Educational Statesman and Scientist, he rose to eminence as a distinguished paleontologist at the University of Chicago. His inquiring mind and catholicity of interests marked him for a wider educational role, and he moved to the presidency of Beloit College where he brought an administration dedicated to the principle of the importance of the liberating experience of the humanities and sciences. As provost and later chancellor of Rice University, he led that institution from the role of a technological institute to the stature of a full university committed to the proposition that the educated man is the man whose mind has been liberated by an encounter with his literary, cultural and scientific heritage. Throughout his distinguished career he has stood for the best in science, in education and in those human qualities marked by graciousness and integrity. For all of these things, but particularly for his role in enriching the intellectual life in the southwestern United States, this University is proud to confer upon Carey Croneis the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa.