Jacques Pépin to Address MET’s 2015 Graduates
During MET’s Commencement Ceremony on Saturday, May 16, Dean ad interim Tanya Zlateva will introduce MET’s 2015 Commencement Speaker, Jacques Pépin.
The acclaimed chef, author, and television personality is a legend in the cooking world, and at BU’s Metropolitan College. In collaboration with French cooking guru and television personality Julia Child, Chef Pépin was responsible for cofounding the Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy program at MET, and the Certificate Program in Culinary Arts, offered through MET’s Programs in Food & Wine. A part-time faculty member at MET since 1983, Pépin has taught hundreds of BU students. He has additionally drawn over ten thousand residents of greater Boston to the University by hosting informal seminars, demonstrations, discussions, and special cooking events through MET’s Lifelong Learning programs.
Before Pépin became a household name in the 1990s with PBS television series such as The Complete Pépin and Cooking at Home with Julia and Jacques, he spent many years cooking in French kitchens and, between 1956 and 1958, was personal chef to three French heads of state, including President Charles de Gaulle. Emigrating from France to the United States in 1959, Pépin worked at New York’s famed Le Pavillon restaurant and developed food lines for the Howard Johnson’s chain. Despite his success, he brought to the U.S. no more than a primary school education, and he was keen to pursue a college degree—which he did at Columbia University, earning a master’s in eighteenth-century French literature when he was 37 years old.
In 2005, MET honored Pépin with the Roger Deveau Memorial Part-Time Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 2011, Boston University bestowed upon Pépin an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. In a 2011 interview with Metropolitan College, Pépin said, “It’s always a shot in the arm to work with the students, and to explain and to break down the idea, and to see someone smile. And you know, as a cook, you bring pleasure to people…. Around the table you are equal—and that’s a great thing.”