Cleveland State University’s spring commencement ceremonies will be Saturday, May 10, at 10:00 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. at the Bert L. and Iris S. Wolstein Center, 2000 Prospect Ave.

The morning ceremony will be for graduates of the Nance College of Business Administration, the College of Education and Human Services, and the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs. The afternoon ceremony will be for graduates of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, the College of Science and the Fenn College of Engineering. Both ceremonies will be preceded by a processional of graduates and faculty, beginning at 9:30 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. At both ceremonies, individual graduates will be recognized by name as they cross the stage and receive their diplomas. Ph.D. and doctoral graduates will be hooded on stage.

Six honorary degrees will be awarded. In the morning, Paul J. Everson will receive an honorary Doctor of Business Administration degree and Morton L. Mandel and Stephen C. Morris will receive honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees. In the afternoon, Timothy J. Cosgrove will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree and Elizabeth A. Pugh and Martha Collins will receive honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees. Cosgrove will deliver the commencement addresses at both ceremonies.

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Typical of many Cleveland State students, Timothy J. Cosgrove was the first in his family to attend college. He received a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1983, followed by a law degree in 1987.

Cosgrove served as executive assistant to Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich and director of policy and legislation for Governor Voinovich. Today, he is a partner with Squire, Sanders & Dempsey.

Always willing to share his time and energy with his alma mater, Cosgrove served 10 years on the University’s Board of Trustees, including four years as Chair. His leadership helped bring about admission standards, an Honors Program, an unprecedented campus building program, and more. He now serves on the Cleveland State University Foundation board of Directors.

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Since receiving her JD from CSU’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 1978, Elizabeth Pugh has enjoyed a distinguished career in government service. For the past 10 years, she has served as General Counsel of the Library of Congress.

She began her career as an attorney with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Education, and held positions of increasing responsibility with the Department of Justice as a litigator and manager. As general counsel to the National Archives and Records Administration, she played a significant role in the resolution of a case that resulted in the opening of tape recordings made by former President Richard Nixon.

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For more than 40 years, the name Paul J. Everson has been synonymous with real estate in Northeast Ohio. The retired president of Paul J. Everson & Associates has worked diligently to advance the business of real estate as a broker, agent, developer and educator.

Everson has served as president of United Multiple Listing Services Inc., the Cleveland Area Board of Realtors, the Ohio Association of Realtors, the Euclid Development Corporation and the Ohio Real Estate Commission.

His Paul J. Everson Scholarship Fund supports students studying real estate finance at Cleveland State.

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Morton L. Mandel is the chairman and chief executive officer of the Parkwood Corporation and the Mandel Foundation, founded in 1953 by Mandel and his brothers, Jack and Joseph.

The Mandel Foundation supports leadership management programs in four key areas: nonprofit organizations, higher education, Jewish education and continuity, and urban neighborhood renewal. At Cleveland State, the Foundation has supported the First Ring Leadership Academy in the College of Education and Human Services and the Presidential Initiatives Fund.

Mandel holds leadership positions with numerous international, national and local organizations, including many lifetime appointments, and has won many awards for his philanthropy and civic activism.

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Five years ago, retired businessman Stephen C. Morris established the Cleveland Schools Book Fund with a goal of funding libraries, in perpetuity, in all Pre-K through 3 classrooms in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Since then, the fund has grown to well over 100 donors and $4.5 million. More than 118,000 hardback books have been purchased for 994 classrooms, reaching 20,000 students in 71 of the district’s 82 elementary schools.

Last year, leveraging Cleveland State’s leadership role in literacy education, Morris transferred management and administration of the fund to the CSU Foundation and the College of Education and Human Services.

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Award-winning poet Martha Collins founded the creative writing program at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and for 10 years was the Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College.

A Catastrophe of Rainbows, her first book, was published by the CSU Poetry Center in 1985 and is still in print. Blue Front, a book-length poem, received the prestigious Anisfield-Wolf Book Award recognizing works that address issues of racism and diversity, and was named among 25 Books to Remember by the New York Public Library.

Dr. Collins is editor-at-large for FIELD magazine and one of the editors of the Oberlin College Press.