FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRESIDENT OF ASSOCIATION OF CATHOLIC COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES TO DELIVER KEYNOTE AT MANHATTAN COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT

RIVERDALE, N.Y. – Monika K. Hellwig, Ph.D., president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU), will deliver the keynote address at Manhattan College’s 163rd Undergraduate Commencement on Sunday, May 22. During the ceremony, she will receive an honorary Doctor of Pedagogy degree.

Dr. Hellwig, who has served as president of ACCU since 1996, is the former Landegger Professor of Theology at Georgetown University, where she taught for three decades. The ACCU promotes Catholic higher education by supporting its member institutions, especially with reference to their Catholic mission and character. The group, based in Washington, D.C., also serves as the “voice” of Catholic higher education in the United States.

Dr. Hellwig has written and lectured extensively, both nationally and internationally, on Catholic theology, interfaith studies and Catholic education. She is the former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and has published numerous books, including Understanding Catholicism, Jesus the Compassion of God and The Eucharist and the Hunger of the World.

In addition to Georgetown, she has taught at St. Norbert’s College, St. Michael’s College, University of San Francisco, Princeton Theological Seminary, Notre Dame University and Boston College. She attended the University of Liverpool in England and earned both her master’s and doctorate at The Catholic University of America. Her academic honors are endless including more than 25 honorary doctorate degrees awarded from colleges such as St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Trinity College in Washington, D.C. and Loyola University of Chicago.

Manhattan College will award approximately 600 undergraduate degrees in more than 40 major fields of undergraduate study from its five schools in arts, business, education, engineering and science. Graduation day will begin with a Baccalaureate Mass at 10:00 a.m. followed by a brunch on the Quadrangle prior to the Commencement ceremony at 1:00 p.m. in the College’s Draddy Gymnasium.

Manhattan College was founded in 1853 in the Lasallian heritage of excellence in teaching, inspired by St. John Baptist de La Salle. Manhattan College, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2003, is an independent, Catholic, coeducational institution of higher learning that offers more than 40 undergraduate programs of study in the areas of arts, business, education, engineering and science as well as graduate programs in education and engineering.

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