Carnegie Mellon University

Bernard Osher at 2017 CMU Commencement

July 09, 2017

Carnegie Mellon University Honors the Osher Institute’s 25th Anniversary

By Osher National Resource Center

Osher National Resource Center

University Awards Bernard Osher Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters

In commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, Bernard Osher was presented with an Osher@CMU logo, altered to recognize his receiving a Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Carnegie Mellon University on May 21, 2017.

Bernard Osher, founder and treasurer of The Bernard Osher Foundation is a patron of education and the arts. He has pursued a successful career in business, beginning with the management of his family’s hardware and plumbing supplies store in Maine and continuing with work at Oppenheimer & Company in New York.

A native of Biddeford, Maine, and a graduate of Bowdoin College, Mr. Osher moved to California in 1963, where he became a founding director of World Savings, the second largest savings institution in the United States when it was purchased by the Wachovia Corporation in 2006. Additionally, he purchased the fine arts auction house of Butterfield & Butterfield, overseeing its growth to become the fourth largest auction house in the world before selling it to eBay in 1999.

Mr. Osher started The Bernard Osher Foundation in 1977, which seeks to improve quality of life through support for higher education and the arts. The foundation funds three national programs: post-secondary scholarships for nontraditional students; lifelong learning institutes for seasoned adults; and integrative medicine centers at select medical schools in the United States and Sweden. It also provides grants to arts organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area and in the state of Maine.

A practitioner and model of lifelong learning, Bernard Osher began piano lessons at the age of 80. He also is a serious student of opera and an ardent fly fisherman.