Norwich University announces 2011 commencement speaker

For Immediate Release
April 26, 2011

Contact: Daphne Larkin
802-485-2886 or 595-3613(m)
dlarkin@norwich.edu

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NEWS RELEASE

NORTHFIELD, Vt. – Norwich University officials announced that the speaker for the May 15 commencement ceremony will be the Honorable Jane Holl Lute. Dr. Lute currently serves as the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, having been confirmed by the Senate on April 3, 2009.

Dr. Lute has over thirty years of military and senior executive experience in the United States government and at the heart of efforts to prevent and resolve international crises.

Dr. Lute has served as Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, responsible for support to peacekeeping operations. In this capacity, Dr. Lute managed operational support for the second-largest deployed military presence in the world. At the United Nations, Dr. Lute led rapid-response support to a wide variety of operations and crises in some of the most remote, austere, and dangerous environments in the world. She also effectively directed the growth of United Nations Peacekeeping support from a $1.8 billion to nearly $8 billion operation.

Prior to joining the United Nations, Dr. Lute served on the National Security Council staff under both President George H.W. Bush and President William Jefferson Clinton.

Dr. Lute graduated from Montclair State University and received her Second Lieutenant Commission through Seton Hall University Army ROTC in 1978. She had a distinguished career in the United States Army, including service in the Gulf during Operation Desert Storm.
Dr. Lute has a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University, and a J.D. from Georgetown University.

Commencement exercises will be held in Shapiro Field House on Sunday, May 15, at 10:30 a.m.

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Norwich University is a diversified academic institution that educates traditional-age students and adults in a Corps of Cadets and as civilians. Norwich offers a broad selection of traditional and distance-learning programs culminating in Baccalaureate and Graduate Degrees. Norwich University was founded in 1819 by Captain Alden Partridge of the U.S. Army. Norwich University is the oldest private military college in the United States of America and the birthplace of our nation's Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). www.norwich.edu