SDSU to award honorary doctorates to two impactful alumni at commencement
The recipients are former CSU trustee Adam Day and the late James Silberrad Brown, a San Diego business leader.
San Diego State University will award honorary doctorate degrees during this month’s commencement ceremonies to a former California State University trustee who serves as chief administrator for a Kumeyaay Nation tribe, and to the namesake of a campus center for AI research.
In an annual tradition recognizing service to the university and the San Diego community, honorary degrees will be conferred upon Adam Day, chief administrative officer for the El Cajon-based Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation and son of a former SDSU president, and the late James Silberrad Brown, whose impact and legacy at the university was recognized last year with the naming of the James Silberrad Brown Center for Artificial Intelligence at the Fowler College of Business.
Both are SDSU alumni.
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy became the first person to receive an honorary doctoral degree from what was then San Diego State College.
Since then, the university has awarded 64 more to community leaders and philanthropists, distinguished alumni, national legislators, international dignitaries and others. This year’s awards will bring the total to 67.
About the 2024 degrees:
Adam Day (Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters), graduated from SDSU with a bachelor of arts degree in political science in 1991. His father was Thomas B. Day, SDSU’s president from 1978 to 1996.
Since 2002 Day has been CAO of the Sycuan Band, whose close ties to SDSU stem from the fact that the university occupies land that once belonged to the Kumneyaay people. As CAO he oversees an annual budget of $75 million and 300 employees providing municipal government services, including police, fire, medical/dental/pharmacy, education and community development, and he manages an $8 million budget for charitable causes, political involvement and public service announcements. He provides strategic oversight of the tribe’s casino resort and other business ventures.
Day was a member of the governing Board of Trustees for CSU, appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown, from 2014 to 2022. The board’s appointments of presidents and a chancellor for the 23-campus system have been notable for a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, and Day was directly involved in the selection of a new SDSU president, Adela de la Torre, in 2018.
During his time as board chairman, Day appeared as the top name on the November 2018 ballot pamphlet statement for Measure G, the successful voter initiative that led to SDSU’s purchase of city-owned property for the development of SDSU Mission Valley.
He previously worked in three San Diego County supervisors’ offices and subsequently worked at two local public affairs firms. He currently serves on the board of trustees for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.
Day will receive his honorary doctorate at the commencement ceremony for the College of Arts and Letters at 1 p.m. Friday, May 10, at Viejas Arena.
James Silberrad Brown (Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters) graduated from what was then San Diego State College in 1967 with a degree in business management (information systems). He later served on the Alumni Board of Advisors, the Aztec Club Advisory Board, and received the 1991 Distinguished Alumni Award recipient from what was then the College of Business Administration.
Brown died December 17, 2020. A gift of $5 million in his memory from the Brown family supported the AI center at the Fowler College of Business. Renamed for Brown in February 2023, the center engages in a range of theoretical and experimental research.
Born in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, Brown spent his childhood in San Bernardino and served for three years in the U.S. Navy as an electrician’s mate. He then worked for ITT Kellogg, a telecommunications equipment company, at Vandenberg Air Force Base, and relocated to San Diego to attend college.
In San Diego Brown had a nearly 50-year career as a real estate professional and entrepreneur. He founded several general and limited partnerships through his company, Silberrad, Inc., which primarily owned and operated multi-family properties in San Diego and the Dallas/Fort Worth area. He founded the Bank of San Diego and Datatronix Financial Services, a data-processing subsidiary, later acquired by FiServ Company. From 1982 to 1993, Brown and partners founded and operated San Diego Television, Inc., the parent company of KTTY-TV, which now operates as Fox 5.
Brown’s widow, Marilyn Brown, will accept the degree at the commencement ceremony for the Fowler College of Business, to be held at 8 a.m. Saturday, May 11, at Viejas Arena. It is SDSU’s first posthumous honorary doctorate.
