A total of 380 graduates participated in the ceremony in the Todd Wehr Center. Lakeland awarded 574 undergraduate degrees, 363 to students that attended classes through Lakeland's Kellett School of Adult Education and 211 to students from the college's full-time program at its main campus in Sheboygan County. Lakeland also awarded 219 graduate degrees.

On Saturday night, at Lakeland's graduation celebration, hosted by the Lakeland College Alumni Association, the college made two major award presentations.

Terry Miller of Sheboygan was named the winner of the Robert W. Lope Award, which goes to the Kellett School graduate who has shown unusual persistence, dedication and commitment in the course of earning their bachelor's degree.

Miller starting taking classes at Lakeland nine years ago, and he completed 92 of his 120 of his academic credits at Lakeland. He graduated Sunday with a bachelor's degree in business management.

Miller's parents had a dream of seeing all four of their children graduate from college, and Miller's graduation completed that dream. Miller relocated twice while taking class, he had three kidney surgeries, a rotator cuff repair and, most challenging, his mother died of cancer a few months before he completed his final coursework.

Kasey Gussert of Kingsford, Mich., was named the winner of the Clarence H. Koehler Campus Senior Award, given annually to the graduate who best exemplifies the "Lakeland Spirit" through academic achievement, service to the college and fellow students and participation in college and student programs and activities.

A four-year member of the Dean's List, Gussert, who gained acceptance into Lakeland's honors program, graduated with a bachelor's in biochemistry and conducted research for Lakeland during her undergraduate time.

She was extensively involved at Lakeland, serving as an officer for Lakeland's pre-healthcare club, a member of the women's basketball team for four seasons, including two as captain, and an ambassador for Lakeland's admissions department. She will attending the University of Wisconsin pharmacy school this fall.

Susan Mboya, founder and president of Zawadi Africa Educational Fund and an executive with Coca-Cola Company, delivered Sunday's commencement address, which was recorded and will be aired nationally on CSPAN.

Mboya established the Zawadi Africa Education Fund (www.zawadiafrica.org) in 2002 to provide scholarships to academically gifted girls from disadvantaged backgrounds from Africa to pursue higher education in the United States.

Two students have attended Lakeland College for the past two years through the program, and two more will attend Lakeland next year.

Susan Mboya's work is a living tribute to her father, Tom Mboya, a former minister for justice and constitutional affairs in Kenya who was assassinated in 1969. Susan based her organization on the highly successful Kennedy-Mboya Africa Student Airlifts Program of the 1960s, pioneered by her father and President John F Kennedy.

Peter Shem Kamuyu attended Lakeland from 1959-61 through the Kennedy-Mboya Africa Student Airlifts Program.

Following her address, Mboya received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Lakeland.

Terry Kohler, a well-known and respected business leader and longtime friend of the environment, received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in recognition of his lifetime of "committed service to country, community and the environment."

Kohler is president of Windway Capital Corp. He was associated with one of its subsidiaries, The Vollrath Co., for 27 years and served as chairman and CEO prior to a 1989 reorganization that formed Windway.

Lakeland is one of many community organizations that have been the beneficiaries of the philanthropy of Terry and his wife, Mary Stewart Kohler.

Prior to his successful business career, Kohler served in the U.S. Air Force, and he continues actively his flying in various aircraft including the Cessna Caravan.

Kohler received his master of science degree in industrial management from the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In addition to teaching computer programming classes at MIT, he was the first Business Executive in Residence at Lakeland College.

Kohler is an outdoor sports enthusiast. He has sailed and raced extensively for 60 years, and is also a past Commodore of the Lake Michigan Sail Racing Federation. He is a life member of Ducks Unlimited (DU) and the National Rifle Association (NRA), and has served on the Board of Directors of the Trout & Salmon Foundation for two decades.

Terry and Mary Kohler are actively involved with the International Crane Foundation and the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service. They recently received the 2009 Lindbergh Award for their lifelong dedication to environmental conservation, and the more recent use of their airplanes to help reintroduce trumpeter swans and whooping cranes in the United States.

The Kohlers have been involved for over a decade with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in the Trumpeter Swan Recovery Project, collecting and flying swan eggs back from Alaska.

Terry's father, Walter J. Kohler Jr., and grandfather, Walter J. Kohler, both served as Governor of Wisconsin, from 1951 to 1957 and 1929 to 1931 respectively, and he was a candidate for U.S. Senate and governor in Wisconsin.

Sunday got started with the baccalaureate service in the Bradley Fine Arts Building.

The baccalaureate preacher was Kelly J. Stone, the chaplain at Lakeland and an ordained United Church of Christ minister.

Stone joined the Lakeland community in the summer of 2006 and has sought new and creative ways to meet Lakeland's religious needs. Prior to Lakeland, she served two churches in Connecticut working with youth and young adults while completing her masters of divinity at Yale Divinity School.

A native of Northwestern Illinois, Stone received her bachelor of arts from Elmhurst College. She is an advisor for Lakeland's Habitat for Humanity chapter, and serves as a resource for numerous other organizations that are concerned with matters of faith, equality and diversity.

Photos from the event are available for viewing.

The Mirror won three awards in Region 6 of the Society of Professional Journalists' (SPJ) 2008 Mark of Excellence competition. The Mirror was recognized for these awards at the Mark of Excellence Luncheon in Bloomington, Minn., in March.

Junior Jessica Lillie and junior J.D. Botana III took second place in the editorial cartooning category for three different political cartoons; senior Alex Marit took third place in feature photography for his homecoming photo of the cheese ball toss; and the entire Lakeland Mirror staff placed third for the Best All-Around Non-Daily Student Newspaper for three of its recent issues.

"I hadn't taken very many photos this year, so I was thrilled when I was notified of the win," said Marit.

"When I was told that I'd won an award for something in the Mirror, I was stoked," said Lillie, who is serving as managing editor this semester. "I'm glad they recognized the value of our political cartoons."

Lakeland has won SPJ's Mark of Excellence awards every year since 2003. SPJ's Region 6 includes newspapers from Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. In the 12 regions of the contest, over 3,600 entries were submitted.

The Mirror also won two Wisconsin Newspaper Association Foundation (WNA) awards last fall. Sports editor Brad Wilk and former editor-in-chief Lori Sass were given honorable mentions in the weekly news publication division of the WNA contest in their respective categories.

Wilk received his award in the category of sports reporting for his article on the Lakeland's men's volleyball team winning the national championship last April. Sass won in the graphics category for her artwork exhibiting the effects of alcohol on the body.

The WNA holds the contest annually, and the Mirror last won awards in 2006.

"I am very proud of the entire staff," said Erik Hyrkas, who serves as editor-in-chief this semester. "Without their constant quality contributions, these awards would be fewer and further between."

• 6th hour: 8:30-11 a.m.
• 11th hour: 12-2:30 p.m.
• *9th hour: 3:30-6 p.m.

In addition to serving as series editor of "The Best American Poetry," which he initiated in 1988, he is general editor of the University of Michigan Press's Poets on Poetry Series.

He is the author of several collections of poems, including "When a Woman Loves a Man" (Scribner, 2005), "Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man" (with James Cummins, Soft Skull Press, 2005), "The Evening Sun" (2002), "The Daily Mirror: A Journal in Poetry" (2000), "Valentine Place" (1996), "Operation Memory" (1990), and "An Alternative to Speech" (1986).

Karl Elder, Lakeland's Fessler Professor of Creative Writing and the college's poet-in-residence, met Lehman at a reading in Milwaukee several years ago, and the two poets have long admired each other's work. Lehman told The National Poetry Review Press that Elder's "Gilgamesh at the Bellagio" was a "tour de force."

"I'm partial to his scholarship and his prose," Elder said. "I was impressed by his professionalism and upbeat anecdotes between poems at a reading he delivered in Milwaukee, and I said to myself then, this is a guy right for a wider audience than mere poets and professors."

Poet John Hollander is another admirer of Lehman's work.

"This increasingly impressive poet keeps reminding us that putting aside childish things can be done only wisely and well by keeping in touch with them, and that American life is best understood and celebrated by those who are, with Whitman, both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it," Hollander said.

A native of New York City, Lehman graduated from Columbia University and attended Cambridge University in England as a Kellett Fellow. He also received a doctorate in English from Columbia University.

He has edited such books as "Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms: 65 Leading Contemporary Poets Select and Comment on Their Poems" (1987; expanded, 1996), "James Merrill, Essays in Criticism" (with Charles Berger, 1983), and "Beyond Amazement: New Essays on John Ashbery" (1980). Most recently, Lehman edited "The Oxford Book of American Poetry" (Oxford University Press, 2006).

His books of criticism include "The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets" (Doubleday, 1998), which was named a "Book to Remember 1999" by the New York Public Library; "The Big Question" (1995); "The Line Forms Here" (1992); and "Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man" (1991). His study of detective novels, "The Perfect Murder" (1989), was nominated for an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Lehman's honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writer's Award. He is on the core faculty of the graduate writing programs at the New School and New York University. He lives in New York City.

The ceremony will be broadcast live and can be viewed on a projection screen in the Woltzen Gymnasium in the Wehr Center. Tickets are not needed to watch the broadcast, which is also open to the public.

Whitcomb's address, entitled, "Being Present to Your Life: Spiritual Tools for the Spiritual Journey," will be at 11 a.m. in the Bradley Fine Arts Building on the Lakeland campus. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Founders Day is an annual Lakeland event that recognizes the church's contributions to Lakeland and provides a time to reflect on Lakeland's strong tradition with the United Church of Christ.

Whitcomb graduated from Yale Divinity School in 1978 and has served churches in Connecticut, Iowa and Wisconsin. She is also a graduate of the two-year program for spiritual directors at the Shalem Institute in Bethesda, Md.

A widely-traveled retreat leader who directs Kettlewood Retreats, she is also a spiritual director and writer who has published dozens of articles on spirituality. She is the author of four books including "Feasting with God and Practicing Your Path." Her latest book, "The Seven Spiritual Gifts of Waiting," sold out in three weeks and had to be immediately reprinted. It took her to New York City where she did a taping for the popular TV show, "New Morning."

Whitcomb lives in suburban Milwaukee with her husband Dr. John Whitcomb, an emergency physician. They are the parents of two adult children, David and Kate.

The Lakeland College Concert Band, Concert Choir, Frauenchor and Schilcutt Handbells will all perform. The concert will open with the singing of the Lakeland College Alma Mater, conducted by 1988 graduate Lisa Landwehr, a music teacher in the Sheboygan Area School District.

The concert is free and open to the public.

The Frauenchor's portion of the program will feature music from several countries and cultures, ending with an American spiritual. The Concert Choir will perform traditional sacred music from the 16th, 19th and 20th centuries. Songs from the musical "Pippin" will be heard from both choirs. Three student soloists will be featured.

The band will be performing two new works by award-winning composer and teacher Zamuel Hazo. The band will also perform the Second Suite in F for Military Band of Gustav Holst, a standard piece for band is based on old English folk songs. The band will also perform "The Symphony of Soul" by Robert W. Smith, a modern composition composed to commemorate the Battle of Bad Axe, the last historic Indian-American battle fought east of the Mississippi River. The band will close its portion of the concert with an arrangement of music from the motion picture "Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End."

After the concert, Lakeland's Schilcutt Handbell Ensemble will perform in the lobby.

Whether talking about Elvis, the Eucharist, Christian hope, sex or reality TV, Rodney Clapp is insightful, funny, earthy, challenging and wise.

Clapp, editorial director and cofounder of Brazos Press, a publishing house of ecumenical Christian books cast at the trade and academic levels, will deliver Lakeland College's Mission House Lecture on Tuesday, Nov. 6, at 11 a.m.

The lecture, held in Lakeland's Bradley Fine Arts Building, is free and open to the public.

Clapp demonstrates through his writings and interaction with people why Christian spirituality must be centered in the life and practices of the Christian congregation. He is the author of six books, including the forthcoming "Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction: Christianity and the Battle for the Soul of a Nation," as well as "A Peculiar People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society."

He has contributed essays to 16 other books and published more than 100 essays in such venues as Christian Century, Catholic Digest, The Church of England Newspaper, The Mennonite Quarterly Review and Cultural Encounters. He has formerly edited Prism, the magazine of Evangelicals for Social Action, and served as an editor at InterVarsity Press and Christianity Today.