Newswise — Texas senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, the first woman representative from Texas in the U.S. Senate, will deliver this spring's commencement address at 12:30 p.m. May 8 during the general convocation in the University of North Texas Coliseum. About 2,000 UNT students are expected to receive their degrees during the commencement ceremonies that day.
UNT President Norval Pohl will welcome graduates and doctoral candidates will be hooded.
The commencement ceremony will be webcast by the Center for Media Production and televised on NTTV. The webcast can be viewed at http://www.unt.edu/commencement.
In 1993, Kay Bailey Hutchison became the first woman to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate. Hutchison, who is one of 14 current women U.S. senators, was re-elected to a second full term in 2000.
During her service, she has become a leading voice on issues concerning defense and foreign policy, transportation and education. As chair of the Military Construction Subcommittee and a member of the Defense Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Hutchison is an integral figure in shaping America's defense policies. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, she helped draft the airline security bill passed by Congress requiring U.S. airport security officials to be replaced by federal screeners.
With the convening of the 108th Congress in 2003, Hutchison became chair of the Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Subcommittee, which allows her to set policies affecting Amtrak, port security and railroad shipping issues.
As a strong advocate for education, Hutchison wrote provisions to the "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001. The law contains the most extensive reform changes to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act since it was enacted in 1965. The provisions were written to help recruit mid-career professionals and retirees to become teachers, to provide parents with regular updates on the performance of their children's schools and to remove barriers to local school districts that wish to offer single-sex schools and classrooms.
The senator has written numerous opinion pieces on a diverse range of topics that have been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, as well as every major newspaper in Texas.
Hutchison grew up in La Marque near Galveston and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and UT Law School. She received her introduction to politics while covering the Texas Legislature as a political reporter for a television station in Houston. She later became press secretary to Anne Armstrong, vice chair of the Republican National Committee. Hutchison also served Texas as a two-term member of the state House of Representatives and as state treasurer.
She lives in Dallas with her husband, Ray, who is an attorney, and their daughter, Bailey, and son, Houston.
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