006, Butler was appointed by President Bush to the J. William Fulbright Scholarship Board, and was reappointed in 2007. Butler currently holds the Gale Chair in Entrepreneurship and Small Business in the Graduate School of Business (Department of Management) at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas.

Smiley said the Honors College has inducted two other honorary members; Anthony Cherry, former SGA student senator and retired NFL player, Jason Hatcher. Cherry assisted to draft the bill to get the self-assessed fee for the Honors College along side of the president of the Honors College, Prentiss Smiley. Hatcher induction was based on his contributions to his community, commitment and patronage to the Honors College. The Honors College usually hold honorary inductions into the Honors College in the Fall semester but both Cherry and Hatcher were inducted in February of 2016.

GSU President Rick Gallot said the induction is special, and having Butler talk with university students was important. “We’re looking to meet new friends and expand our circle of friends and we are excited to welcome this new friendship with such an accomplished business man well-connected in so many circles,” he said.

During Butler’s convocation speech he encouraged students to set goals for themselves and put effort towards accomplishing them. He expressed the importance of liberty and what it means to live freely without the bondage of preconceived notions or stereotypes. “Living life and living liberty means that a person should be able to accomplish whatever they visualize,” said Butler.

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