Spring Commencement Slated, Honorary Degree Recipients Announced

Students from the class of 2019 will be honored at the spring undergraduate and graduate commencement ceremonies next month. In addition, two Pittsburghers will receive honorary degrees from the University.

The graduate student commencement ceremony will be held at noon on Friday, May 10, at PPG Paints Arena, followed by the undergraduate ceremony at 3 p.m. The traditional baccalaureate Mass will be held at 9 a.m. in the fourth-floor Union ballroom.

This year’s honorary degree recipients include Maxwell King, president and chief executive officer of the Pittsburgh Foundation, and Joanne Byrd Rogers, wife of the late Fred Rogers.

President Ken Gormley will present an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters to both King and Rogers. In addition, King will deliver the commencement address and Rogers will also give remarks. Gormley will give presidential remarks at both commencement ceremonies.

King, who has led the Pittsburgh Foundation since 2014, was founding director of the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at Saint Vincent College. He also wrote The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers, the first-ever full biography of the children’s educational television pioneer. King also served as editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1990-1998, during which the newspaper was recognized by Time magazine as one of the five best newspapers in the nation.

Joanne Rogers is chair emerita of The Fred Rogers Company Board of Directors—the nonprofit founded by her husband in 1971. She also is honorary chair of the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media’s advisory council. Rogers met her husband Fred at Rollins College, where she received a bachelor of music degree. She also received a master of music degree from Florida State University, where she held a graduate fellowship for piano study with Ernst von Dohnanyi, the renowned Hungarian composer, pianist and conductor. For decades, Rogers widely performed in concert with Jeannine Morrison as a duo-piano team. She retired from public performance in 2008.

For more information on the spring commencement ceremonies, visit www.duq.edu/commencement.