GRANVILLE, Ohio — Author Ann Hagedorn and educator Orlando Taylor will speak at Denison University’s 168th commencement at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 17, 2009, on the Fine Arts Quadrangle on the college’s lower campus (the 200 block of West Broadway), weather permitting. In case of rain, the ceremonies will be moved to the Mitchell Recreation and Athletics Center (200 Livingston Drive). This marks the first time since 1972 that more than one distinguished honoree has been designated as commencement speaker. Both will receive an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree during the ceremony, and both have significant ties to the college that began when they were students at Denison.

	Ann Hagedorn ’71

Born in Dayton, Ann Hagedorn earned her bachelor’s degree in history at Denison. She went on to earn a master’s in library science from the University of Michigan and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University.

Her newspaper career began at the San Jose Mercury News, after which she became a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal and later, an investigative editor for the New York Daily News. She has reported on a broad range of subjects, writing front-page stories on white-collar crime on Wall Street, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the federal prison system and numerous federal trials in New York.

In 1991, she focused her knowledge of fraud and bankruptcy on the collapse of an American horse racing dynasty, Calumet Farm. The probe resulted in her first book, “Wild Ride,” which is now under option with Paramount Pictures. Her other books are “Ransom: The Untold Story of International Kidnapping” (Henry Holt & Co.); the award-winning “Beyond the River: A True Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad” (Simon & Schuster); and “Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919” (Simon & Schuster). Currently, she is working on an investigative narrative about the new private military companies. Her books have been reviewed in The Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, The New York Times and many other prestigious publications.

Hagedorn has taught writing at Northwestern, Columbia and Xavier universities. She’s currently the Simons Fellow in Writing and Humanities at the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas. About her third book, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote that it is “as vivid in its narration as it is scrupulous in its scholarship.”

Orlando Taylor is vice provost for research and dean of the Graduate School at Howard University. He joined the Howard faculty in 1973 after serving in various positions at Indiana and Stanford universities, the University of Pittsburgh, and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. A national leader in graduate education, communication sciences and disorders, educational linguistics, sociolinguistics, and communication, Taylor has been a lifelong advocate for the educational progress of minority students. He graduated from the Hampton Institute in Virginia where he participated in an exchange program for black students that brought him to Denison University for one year. At Denison he was mentored by Professor of Speech Lionel G. Crocker and developed an interest in interracial and intercultural communication.

	Orlando Taylor ’57

Taylor earned a master’s degree at Indiana University and his doctorate at the University of Michigan, where his dissertation linked brain function with language and communication behaviors. He was a founder of the Black Caucus unit of the American Speech and Hearing Association and a similar group, the Speech Association of America Black Caucus. His research in Ebonics and communication disorders led to a two-volume anthology in 1986, “Nature of Communication Disorders in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Populations” and “Treatment of Communication Disorders in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Populations.” Taylor’s most recent book is “Making the Connection: Academic Achievement and Language Diversity in African American Children.”

The past president of the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools and the National Communication Association, Taylor also has served on the Advisory Committee of the Directorate for Education and Human Resources of the National Science Foundation and on the Advisory Council at the National Institutes of Health. He currently works with the U.S. Department of Education to develop collaborative academic and research programs between universities in Brazil and in four European Union countries with Howard University and several others in the United States.

Denison University, founded in 1831, is an independent, residential liberal arts institution located in Granville, Ohio. A highly selective college enrolling 2,050 full-time undergraduate students from all 50 states and dozens of foreign countries, Denison is a place where innovative faculty and motivated students collaborate in research, civic engagement and the cultivation of independent thinking.

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