Rochester Institute of Technology announced this afternoon that Bill Nye will be the school’s keynote speaker in this spring’s graduation ceremony, according to ABC’s 13wham.com. This year marks RIT’s 127th commencement celebration.
The Cornell graduate has become famous for his TV show “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” which ran on PBS during the 1990s. After leaving Ithaca in 1977 with a degree in mechanical engineering, Nye began a career in Seattle at The Boring Company, working on 747s. He then took to television donning a light blue lab coat and a bow tie.
“You don’t have to become an astronomer. You don’t have to learn spherical geometry –– you just have to have an appreciation that the earth’s orbit is an odd shape,” said Nye in an interview with the Daily Sun when he returned to Cornell this August to dedicate a new solar clock.
The Science Guy should be a good fit for his RIT audience, but he will have big shoes to fill. Nye joins a prestigious list of past commencement speakers at the Institution, including President Bill Clinton, CBS News’ Bob Schieffer, Senator Charles Schumer, and CIA Director George J Tenet.
