Contact: Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 414/832-6590 FOR RELEASE JUNE 13, 1997 Lawrence University's 148th Commencement Honors Five with Honorary Degrees APPLETON, WIS. Two college presidents, two historians and one of the nation's most prominent multicultural scholars will share the spotlight with 270 Lawrence University seniors receiving bachelor's degrees Sunday, June 15 during the college's 148th commencement beginning at 10:30 a.m. on the Main Hall Green. In the event of inclement weather, commencement ceremonies will be conducted in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. If held outdoors, the commencement activities are free and open to the public, but are restricted to family members of degree recipients if moved inside. Rev. William Sloane Coffin, who is ending his stay at Lawrence as the Stephen Edward Scarff distinguished visiting professor of religious studies, will be the featured speaker at a baccalaureate service Saturday, June 10, at 11 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. In addition to its bachelor of arts and bachelor of music degrees, Lawrence will confer honorary degrees to Charles Breunig, former Lawrence professor of history, Sister Joel Read, president of Milwaukee's Alverno College, Douglas J. Bennet, president of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., and former president of National Public Radio, H. Nicholas Muller III, president and CEO of The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., professor of the humanities and chairman of the Afro-American studies department at Harvard University. Breunig, Read, Muller and Gates each will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree, while Bennet will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws. Lawrence President Richard Warch, John A. Luke Jr., chair of the Lawrence Board of Trustees, student representative Katra Byram, a senior from Manitowish Waters, and each of the five honorary degree recipients will address the graduates during the commencement ceremony. Breunig, 76, the former David G. Ormsby Professor of History and Political Economy, retired from the Lawrence faculty in 1986 after spending 31 years in the history department. In his retirement, he chronicled the history of the college in the book, "A Great and Good Work, A History of Lawrence University 1847-1964," for which he was named Outagamie County Historical Society's 1995 Historian of the Year. During his tenure, Breunig served as the first director of the college's Overseas Study Center in Germany and in 1985 was awarded Lawrence's "Excellence in Teaching" award. He has written widely on French history, church history and the history of higher education. His book on the French Revolution, "Revolution and Reaction, 1789-1850" was included in the acclaimed Norton History of Modern Europe. The holder of bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees from Harvard, where he taught before coming to Lawrence, Breunig has lived in New Hampshire since retiring. The recipient of six previous honorary degrees, Sister Read, 72, has served as president of Alverno since 1968, the longest tenure of any college president in Wisconsin. Her leadership in developing and implementing innovative curriculum, specifically Alverno's "ability-based" model, has earned her national recognition, including honors from Harvard University Graduate School of Education and the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning. The book, "The Many Lives of Academic Presidents" cited Sister Read as one of a handful of college presidents who have broken new educational ground in the past 100 years. She served six years as an appointee of President Carter on the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities and is past president of the National Forum for Women. In 1983, she founded the Milwaukee Achiever Program, an organization that provides literacy services to adults. Sister Read earned her bachelor's degree in education at Alverno and a master's degree in history from Fordham University. Bennet, 58, began his tenure as the 15th president of Wesleyan University in July, 1995 after serving as the assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, a post he was appointed to by President Clinton in 1993. Before joining the Clinton administration, Bennet spent 10 years as president and chief executive officer of National Public Radio, during which he tripled listenership and nearly doubled the number of member stations. Under his direction, innovative programs such as "Weekend Edition," "AfroPop" and "Performance Today" were launched. Bennet spent nearly 20 years in public service, including serving as an assistant to Vice President Hubert Humphrey and senators Thomas Eagleton and Abraham Ribicoff and as a special assistant to U.S. Ambassador to India Chester Bowles. In 1981, he was named the first president of the Roosevelt Center for American Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. A 1959 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wesleyan, Bennet holds a doctorate in history from Harvard. Muller, 58, was named president and CEO of the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation in 1996 after spending 11 years as the director of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. From 1978-85, Muller served as president of New Hampshire's Colby-Sawyer College and has taught history on the faculties of the University of Vermont, Dartmouth University and Mt. Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada. Since 1970, Muller has served on the boards of more than 20 organizations and commissions and has received a dozen government appointments by governors, mayors and school boards. Muller has written numerous published articles on Vermont history and is the author of the book, "A State of Nature: Readings on Vermont History." He earned his bachelor's degree in history from Dartmouth and his Ph.D. in history at the University of Rochester. Gates, who has been called a "superstar scholar" of the study of African-American culture, heritage and literature, returns to the Lawrence campus, where he delivered a convocation address in January. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1991 as the W.E.B. du Bois Professor of the Humanities and chairman of the Afro-American Studies department. Hailed last year as one of America's 50 most influential baby boomers by Life magazine, Gates, 46, has written nearly 100 published articles on scholarly and popular subjects ranging from Hillary Rodham Clinton to the black person in art to 2 Live Crew. The author of four books, Gates earned national acclaim for his 1994 memoir, "Colored People," which recounted his boyhood in West Virginia in the late 1950s and early '60s. He also has edited several significant anthologies, including "The Norton Anthology of African American Literature," which was published in 1996. A recipient of a MacArthur Foundation $100,000 "genius grant" at the age of 30, Gates graduated summa cum laude from Yale University with a degree in history and earned his master's and doctoral degrees at the University of Cambridge in England.