First Year Experience expert to offer Thiel commencement address on May 7
For immediate release April 26, 2006

GREENVILLE, PA – Founder and executive director of The Policy Center on the First Year of College, John N. Gardner will serve as the keynote speaker at Thiel College’s spring commencement at 2 p.m. Sunday, May 7.

Gardner and two alumni, the Rev. Martin M. Roth ’66, pastor of the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Greenville, and William Slater II ’80, president and owner of William Slater & Sons Inc. funeral homes, will be awarded honorary degrees during the ceremony.

Best known as the initiator of the international reform movement in higher education to what he has coined “The Freshman Year Experience,” Gardner will provide the address “Giving Praise, Giving Thanks, Giving Back.”

Under Gardner’s leadership, The Policy Center on the First Year of College has as its basic mission the improvement of the first college year through enhanced learning outcomes and the success of first-year students. A particular focus of the Policy Center is the development and dissemination of a range of first-year assessment procedures and tools that can be used to strengthen or confirm practices in the curriculum, the co-curriculum, and institutional policy. In addition to improving practice, this process will contribute to the body of research on best practices in first-year programs.

The Center was initiated in October 1999 with a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts, and is hosted on the campus of Brevard College in North Carolina. The work of the Policy Center is currently made possible by the generous support of two primary benefactors, The Atlantic Philanthropies and Lumina Foundation for Education, and is an extension of the work of Gardner and his colleagues at the University of South Carolina’s National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. The two entities work cooperatively on issues of central concern for the success of first-year college students.

Gardner will be awarded an honorary doctor of humanities degree during the ceremony.

Roth, pastor of Holy Trinity since 1986, is a 1966 alumnus of Thiel College. He earned master of divinity and master of sacred theology degrees from the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He is the co-founder of the concert series Friends of Music at Holy Trinity. Active in the community, he is a member of the Thiel College Board of Trustees and its Instruction Committee, the UPMC Horizon Board and its Joint Commission, Medical Ethics and Hospital Chaplaincy Advisory committees. He is co-founder of the Community Medical Ethics Project and is a founding member of Greenville’s Good Shepherd Center.

Roth will receive an honorary doctor of divinity degree.

Slater, whose company operates eight funeral homes in the Pittsburgh area, is a 1980 alumnus of Thiel and a graduate of the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science. He is active in community affairs and a member of several civic organizations, including the Greentree Rotary Club to which he has served as president. An active Mason, Slater is also noted as the youngest grand master in 100 years to serve the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania. He became a 33rd degree Mason in 2002.

Slater will receive an honorary doctor of humanities degree.