Seton Hill University will award three honorary degrees at its May commencement. Dr. Mary Lou McLaughlin, creator of Family House, will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Dr. William Stavisky, superintendent of the Greater Latrobe School District, will also receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree, and international business scholar Dr. Shuming Zhao will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters – Business Management degree. Seton Hill’s May 13 commencement ceremony will take place in the Katherine Mabis McKenna Center on Seton Hill’s Greensburg, Pa. campus at 11 a.m. U.S. Representative John P. Murtha, who received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Seton Hill in 2000, is the featured commencement speaker.

Although Mary Lou McLaughlin has spent a lifetime in service to the community, she is perhaps best known for her work as creator of Family House. In 1981 McLaughlin accepted the position of Director of Corporate Relations at the University of Pittsburgh, with a special emphasis on the creation and development of Family House. Designed to provide supportive housing for adult patients and their families who travel to Pittsburgh to receive treatments for life-threatening illnesses, Family House was dedicated in 1982 on McKee Place in Oakland and quickly became the national model for specialized adult housing. In 1982 McLaughlin became the executive director of Family House, with a staff of two. Upon her retirement in 1993, Family House, Inc. consisted of three facilities (Family House McKee, Family House Neville and the Family House Inn) with a staff of 18 supported by over 200 trained volunteers. McLaughlin has been awarded the YWCA of Greater Pittsburgh Leadership Award in Human and Social Service, Pittsburgh Magazine’s Real Pittsburgher of the Year Award and the Carlow College President’s Award. She currently serves as Chair of the Pittsburgh Foundation’s Board of Directors and on the Board of Directors for the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Committee for Oversight in Organ Transplantation, the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative.

Dr. William Stavisky, recently named 2006 Pennsylvania Superintendent of the Year by the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, has been superintendent in the Greater Latrobe School District since 1992. He has also served as superintendent in the Mount Pleasant and Otto-Eldred School Districts. Dr. Stavisky’s recent accomplishments include a technology initiative that provides junior high school and high school students with wireless laptops, the construction of the Center for Student Creativity, and support of the joint school-community Greater Latrobe School District Art Conservation Trust and its student-selected art collection. Stavisky is a Charter Member of the University of Pittsburgh’s Superintendents Forum and has served as a mentor to aspiring superintendents and doctoral students through Duquesne University, the University of Pittsburgh and Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Stavisky serves on the Board of Directors of the Latrobe Area Hospital and is a member of the Latrobe Rotary Club, the Latrobe Foundation Committee and Latrobe Area Chamber of Commerce.

Dr. Shuming Zhao is professor and dean of the School of Business, Nanjing University, and dean of the School of Graduate Studies, Macao University of Science and Technology, People’s Republic of China. Internationally recognized as an expert on human resource management and the management of multinational corporations, Dr. Zhao is the author of over 40 books and 200 academic papers, chapters, and articles on human resource and business management. He has served as a visiting scholar at numerous colleges and universities in the U.S. and China, and been featured at human resource management conferences and forums around the world. Among numerous honors and awards, Dr. Zhao has received the Asia Pacific Human Resource Association’s 2004 China Business School Dean's Leadership Award and been named the 2002 China HR Person of the Year.

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Contact:

Becca Baker, Associate Director of Media Relations
bbaker@setonhill.edu/724-830-1069/724-689-3599 (cell)