St. Lawrence University announces 2024 Commencement Speakers

CANTON, N.Y. (WWTI) – Kathleen Fitzgerald ’92 and Cali Brooks will be honored during this year’s commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 19, in celebration of their exceptional achievements and exemplary service to St. Lawrence University and the North Country community, Professor Liz Regosin will address the Class of 2024.

Kathleen H. Fitzgerald ’92 is a conservation leader with extensive experience in integrated large landscape conservation and development programs in Africa and North America, she will be presented with an honorary doctorate degree.

She has worked in 24 countries focusing on building resilient conservation landscapes for wildlife and people. Her list of accomplishments include:

• Creating new conservation areas;
• Improving management and financial sustainability of existing protected areas;
• Establishing innovative public-private-partnerships for conservation and communities;
• Supporting community and climate resiliency initiatives;
• Helping establish the first species impact bond;
• Completing dozens of conservation land transactions; and
• She is also widely published.

Fitzgerald has been:

• A partner at Conservation Capital;
• Vice president at the African Wildlife Foundation;
• Co-founder and executive director at the Northeast Wilderness Trust;
• Executive director of the Stowe Land Trust;
• Project director of Enduring Earth at The Pew Charitable Trusts; and
• A member of the World Commission on Protected Areas Advisory Group;

At St. Lawrence University, she majored in environmental studies and government and earned a master’s degree from the University of Vermont’s Field Naturalist Program, where she did her final research on wolves in Canada.

Cali Brooks is President & CEO of Adirondack Foundation Cali Brooks will receive the North Country Citation in recognition of her leadership of a community foundation that strengthens and enriches Adirondack communities. Within 20 years, the Adirondack Foundation has grown to $90 million in assets and has distributed over $75 million in grants and scholarships to the mountain and lake communities throughout the Adirondack region.

Brooks currently serves on:

• The North Country Regional Economic Development Council;
• Common Ground Alliance Core Team; and
• The New York Federal Reserve Bank Community Advisory Council.

She has formally served on North Country Public Radio’s Executive Committee and on the station manager search committee. She is a 2014 recipient of the Hudson Headwaters Health Foundation Community Champions Award and she has worked with dozens of organizations throughout the United States, Southeast Asia and Central America to strengthen civil society. She was a staff member of the HKH Foundation, where she conducted a survey to assess the economic, social, cultural and environmental strengths of the Adirondack region.

Prior to the Foundation, Brooks served in the Public Affairs Office of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. She is a graduate of Evergreen State College and holds a master’s degree in International and Intercultural Management from The School for International Training.

Charles A. Dana Professor of History Liz Regosin has been teaching at St. Lawrence since 1997 and is admired for her commitment to her students’ personal growth and academic success. She has been invited by President Kathryn A. Morris to address the Class of 2024 at the Commencement ceremony.

She has been selected by students as the Owen D. Young Outstanding Faculty Award recipient and has been honored with the Louis and Frances Maslow Award and the J. Calvin Keene Award in recognition of her scholarship, effective teaching and care for the education and welfare of the entire student population.

She teaches courses in American history, African American history and American women’s history and has also been an instructor in the First-Year Program. The emphasis of her research in African American history has been on African Americans’ transition from slavery to freedom and has published two books on this subject:

• Freedom’s Promise: Ex-Slave Families and Citizenship in the Age of Emancipation; and
• Voices of Emancipation: Understanding Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction through the U.S. Pension Bureau Files (with Donald R. Shaffer).

Her service as Associate Dean for Faculty and as co-Chair of Faculty Council earned high marks from faculty colleagues and after 27 years of service to St. Lawrence, she is retiring in June. Regosin earned her bachelor’s in history from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s and Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Irvine.

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