Nationally recognized journalist John S. Carroll to deliver Transylvania University commencement address on Saturday, May 23, at 10 a.m.
John Carroll LEXINGTON, Ky.—Veteran journalist John S. Carroll will deliver the commencement address at Transylvania University on Saturday, May 23, at 10 a.m. on the steps of historic Old Morrison, where 260 seniors will be awarded the Bachelor of Arts degree. Carroll, a member of the Transylvania Board of Trustees, is a nationally recognized leader in the field of journalism. He is a veteran of more than four decades of editorial and executive experience at five metropolitan daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the Lexington Herald-Leader. He directed coverage that won numerous Pulitzer Prizes for the Los Angeles and Lexington papers, as well as the Baltimore Sun and Philadelphia Inquirer. During his tenure in Lexington, he spearheaded an investigative series of reports titled Cheating Our Children. The series exposed flaws in Kentucky’s public education system, which helped led to the passage of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990. He was a Neiman Fellow at Harvard University, a Knight Visiting Lecturer at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a Visiting Journalist Fellow at Queen Elizabeth House in Oxford University. Continuing the tradition of a graduating senior speaking at commencement on behalf of the students, Marshall Allen Jolly, an American Studies major and Communications minor from Paris, Ky., has been selected to represent the Class of 2009. Carroll will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters