Haverford Announces 2025 Honorary Degree Recipients

Each year, Haverford College awards honorary degrees to individuals who have distinguished themselves in letters, the sciences, or the arts, or who have devoted their lives to service and the betterment of humanity. At this year’s May 17 Commencement ceremony, the College will award honorary degrees to legendary track and field coach Tom Donnelly, who retired in December 2023, and alternative death care pioneer Katrina Spade ’99. 

Tom Donnelly 
A 2014 inductee into the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association  (USTFCCA) Hall of Fame, Tom Donnelly helmed Haverford’s track and cross country programs for an astounding 49 seasons. 

Donnelly's arrival in 1975 marked the start of an era at Haverford characterized by unparalleled success on the track. Under his leadership, Haverford's teams secured an impressive 77 Middle Atlantic and Centennial Conference championships. His commitment to excellence propelled the 2010 cross country squad to Haverford's first-ever NCAA Division III team championship, a milestone for the College. That historic season also included five All-American finishers and Donnelly receiving the USTFCCA’s Coach of the Year award.

Through his simple but inspiring mantra, “Everyone matters,” Donnelly’s guidance has been instrumental in developing individual athletes. Since 1980, nearly 180 of his runners have achieved All-American honors in cross country and track and field. Three of them — Kevin Foley ’83, Seamus McElligott ’91, and Karl Paranya ’97 — have been inducted into the USTFCCCA Division III Athlete Hall of Fame.

Before embarking on his decorated coaching career, Donnelly was an accomplished athlete himself. From 1966 to 1969, he was an All-American in cross country and track at Villanova University, where he contributed to three consecutive NCAA cross country championships and one NCAA track title for the Wildcats.

Katrina Spade '99
An entrepreneur, designer, and visionary advocate for death care, Katrina Spade ’99 has revolutionized sustainable practices in end-of-life care in ways that honor both the deceased and the planet. After graduating from Haverford, Spade continued her academic journey in the University of Massachusetts Amhert’s architecture program. There, she invented human composting as an alternative to the funeral industry’s burial and cremation practices. 

After achieving her master’s degree, Spade founded the Urban Death Project in 2014, a nonprofit that developed a compassionate and patent-pending system for transforming human remains into soil. The project and Spade’s efforts to bring attention to a toxic funeral industry established the framework for Recompose, the world’s first company to offer human composting services, which Spade founded in Seattle in 2017. Recompose began accepting human bodies for natural organic reduction in 2020 and has since served more than 500 families. 

Spade’s tireless advocacy in advancing sustainable death care options has been instrumental in the legalization of human composting in multiple states. In 2019, thanks to her efforts, Washington State passed legislation that legalized the eco-friendly practice. Eleven additional states have since followed suit. 

Throughout her career, Spade has been widely recognized for her contributions to society. She is an Echoing Green Fellow, an Ashoka Fellow, and has served as a visiting social innovator at Harvard Kennedy School. Her work has garnered significant media attention, with features in The Guardian, NPR, Wired, Fast Company, and The New York Times that highlight her role in transforming the funeral industry.