Academic Convocation
Bill Strickland,
President and CEO
Manchester Bidwell Corporation
Please join us for Academic Convocation
A celebration of excellence, caritas et veritas, and community at Dominican University
Monday, August 31, 2009
4:00 p.m., Lund Auditorium
During Academic Convocation on August 31, Dominican University will honor four extraordinary
individuals. Seniors will also receive their pins. Following Academic Convocation, please join us
for DU Fest.
The Bradford-O'Neill Medallion for Social Justice
The Sister Mary Clemente Davlin, OP Diversity Leadership Award
The Bradford-O’Neill Medallion for Social Justice: Bill Strickland
President and CEO of Manchester
Bidwell Corporation
Bill Strickland focuses on building partnerships to help the disadvantaged
build a better future. Strickland grew up in Manchester, an inner-city neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
His life changed when he became inspired by his high school art teacher, a skilled artisan on the
potter's wheel. This gave Strickland the idea for the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, which began as
an after-school arts program in a donated row house while Strickland was a student at the
University of Pittsburgh.
In 1971, Strickland took over leadership of the Bidwell Training Center, which provides vocational training to displaced and underemployed workers. Strickland formed relationships with businesses, government officials and individuals who shared his vision. Manchester Bidwell Corporation is a national model for education, culture and hope. MCG Youth & Arts and MCG Jazz are programs of Manchester Craftsmen's Guild; MCG Youth is dedicated to preserving, promoting and presenting jazz music. Bidwell Training Center provides market-driven career education through partnerships with leading local industries. The center offers accredited associate degrees in culinary arts, chemical laboratory technologies, health careers, horticulture and office technology. He has completed the development of a new 40,000-square-foot production greenhouse for the development of Phalaenopsis orchids and hydroponics vegetables, a 70,000-square-foot medical technology complex and a 62,000-square-foot facility, which includes a 350-seat music hall, library, arts studios and labs, meeting rooms and award-winning audio and video recording studios Strickland is replicating the Manchester Bidwell enterprise throughout the country.
Strickland has been honored with numerous awards including Indiana University of Pennsylvania's Presidential Legacy Award for Civic Service, International Association for Jazz Education's Lawrence Berk Leadership Award, American Heart Association Heart of the Community Award, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the area of Arts and Education and the International Economic Development Council's 2005 Citizen Leadership Award. In 1998, he accepted on behalf of the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild the "Coming Up Taller" Award presented in a White House ceremony by first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. In 1996, he received the MacArthur "Genius" Award for leadership and ingenuity in the arts.
He has also served as chairman of the Expansion Arts Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in Washington, D.C. and served a six-year Presidential appointment as a Council Member to the NEA. He was also a Member of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Pennsylvania State Board of Education and a consultant with the British/American Arts Association in London, England.
Strickland has excelled in cultivating collaborative partnerships in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, San Francisco, Baltimore and Grand Rapids. He has developed successful relationships with prominent foundations such as the ALCOA Foundation, Helen Bader Foundation, The Danforth Foundation, Ford Foundation, The Forbes Fund, the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, the Milwaukee Foundation, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Social Venture Partners, Pittsburgh Foundation, E. M. Kauffman Foundation, Heinz Foundation, R.K. Mellon Foundation and Pew Charitable Trust.
In 2002, Strickland was sworn in as a member of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. He also serves as a consultant, grant evaluator and mentor in the field of arts and arts education, community development and vocational training.
Strickland, his wife Rose and daughter Olivia, reside on the north side of Pittsburgh.
The Sister Mary Clemente Davlin, OP Diversity Leadership Award: Vernita Jones, Fannie Theresa Rush and MaDonna Thelen
The Sister Mary Clemente Davlin, OP Diversity Leadership Award, will be presented to Vernita Jones, Fannie Theresa Rushing and MaDonna Thelen.
As coordinator of Special Services
for Rosary College in 1970,
Vernita Jones, a 1961 graduate of Rosary College, worked with primarily Hispanic
and African-American students in the Academic Potential Program. Her job was "to set up necessary
supportive services that Special Admissions students would need for a successful academic and
social adjustment to college and to assist minority students." She worked with the deans of
Academic Students and Admissions to develop a program that would provide academic and financial aid
opportunities to students with college potential, but who lacked the benefits of a quality high
school preparation.
When she left Rosary College in 1977, she worked as director of pupil services at Roosevelt Junior High School in the Bellwood School District. She was principal of Lincoln Elementary Schools until she retired in 1999. She is an active member of St. Philip Neri Parish in South Shore where she helps with Sunday masses. She also volunteers in the food panty, faith knitting circle and the annual fund-raising committee. She is a member of the Women's Club and the Garden and Grounds Beautification Committee. She was the 2007 recipient of the Bishop Augustus Tolton award, which was presented by Cardinal Francis George. She also volunteers weekly at the DuSable Museum of African American History.
As a young student, Fannie Rushing was active in the Student nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the south, participating in the civil rights struggle. She has lived and studied in Mexico, Central America, and Cuba, as well as the United States. After Vernita Jones left Rosary College, Rushing took over the responsibility of assisting minority students. She taught study skills and helped form a faculty colloquium that met regularly on race relations. She also helped the students build an organization for students of color. She left Rosary to pursue her doctoral studies in history at the University of Chicago. She taught at Northwestern University and DePaul University before taking her current position at Benedictine University, where she is tenured in the history department. She specializes in Latin American studies, but also teaches core curriculum classes. She has helped organize a movement to record the vanishing histories of African Americans and make them accessible to new generations around the world. This movement has resulted in oral history tapes, music tapes and the archiving of records in the Carter Woodson (Chicago Public) Library. She received the HistoryMaker's Award in 2004.
Current Dominican University Director of Service Learning MaDonna Thelen has spent her career engaged in social justice and service learning with students. She has coordinated collaborative, curricular/co-curricular educational projects, including originating an institutional priority for service learning and establishment of a community-based Learning Center and the Service Learning Center at Dominican University. She has met, marched with, listened to and learned from people who celebrated and honored the diversity of people and cultures. She has assisted in the development and leadership of international service learning courses and experiences in El Salvador, Mexico, Venezuela and South Africa. Thelen also has participated in a summer service immersion in Belize, Central America. She has served as a summer school teacher at the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Migrant Workers Camp. She has taught and ministered to girls at African American high schools on Chicago's south side. She has her master's degree in theology and arts from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, Calif., and her master's in applied spirituality from the University of San Francisco, San Francisco.