Cedar Crest College

May 11 Commencement speaker

Cedar Crest College has announced that Shabana Basij-Rasikh, the co-founder and president of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan, will be the Commencement speaker at 10 a.m. on May 11 at the PPL Center, 701 Hamilton St., Allentown. At that time, she will also receive an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Cedar Crest College.

Born and raised in Kabul, Afghanistan, under Taliban rule, she studied in secret schools as education girls was forbidden. She completed high school in the United States through the State Department’s Youth Exchange Studies program. She graduated with honors in 2011 from Middlebury College, where she received the Campus Compact Madeline Kunin Public Service Award for outstanding leadership and service to others.

She returned to Afghanistan and established SOLA, the country’s first boarding school for girls from age 11-19.

In 2014, she was named one of National Geographic’s Emerging Explorers and one of CNN International’s Leading Women. She was recognized with the Malalai Medal in 2018, one of Afghanistan’s most important national awards.

April 2 Information session

There will be an information session for adults interested in advancing their careers through continuing education, at 5:45 p.m. on April 2 in the Tompkins College Center.

Program directors and faculty will be in attendance to meet with prospective students about Cedar Crest’s undergraduate and graduate academic programs, including the recently added Master of Science in Integrative Exercise Science and the graduate certificate in Strategic Leadership and Analytics. The event is hosted by Cedar Crest College’s School of Adult and Graduate Education.

To register, visit www.cedarcrest.edu/sageevents or contact the School of Adult and Graduate Education at 610-740-3770 or email sage@cedarcrest.edu.

Award-winning author Bathsheba Monk will present a fiction reading and sign copies of her books from 7 to 8 p.m. April 3 in the Tompkins College Center. The free, open to the public event as part of the college’s Visiting Writers Series.

The speaker is an editor of Blue Heron Book Works, develops original screenplays for television, writes the Swanson Herbinko Mystery series and, as Maddy Wells, authors young adult novels. Her collection of short stories, ‘Now You See It…Stories from Cokesville, Pa.’ and her novel ‘Nude Walker’ bring to life the coal and steel towns of Pennsylvania, depicting underrepresented experiences in working-class, post-industrial America.

For information,email acwellfo@cedarcrest.edu.

Cedar Crest College is located at 100 College Drive, Allentown, 8104. For information, call 1-800-360-1222 or visit www.cedarcrest.edu.

Muhlenberg College

May 19 Commencement speaker

Author and attorney Scott Turow will be the speaker for Muhlenberg College’s 171st Commencement on May 19. He is the author of 14 books, including ‘Presumed Innocent’ which became a 1990 movie starring Harrison Ford. He is a law school classmate of both college president John I. Williams Jr. and his wife Diane Pierce-Williams.

He earned an undergraduate degree from Amherst College and a doctorate from Harvard Law School. He attended Stanford University’s Creative Writing Center.

Turow, former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury Sarah Bloom Raskin, chief of the Wills Eye Pediatric Ophthalmology and Ocular Genetics Service Dr. Alex Levin ’78 and former Sandy Hook Elementary School teacher Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis will receive an honorary degrees during the ceremony.

Muhlenberg College is located at 2400 W. Chew St., Allentown, 18104. For information, visit www.muhlenberg.edu.

Northampton Community College

Gender Genie Tour April2

Kavindu “Kavi” Ade, an activist, arts educator and nationally recognized poet of Afro and indigenous Caribbean descent, will present the ‘Gender Genie’ tour at 11 a.m. April 2 in Room 114, Cohen Lounge, College Center, Bethlehem Campus. The performance will be followed by a Q & A session.

Ade earned a bachelor of arts in social justice with a concentration on art for social change and gender justice.

The poetry is described as a lamentation, a leaning in to what haunts the spirit of a Black Trans Queer body. Ade is a 2016 Leeway Transformation Award Recipient, Brave New Voices Alum, Watering Hole Poetry Fellow, and former Poetry Slam Coach for the internationally recognized Philly Youth Poetry Movement.

The free, open to the public event is sponsored by the NCC Pride Club and the College Life Committee. For more information, visit www.northampton.edu or call 610-861-5300.

Northampton Community College’s main campus is located at 3835 Green Pond Road. The Fowler Family Southside Center is located at 511 E. Third St. For information, call 610-861-5000 or visit or visit www.northampton.edu or http://northampton.edu/news/ncc-events-calendar.htm.