YSU to award honorary degrees to CEO and symphony conductor

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The head of one of the nation’s largest corporations and an internationally accomplished musician, composer and conductor will receive honorary degrees and speak at Youngstown State University’s spring commencements May 16 in Beeghly Center on campus.

Commencement ceremonies for undergraduate and graduate students in the Beeghly College of Education, Williamson College of Business Administration and the College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics will take place at 10 a.m.

Commencement ceremonies for undergraduate and graduate students in the Bitonte College of Health and Human Services, the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and the College of Creative Arts and Communication will take place at 2:30 p.m.

Eric A. Spiegel will receive an honorary Doctor of Business Administration and give the commencement address at the morning ceremony. Randall Craig Fleischer will receive an honorary Doctor of Music and provide the commencement address at the afternoon event.

Spiegel, who was raised in Poland, is president and chief executive officer of Siemens Corp., which has $22 billion in domestic sales, $6 billion in exports and approximately 60,000 employees based in the United States.

In 2013, Spiegel was on campus to announce that Siemens was providing an in-kind grant for $440 million in state-of-the-art product life-cycle management software and training to YSU’s STEM College.

He has a master of business administration degree from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, where he was an Edward Tuck Scholar, and he received his A.B. with honors in Economics from Harvard University.

Fleischer is in his seventh season as music director of the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra. He also is music director for the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and the Anchorage Symphony.

He has appeared as a guest conductor with many orchestras across the world, including repeat engagements with the Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony, the symphonies of San Francisco, Houston, Seattle, Utah and San Diego and the chamber orchestras of St. Paul and Philadelphia.

Fleischer is the only American conductor to receive Newsweek magazine’s “Parent Choice Award” for his groundbreaking CD-ROM of “Peter and the Wolf.”

He first came to international attention when, while serving his first of five years as assistant and then associate conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra, he conducted Dvorak’s Cello Concerto with Mstislav Rostropovich as a soloist during the NSO’s 1990 tour of Japan and the Soviet Union. It was the first time Rostropovich played the cello in Russia since his forced exile in 1972.

As a composer, Fleischer is a national leader in symphony rock and world music fusion. He has co-authored several instruction pieces for children in collaboration with his wife, Heidi Joyce, that were premiered by the National Symphony Orchestra.