Candy Crowley to Deliver Commencement Address on May 20th

President Weisbuch has announced that Candy Crowley, CNN’s senior political correspondent, will deliver the commencement address at the university’s 138th annual commencement ceremonies on Saturday, May 20, 2006.

“A working journalist of Candy’s caliber, who is also a graduate of a fine liberal arts college, will deliver compelling remarks to our graduates,” said Weisbuch. “I am honored to welcome her to campus and to have her share this special day with our students and their friends and family.”

Crowley covers a broad range of stories for CNN, including presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial races and major legislative developments on Capitol Hill. Previously, Crowley was a congressional correspondent for the network. She came to CNN from NBC in 1987.

Crowley’s assignments have taken her to all 50 states and around the world. She has covered presidential campaigns of Pat Buchanan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Howard Dean, Bob Dole, Jesse Jackson, Edward Kennedy, John Kerry, Ronald Regan, and Paul Tsonga, among others. Since the presidential nomination of Jimmy Carter, she has covered all but one of the national political conventions.

Crowley began her broadcast journalism career in Washington, DC, as a newsroom assistant for Metromedia radio station WASH. She has served as an anchor for Mutual Broadcasting and as a general assignment and White House correspondent for the Associated Press, where she covered most of the Reagan era before moving on to NBC-TV to become a general assignment correspondent in NBC’s Washington bureau.

In 2005, Crowley was honored with the Edward R. Murrow award and the Joan Shorenstein Barone Award for excellence in journalism for her reporting on the 2004 presidential election. In 2004, Crowley won the Gracie Allen Award in the “National News Story-Series” category for “War Stories” and a National Headliner and a Cine award for CNN Presents: Fit to Kill. In 2003, Crowley won an Emmy for her work on CNN Presents: Enemy Within. She won the 1999 DuPont-Columbia University Silver Baton Award for her coverage of the impeachment and trial of President Bill Clinton.

Crowley earned a bachelor’s degree from Randolph-Macon Women’s College.