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Dickinson Announces 2025 Commencement Speaker and Honorees

Dickinson will celebrate the class of 2025 and other accomplished members of its community during Commencement exercises on Sunday, May 18. Associate Professor of Biology Tiffany Frey will deliver the Commencement address and alumni Brian J. Dorfler '97 and Dr. Jennifer Gass '83 will receive honorary degrees.

Additionally, graduates will be addressed by one of their peers who will be selected by a committee of faculty, staff and members of the class to speak at the ceremony. Commencement will also include the traditional presentation of the Sam Rose ’58 and Julie Walters Prize for Global Environmental Activism, awarded annually to a prominent individual or group dedicated to preserving the planet and its resources. Environmental Defense Fund will be honored this year, in recognition of the launch of MethaneSAT, a global methane emissions monitoring program, and its decades of work on environmental issues.

Tiffany Frey
Associate Professor of Biology
Commencement Speaker

Frey is the most recent recipient of the Constance & Rose Ganoe Memorial Award for Inspirational Teaching. The only student-bestowed accolade at Dickinson, graduating seniors vote on the award each year. Class of 2024 President Deon Rosado lauded Frey while announcing her recognition at last year’s Commencement, saying “she has unfettered passion for teaching and an innate capacity to help others.”

Frey was instrumental in launching Dickinson’s Human Anatomy course, which provides students access to two human cadavers, offering rare, firsthand exploration of the human body in a liberal-arts environment. She also takes part in collaborative student-faculty research in the college’s biochemistry & molecular biology labs.

In addition to teaching courses on human anatomy, physiology, molecular medicine and more, Frey’s research centers on inflammation in various settings, including sepsis, lung infection, diabetes and autoinflammatory diseases. Frey earned a bachelor’s degree from Penn State University and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Brian J. Dorfler '97
Doctor of Human Resource Management
Honorary Degree Recipient

Dorfler, an experienced leader, has spent a career developing organizations’ most valuable asset—their people.

In January, he was named chief human resources officer of “SpinCo,” Comcast’s planned public spinoff of select media brands and digital businesses. Prior to this appointment, he served as the head of human resources for NBCUniversal’s Media Group, an expansive enterprise that includes television networks and streaming services.

Dorfler also previously oversaw the Human Resources teams for the company’s broadcast, entertainment, and international networks as well as the NBC Sports Group, NBCUniversal’s Global Advertising division, Content Distribution, and NBCUniversal’s direct-to-consumer portfolio, including the company’s streaming service, Peacock.

Dorfler has held several HR leadership roles during his tenure at NBCUniversal, working with teams across CNBC, Corporate Finance, Global Operations & Technology, and Direct-to-Consumer, where he was part of the core team that officially launched Peacock in 2020 and developed a strategy for its success. 

Dorfler is a U.S. Army veteran who served as a military intelligence officer in Europe from 1997 to 2001, supporting peacekeeping operations in both Bosnia and Kosovo. In 1997, Dorfler graduated from Dickinson with a bachelor’s degree in English. As a student, he was a member of ROTC and an officer of the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity. Dorfler earned his master’s degree in industrial & labor relations from Cornell University.

He supports Dickinson students through internships, career mentoring and The Brian J. Dorfler ’97 and Christine M. Dorfler Scholarship, which was established in 2021 to help fund a deserving student who would not otherwise be able to attend Dickinson. Dorfler was recognized by Dickinson’s Alumni Council as Career Champion of the Year in 2018. The award is presented to an alumnus who has provided significant and consistent contributions toward the advancement of the college’s career center programming and services. 

Dr. Jennifer Gass '83
Doctor of Medicine
Honorary Degree Recipient

Gass has dedicated her career to advancing the breast health of women. She has been director of the Breast Health Center at Care New England in Providence, R.I., since 2021. In addition, she is 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 been 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 moving to Rhode Island, where she served as an HMO general/breast-cancer surgeon at Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare and an attending physician in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at Rhode Island Hospital. In 2001, she joined the Women and Infants Breast Health Center, where she assumed the fellowship director role in 2003.

Through her leadership, the Breast Health Center at Women & Infants was chosen as a site for a multi-institutional cryo-assisted lumpectomy trial. She also serves as principal investigator on the innovative MRI-guided breast cancer surgery trial through a collaboration with Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical School. She has been recognized on Rhode Island Magazine’s Top Doctors list each year since 2010.

Gass served as president of the National Consortium of Breast Centers and earlier served as program and policy chair. She served as program chair for the American Society of Breast Surgeons annual meeting in 2024 and is newly elected to their board of directors. For the American College of Surgeons, Gass has served as instructor in the annual Congress Oncoplastic Surgery Course and the 2025 course co-chair. Gass graduated from Dickinson in 1983 with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, with honors. As a student, she was a member of Delta Nu sorority and involved with the college’s yearbook. She earned her M.D. 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

With more than 3.5 million members, supporters and activists, Environmental Defense Fund creates transformational solutions to the most serious environmental problems. Working across the globe—including Europe, China, India and the United States—EDF links science, economics, law and innovative private-sector partnerships to turn solutions into action. It works for progress on methane pollution, clean electricity, clean transportation, forests, fisheries and oceans, healthy communities, fuels and feedstocks, agriculture, water, food, carbon markets and other critical environmental challenges.

EDF pioneered groundbreaking corporate partnerships, including Walmart’s successful effort to cut a billion metric tons of climate pollution and GM’s plan to sell only zero-emission vehicles by 2035. In 2023, the organization helped secure commitments from 50 oil and gas companies, representing 40% of global oil sales, to reduce their methane pollution by 90% by 2030. In 2024, EDF launched MethaneSAT, a satellite to measure and map methane pollution and help usher in a new era of climate accountability. It was a primary advocate for the overhaul of America’s chemical safety laws in 2016 and the passage of historic climate investments in 2022.

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Published April 3, 2025