Jersey City, NJ – Best-selling author and NBC News Presidential Historian, Michael Beschloss, will address the Class of 2009 at the 118th commencement exercises for Saint Peter’s College in Jersey City. The ceremony will take place on Sunday, May 17, 2009 at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, N.J. at 10:00 a.m. The College will award degrees to approximately 750 students at the undergraduate and graduate levels; Beschloss will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters degree, honoris causa, as will honorary degree recipient Carl R. Augusto, president and chief executive officer for the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB).
Beschloss, who appears regularly on all NBC News programs, including Meet the Press and Today, provides viewers with expert analysis of the executive branch, and historical perspective on today’s leadership. His appointment as the NBC News Presidential Historian was the first position of its kind created by any major network. Beschloss is also a regular contributor to PBS’s The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. In 2005, he received an Emmy Award for creating the Discovery Channel series, Decisions that Shook the World, for which he was the host.
Trained in leadership at the Harvard Business School, Beschloss has the unique experience of having discussed leadership with every American president from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush. Beschloss shows executives and business leaders what they can learn from these men to better manage, lead and inspire.
Regarded by Newsweek as the “nation’s leading presidential historian,” Beschloss has written eight books on American presidents, including the best-sellers The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941-1945; Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964; and Reaching for Glory. His latest book, Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989, describes crucial times when courageous presidents took career-threatening risks and overcame obstacles to dramatically change the future of the United States.
A Chicago native, Beschloss is an alumnus of Williams College and Harvard University. He has served as a historian for the Smithsonian Institution, as a senior associate member at Oxford University and a senior fellow of the Annenberg Foundation.
He is a trustee of the White House Historical Association, the National Archives Foundation, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the Urban Institute, and the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Afsaneh, and their two sons.
Since 1991, Carl R. Augusto has served as the president and chief executive officer of the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB). In this position, Augusto has guided the organization toward fiscal stability and focused on addressing critical issues in the field of blindness. Under his leadership, AFB’s scope was also expanded to encourage American corporations to make products and services accessible to the blind and visually impaired. Mr. Augusto has additionally brought organizations, of and for the blind, together for greater collaboration.
From 1985 until his appointment as AFB’s president, he served as executive director of the Cincinnati Association for the Blind (CAB) where he expanded service programs to include assistive technology training and early childhood intervention. Previously, Augusto also held positions with the National Accreditation Council (NAC) for Agencies Serving the Blind and Visually Handicapped in New York City.
Prior to serving as the associate executive director for the NAC, Augusto worked as a rehabilitation counselor for the New York State Commission for the Blind and Visually Handicapped, as well as for Helen Keller Services for the Blind in Brooklyn.
He is currently the president of the North American/Caribbean Region of the World Blind Union (WBU). He also serves on the board of the National Assembly of Health and Human Service Organizations, and is a former board member of the National Industries for the Blind, the Descriptive Video Service of WGBH in Boston, and Radio Reading Services of Greater Cincinnati, Inc. among other affiliations.
Augusto has published several articles regarding blindness, as well as other fields of study. He has received numerous honors and awards, including the Robert B. Irwin Award presented by National Industries for the Blind; the George Card Award, presented by the American Council of the Blind; the J. Kenneth Cozier Award, presented by the Ohio Chapter of AER; and the Distinguished Service Award from the California Council for the Blind.
Augusto holds a master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling from New York University and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Connecticut. For more information about Augusto, visit the AFB Web site.
Saint Peter’s College is the Jesuit College of New Jersey. Founded in 1872, Saint Peter’s has an enrollment of approximately 3,000 students in undergraduate and graduate programs. The main campus is located in Jersey City with a branch campus in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, with courses at various corporate sites at the Jersey City waterfront and in South Amboy, NJ.