(Posted April 19, 2001)

-- News Release -- Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and a 1965 graduate of Juniata College, will deliver the commencement address and receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters degree May 13 at 2 p.m. during Juniata's 122nd commencement ceremony.

Following graduate study in literature at the University of Maryland, Davis returned to Juniata as an instructor in 1968. Over the next several years, Davis played a major role in a wholesale redesign of Juniata's curriculum. Some of the elements within the redesigned curriculum were courses that involved both students and faculty from a wide spectrum of academic departments. Davis became a specialist in these new "interdisciplinary" courses.

He also was very active in directing campus theatrical productions and was appointed chair of the theatre department in 1972. He also introduced a series of courses on motion picture history and aesthetics to the Juniata curriculum.

His interest in film eventually led to a move to Los Angeles and into another career. He moved to California to pursue a writing career in 1980.

In 1981, he was hired by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a worldwide organization of theatrical filmmakers whose best-known annual activity is the presentation the yearly Academy Awards Oscar telecast, honoring achievement in motion pictures.

He was named executive administrator in 1983, overseeing the Academy's world-renowned Herrick Library, its film archives and its public programming. He became executive director of the Academy in 1989.

Davis, a native of Washington, D.C., earned a bachelor's degree in English from Juniata College in 1965 and earned a master's degree in English from the University of Maryland in 1968.

Davis is married to Joann Davis, a 1975 Juniata graduate. The couple has four daughters, Brangien, Alexandra, Archer and Roxanne.

Davis received the Juniata Alumni Achievement Award in 1990.

Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.