May 01, 2009
Clark Commencement May 17
Steven A. Minter to speak at Clark's 104th Commencement on Sunday, May 17, on the Jefferson Academic Center Green. The procession, from the Kneller Athletic Center to the Campus Green, begins at 1:15 p.m., and ceremonies start at 1:30 p.m.
Minter, an Executive-in-Residence and a Fellow in the Center for Nonprofit Policy & Practice at the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University, will deliver the Commencement address.
From 1984-2003, Mr. Minter served as president and executive director of The Cleveland Foundation, a public charity dedicated to enhancing the quality of life in Greater Cleveland and the original and second-largest community foundation in the nation. Under his direction, the Cleveland Foundation became the first non-coastal community foundation to make AIDS grants. Mr. Minter led the Foundation's efforts to extend services for donors, expand donor outreach efforts to the African-American community, improve Cleveland's public schools and systematically revitalize Cleveland's neighborhoods and lakefront.
In 2003 Mr. Minter was awarded the Distinguished Grantmaker Award from the Council on Foundations in recognition of his lifetime achievement in the field of philanthropy.
Prior to joining the nonprofit sector, Mr. Minter worked in government, beginning as a caseworker for the Cuyahoga County Welfare Department in 1960 and going on to become its first African American director. From 1970-1975, he served as Commissioner of Public Welfare for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the first African American to do so. Mr. Minter joined the Carter administration in 1980 to serve as Under Secretary for United States Department of Education and ultimately as director of the department's transition from the Carter to the Reagan administration.
Mr. Minter, who holds a master’s degree in social administration from the Mandel School at Case Western Reserve University and a B.A. in education from Baldwin-Wallace College, will receive the Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
Other Honorary Degree recipients will be Lois B. Green and David Ward.
Ms. Green is an independent consultant for a number of central Massachusetts nonprofit organizations and is a member of the University of Massachusetts Medical School Faculty, serving as the Director of Geriatric Community Clerkship.
She is on the boards of the Fallon Clinic Foundation, Bet Shalom Housing for the Elderly (which she helped found), the Central Massachusetts Partnership to Improve Care at the End of Life, the Worcester Regional Research Bureau and is a trustee for the Hoche Scofield Foundation. She also received a Masters in Public Administration at Clark in 1978.
Mr. Ward is former president of the American Council on Education (ACE), serving from 2001 to 2008. Under his leadership, the American Council as the major coordinating agent for higher education, maintained and strengthened its efforts to expand equity and diversity, internationalization, lifelong learning, and institutional effectiveness. As president of ACE, he was appointed to the Council of the United Nations University and to the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, convened by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.
Ward is also the former provost and Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he was also Andrew H. Clark Professor of Geography. A recognized authority in historical urban geography, he has pioneered research on English and American cities during their rapid growth of the 19th and early 20th centuries and is the author of several books in this area, including "Poverty, Ethnicity, and the American City: Changing Conceptions of the Slum and the Ghetto, 1840-1920."
For updates call the Marketing and Communications Office, at 508-793-7441.