Newswise — St. Lawrence University's Commencement will be held on Sunday, May 15, at 10 a.m. on Creasy Commencement Commons.
Honorary degrees will be awarded to three people at the ceremony, and each will give a brief address. They are:
- The Reverend Joan Brown Campbell, director of religion at the Chautauqua Institution. In every job she has held, Campbell has been the first woman to carry that responsibility. She was the first woman to be executive director of the U.S. office of the World Council of Churches; the first ordained woman to be general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.; and today, she is the first woman director of religion at the historic Chautauqua Institution. Campbell led a delegation to present the Catholic edition of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible to Pope John Paul II, and she worked with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and brought him to her own congregation. She has led peace missions to the Middle East, and is chair of the Global Women's Peace Initiative.
- John R. Cook, founder and president of the Environmental Careers Organization in Boston, and a 1970 graduate of St. Lawrence. Cook has been concerned about the environment since his college years and almost immediately after graduation founded the Environmental Intern Program (E.I.P.) under the sponsorship of the Audubon Society. He has remained with the program as it has evolved into the Environmental Careers Organization (ECO). Now a national organization, ECO places environmentalists in internship positions in industry, state agencies and private non-profit groups, and provides career information to over 50,000 people each year. Cook also is a charter member and on the board of directors of Partners for Livable Places.
- Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Kennedy. Kennedy earned the Pulitzer for the novel Ironweed, and six other novels comprise his "Albany Cycle": Legs, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, Quinn's Book, Very Old Bones, The Flaming Corsage and Roscoe, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Kennedy founded a writer's institute in 1983 at the University at Albany, State University of New York. His creation became the New York State Writers Institute, building upon programs in writing and allied arts for students of writing and the literary community of New York State. Kennedy is a professor in the English department at the University at Albany.
The University will also award at Commencement the North Country Citation, to John B. Johnson Jr., of Watertown, chairman and chief executive officer of the Johnson Newspaper Corporation and editor and co-publisher of the Watertown Daily Times. Johnson has been a member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors since 1978 and a member of the society's nominating committee and Freedom of Information Committee. He has also served on the board of directors of the New York State Newspaper Publishers Association, and of the New York State Newspapers Foundation. Johnson is a member of the board of the Dormitory Authority of New York State, a trustee of Clarkson University since 1991 and has served such organizations as the Development Authority of the North Country, the YMCA of Jefferson County, the Jefferson County Historical Society, the Bugbee Housing Development Corporation, Jefferson County United Way, the Central New York Health Systems Agency, the New York State Literacy Volunteers and Jefferson County Baseball.
St. Lawrence annually awards the North Country Citation to an individual from the region who, through professional and volunteer endeavors, has improved the quality of life in the North Country.
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