Dr. Albert Alley
COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES, MAY 20, 2018
Dr. Albert Alley ’60
Doctor of Humanitarian Service
Citation presented by David Sarcone
Associate Professor of International Business & Management
Conferring of the degree by Margee M. Ensign, President
Dr. Alley, your contributions to the common good as social entrepreneur, philanthropist, teacher and health care provider benefit those within the region, our nation and the international community.
Following graduation from Temple University Medical School, you served for two years as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force, attaining the rank of captain and becoming director of aerospace medicine at Castle Air Force Base.
After completing military service, you practiced medicine and surgery as a board-certified ophthalmologist in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, for 45 years. Within the community, you served as president of the medical staff of the Good Samaritan Hospital in Lebanon and as a member of the hospital’s board of trustees. You also served as a clinical professor of ophthalmology at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Despite a very full professional schedule, in 1990, you founded World Blindness Outreach (WBO), a nonprofit working to alleviate preventable and treatable blindness for patients who cannot afford or access eye care. In your leadership role with the nonprofit, you led WBO teams of volunteer eye surgeons, doctors, nurses and other personnel on more than 85 international missions to 25 countries, where they performed more than 10,000 cataract operations, corneal transplants and strabismus corrective surgeries. They also trained local medical personnel to perform eye surgeries and established medical clinics in several countries.
Your commitment to combating preventable blindness further led you and your wife, Virginia, to establish the Alley Center for the Blind to serve the Lebanon community and surrounding region. To benefit the international community, you and your wife subsequently established the Albert and Virginia Alley Endowment for International Outreach in Ophthalmology at Penn State College of Medicine to enable medical students and young doctors to participate in international missions.
For your contributions, you have received numerous awards, including humanitarian service awards from the Pennsylvania Academy of Ophthalmology and the American Academy of Ophthalmology. In the past, you also received Dickinson’s Distinguished Alumni Award for Professional Achievement—I am sure a particularly proud moment for the 14 members of the extended Alley family who have attended Dickinson College.
President Ensign, for his achievements as a leader, philanthropist, teacher and care giver serving those in underserved communities in developing countries and here at home, I am honored to present to you Dr. Albert Alley for the honorary degree of Doctor of Humanitarian Service.
*****************
Albert Alley, upon the recommendation of the Faculty to the Board of Trustees, and by its mandamus, I confer upon you the Degree of Doctor of Humanitarian Service, honoris causa, with all the rights, privileges and distinction thereunto appertaining, in token of which I present you with this diploma and cause you to be invested with the hood of Dickinson College appropriate to the degree.