2013 Spring Commencement Speaker Comes Full Circle

Jhan Doughty Berry ’94g, '01g will serve as the College of Education’s Spring 2013 commencement speaker at 1:30 p.m. on May 5 at the Bryce Jordan Center at University Park.

Doughty Berry said that she is thrilled, humbled, and honored to be addressing our distinguished 2013 class.

“As a graduate of the College for both my masters and my doctorate, I recognize the high value that a degree from our College holds in both the educational and corporate arenas,” said Doughty Berry. “So being asked to return after almost 20 years after later from receiving my first degree is truly a rewarding and full-circle experience.”

Doughty Berry said that all of the high-level skills that she learned in the counselor education program at Penn State as a researcher have helped her be successful throughout her career.

“As a student at Penn State, I had the distinct advantage of being trained in a research-intensive training model within a public educational setting,” said Doughty Berry. “As such, all of the high-level skills— such as analytical thinking, problem solving, investigative inquiry, and persuasive written and oral communication skills— not only allowed me to advance in my career as a practicing counselor educator and rehabilitation counselor, but they also greatly informed my later work as a post-doctoral fellow in a medical school setting and then as a professor and college administrator.”

She continued by saying that she still finds herself going back to those skills that have in essence served as a professional framework for how she now engages in her work in a corporate environment.

Doughty Berry also points out that her Penn State education was instrumental in teaching her the importance of reducing educational inequality wherever it presented itself. She said she hopes that this year’s class will utilize their own lives as an opportunity to make a difference in the world.

“As a graduate of the College of Education at Penn State, every graduate this year has a distinct opportunity to create positive changes in the lives of others,” said Doughty Berry. “It is our responsibility to take all that we have learned to create those opportunities with others in our chosen professions. This is the hallmark of a Penn Stater.”

Doughty Berry is the Chief Diversity Officer at Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, New Jersey, where she is responsible for the corporate-wide strategic diversity initiatives for the organization. During her tenure at ETS she has developed and implemented multiple corporate-wide diversity enhancement programs including a research institute at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Prior to her role at ETS, Doughty Berry was the Senior Director for Institutional Diversity and an adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. In addition to publishing several articles on dual diagnosis, multicultural counseling, and intervention-based research, Doughty Berry has also been awarded grant funding to conduct her research.

-- by Kevin Sliman (April 2013)