Sports journalist Steve Rushin to deliver Marquette Commencement address Released: April 2, 2007 Award-winning sports journalist Steve Rushin will be the speaker for Marquette University’s commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 20, 2007.  The ceremony will take place at the Bradley Center, 1001 N. 4th St., at 9:30 a.m. Steve Rushin joined Sports Illustrated as a reporter in 1988 after graduating from Marquette University. Three years later, he became the magazine's youngest senior writer. He is a four-time finalist for the National Magazine Award and his work has appeared in The Best American Magazine Writing, The Best American Travel Writing and The Best American Sports Writing anthologies. In 2006, he was named the National Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. For nine years, beginning in 1998, Rushin wrote a weekly column for SI called "Air and Space." The 40-year-old left Sports Illustrated in March 2007 to write books. “We are honored to have Steve Rushin, an alumnus and nationally renowned sports writer, address our graduates and their families.  His prolific and highly successful career, at a relatively young age, will inspire our graduates as they embark upon their own post-graduation journeys,” said Rev. Robert A. Wild, S.J., president of Marquette University. Called "the best sportswriter in the country" by the St. Paul Pioneer Press and "certainly the most fun to read" by the Hartford Courant, Rushin has also been described as "one of the most agile essayists around" by Publishers Weekly, which listed his book Road Swing among the Best Books of 1998. Money magazine called the book "one of the funniest travelogues ever written," and Sports Illustrated named Road Swing one of The Top 100 Sports Books of All Time. Rushin has covered nearly every major sporting event for Sports Illustrated. His stories from the 1998 Winter Olympics in Japan won the Prix des Medias Olympiques for excellence in journalism in the coverage of the Games. He has also written about movies for The New York Times. A collection of Rushin's travel and sports writing -- THE CADDIE WAS A REINDEER: And Other Tales of Extreme Recreation -- was published by Grove/Atlantic in the fall of 2004. It was named a semifinalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. A native of Bloomington, Minnesota, Rushin now lives in Connecticut with his wife, Rebecca Lobo, and two daughters. Rushin will be presented with an honorary doctor of letters degree. Three other individuals will also receive honorary degrees at the 2007 commencement: Dr. Louis Dupré, an award-winning philosopher and theologian specializing in phenomenology and the philosophy of religion, early modern thought and spiritual theology, will be awarded an honorary doctor of religious studies.  Dupré studied philosophy at the University of Leuven and immigrated to the United States in 1958. He taught philosophy at Georgetown University until 1972, and in 1973, he became the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University.  He was elected a foreign member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Letters, Arts and Sciences and in 1994 became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1997 he received the Aquinas medal from the American Catholic Philosophical Association. He is the author of 15 books and more than 200 published articles. Rev. Leland Eugene Lubbers, S.J., Ph.D., founder of the international news channel SCOLA, will be awarded an honorary doctor of science. Father Lubbers founded SCOLA (Satellite Communications for Learning) in 1983.  It is a 24-hour satellite network retransmitting live television news to more than 10,000 schools and 50 cable systems worldwide. A leading provider of foreign language television programming, SCOLA’s mission is to help the people of the world learn more about each other, their languages, their cultures and their ideologies. A native of Stoughton, Wisconsin, Father Lubbers graduated from Marquette High School before joining the Jesuit order and studying at St. Louis University and the L’Universite de Paris, Sorbonne. He served as a professor of fine arts at Creighton University from 1964 to 1989 and is the recipient of numerous honors and awards. Vel Phillips, a pioneer in the women’s and civil rights movements in Milwaukee, will be awarded an honorary doctor of laws.  As the first black woman to graduate from University of Wisconsin Law School in the 1951, she later became the first woman and the first African American member of the Milwaukee Common Council with her election as an alderperson in 1956. During the 1960s, Phillips organized and participated in numerous nonviolent protests against racial discrimination in housing, education and employment. In 1958, Milwaukee approved the Fair Housing Law that Phillips had proposed six years earlier.  After 15 years on the Common Council, Philips was appointed in 1971 to the Milwaukee County judiciary, becoming the first woman judge in Milwaukee and the first African American judge in Wisconsin. In 1978, she made national history when she was the first woman and first African American elected secretary of state.  An active community leader even after leaving public office, Phillips was a distinguished visiting professor at Marquette Law School in 2002- 2003. Office of Marketing and Communication Contacts Brigid O'Brien Miller Director of University Communication Phone: (414) 288-7445 Send e-mail Anne Broeker Sr. Media Relations Specialist Phone: (414) 288-0286 Send e-mail