Saint John’s Commencement Activities to be Held May 8

COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. – Charles (Chuck) M. Denny, Jr., retired president, chairman and CEO of ADC Telecommunications, will deliver the commencement address at Saint John's at 2 p.m. Sunday, May 8, in the Saint John's Abbey Church, Collegeville, Minn. Denny will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Also during the commencement ceremony, Saint John’s Abbey and University will present its Pax Christi Award to Martin Marty, Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School. 

Andrew Dirksen, a political science major from Le Mars, Iowa, will be the student commencement speaker, as selected by this year's SJU senior class. The 2005 Saint John’s graduating class includes 427 undergraduate men, which is the second-largest graduating class in the university’s history, and 37 School of Theology Seminary graduates. When combined with the College of Saint Benedict’s 503 graduates, this year’s undergraduate graduating class of 930 will be the second-largest combined class in the schools’ history.

Denny's career started at Home Gas Company in the mid-50s and joined Honeywell in 1959. In 1971, he became president of ADC Magnetic Controls, where he set out to build on the company's growing sales of equipment for telephone operating companies. Under his watch, ADC became the largest independent supplier of test boards in the United States in 1976. In 1984, the company became ADC Telecommunications and later emerged as a leading player in the fast-developing telecommunications industry, well positioned to serve Internet-spurred growth in the 90s. In 1991, Denny retired as president to become ADC's chairman of the board, retiring as board chair in 1994.  Denny has also served on various boards, including as director or chairman of the Minneapolis Community Development Agency, Board of Trustees at the College of St. Catherine, Minnesota High Technology Council, Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, Boys and Girls Club of Minneapolis, Minnesota Center for Corporate Responsibility and Citizens League.

Marty has taught at the University of Chicago Divinity School for 35 years and where the Martin Marty Center has since been founded to promote “public religion” endeavors. Marty writes the “M.E.M.O.” column for the biweekly “Christian Century,” on whose staff he has served since 1956. Marty specializes in late 18th - and 20th-century American religion. An ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Marty is past president of the American Academy of Religion, the American Society of Church History, the American Catholic Historical Association and interim president at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn. He has served on two U.S. Presidential Commissions and was director of both the Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Public Religion Project at the University of Chicago.

As the highest honor awarded by Saint John’s the Pax Christi Award recognizes those who have devoted themselves to God by working in the tradition of Benedictine monasticism to serve others and to build a heritage of faith in the world. The Award has been presented to 50 individuals. Past recipients include the late Cardinal Leo Jozef Suenens of Belgium; the former representative of the Holy See in the United States Archbishop Jean Jadot; former senator and presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy; the late Archbishop John Roach of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis; Mary Jo Copeland, founder and director of Minneapolis’ Sharing and Caring Hands; Amy Grant, a contemporary Christian singer; and the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of the Chicago Archdiocese.