MOUNT VERNON — Cedar Rapids native and Xavier University President Michael Graham will receive the Distinguished Achievement Award at Cornell College’s
homecoming Saturday, Oct. 15, in an awards presentation at 10 a.m. in King Chapel.
Graham, a 1975 Cornell graduate, has served Xavier for 20 years, starting as an adjunct professor of history and culminating in his installation in 2001 as president of the Jesuit university in Cincinnati. He also has served as the senior development officer leading a $125 million campaign.
Graham graduated from Jefferson High School and then from Cornell with a degree in philosophy and psychology. He earned two master’s degrees and a doctorate from the University of Michigan, and a master’s degree in divinity at the Weston School of Theology. He was ordained a priest in 1988.
Other alumni to be honored are Dr. Sharon Goodwin Fogleman, receiving the Leadership and Service Award, and Tim Devine, with a Young Alumni Award. Fogleman, a 1975 Cornell graduate who earned a medical degree from the University of Iowa, has spent her career as a medical missionary. Along with her physician husband, she served a population of 350,000 people for 10 years in Kenya’s only
United Methodist hospital and since 1997 has worked at a Methodist medical clinic in rural Kentucky.
Devine, a 1992 Cornell graduate, has managed a number of successful Chicago political campaigns and was one of 10 Chicago-area winners of the 2004 Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching. He teaches history, government and constitutional law at Northside College Preparatory High School, Illinois’ No. 1 high school and one of the top 20 high schools in the country.
Also on Saturday is a reception from 3 to 5 p.m. for the current exhibition in the Peter Paul Luce Gallery of McWethy Hall. “
Cornell College Alumni Photo” features 15 alumni artists’ work, including traditional and digital ranges of the spectrum, manipulated imagery, documentary subjects, human and canine portraiture and landscapes of a personal and universal nature.
Cornell’s homecoming events begin Friday, Oct. 14, and include a pep rally and fireworks in Ash Park, starting at 9:30 p.m. Other special activities are historic tours of campus, featuring reenactors representing characters from Cornell’s past, starting outside The Commons at 3 p.m. Friday and 1:30 p.m. Saturday, and the homecoming football game against the University of Dubuque, kicking off at 1 p.m. Saturday in Ash Park.
