Ohio Northern University will celebrate its 2016 Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony in the ONU Sports Center on Sunday, May 8, at 2 p.m.
David Greene
David Greene, NPR’s “Morning Edition” host, will serve as the undergraduate commencement speaker.
The student address will be delivered by Jason Luthman, a graduating mechanical engineering major, with minors in chemistry and biomedical science, from Bellbrook, Ohio.
For two years prior to taking his current role in 2012, Greene was an NPR foreign correspondent based in Moscow covering the region from Ukraine and the Baltics, east to Siberia.
During that time, he brought listeners stories as wide ranging as Chernobyl 25 years later and Beatles-singing Russian Babushkas. He spent a month in Libya reporting riveting stories in the most difficult of circumstances as NATO bombs fell on Tripoli. He was honored with the 2011 Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize from WBUR and Boston University for that coverage of the Arab Spring.
Greene’s voice became familiar to NPR listeners from his four years covering the White House. He also spent time trekking across five continents, reporting on White House visits to places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Rwanda, Uruguay and, of course, Crawford, Texas.
Greene was an integral part of NPR’s coverage of the historic 2008 election, covering Hillary Clinton’s campaign from start to finish and focusing on how racial attitudes were playing into voters’ decisions. The White House Correspondents Association took special note of Greene’s report on a speech by then-candidate Barack Obama, addressing the nation’s racial divide. Greene was given the association’s 2008 Merriman Smith Award for deadline coverage of the presidency.
After Obama took office, Greene kept one eye trained on the White House and the other eye on the road. He spent three months driving across America – with a recorder, camera and lots of caffeine – to learn how the recession was touching Americans during Obama’s first 100 days in office. The series was called “100 Days: On the Road in Troubled Times.”
Before joining NPR in 2005, Greene spent nearly seven years as a newspaper reporter for The Baltimore Sun. He covered the White House during the Bush administration’s first term and wrote about an array of other topics for the paper: Why Oklahomans love the sport of cockfighting, why two Amish men in Pennsylvania were caught trafficking methamphetamine, and how one woman brought Christmas back to a small town in Maryland.
Before graduating magna cum laude from Harvard in 1998 with a degree in government, Greene worked as the senior editor on The Harvard Crimson. In 2004, he was named co-volunteer of the year for Coaching for College, a Washington, D.C., program offering tutoring to inner-city youth.
At the undergraduate ceremony, Greene will be awarded an honorary degree. Ohio Northern also will award an honorary degree to Inara Brubaker, who retired in 2002 from the UOP/AlliedSignal (now Honeywell International) Research Center.
Inara Brubaker
From 1996-2002, Brubaker was a senior research associate with UOP; from 1988 to 1996, she was project leader and research manager at AlliedSignal.
Her work was in applied research in analytical chemistry and separations, ranging from feed to effluent treatment and purification, and in materials properties and recycling.
She is a co-author of about two dozen publications on separations, separation processes and analytical methodologies as well as co-author of three U.S. patents.
In 2003, Brubaker received the Chicago Section Public Affairs Award for “pioneering the development of programs and activities that established the agenda for a decade of state and location section cooperation on a wide range of public policy issues; for setting the performance standard for the ACS Congressional Fellowship by her significant achievements during her fellowship year of 1977; and for serving your community in various ways.”
Brubaker is a Lifetime Member of the Lehr Society and was very active in ONU’s recent capital campaign.
She funded the chemistry seminar room and the chemistry student organization room in the Mathile Center.
She also established The Erika Jane and Andra Elaine Brubaker Memorial Scholarship in Chemistry in 1994. She is a Class of 1959 reunion planning committee member, and in June 2004, she was appointed to the Advisory Council for the College of Arts & Sciences. She has spoken to chemistry classes and students on campus.
Brubaker earned her Bachelor of Science in chemistry and mathematics from Ohio Northern University and her Master of Science and Ph.D. in chemistry from Ohio State University. She also is a graduate of Shawnee High School in Lima.
Doors for the undergraduate commencement ceremony will open Sunday at 12:30 p.m. Guests should arrive by 1 p.m. The musical prelude will begin at 1:30 p.m., followed by the procession of faculty and students.
Tickets are not required to attend ONU’s Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony.
