Holy Cross College’s 55th Commencement

Holy Cross College celebrated the 55th Commencement on Saturday, May 14, 2022, at the Holy Cross College campus. The College was pleased to confer honorary degrees to David W. Wantz, Ed.D., John Nally, Ed.D., and Barbara O’Connor

David W. Wantz, Ed.D., who delivered the commencement address, is the president and chief executive officer of Independent Colleges of Indiana (ICI). ICI is a non-profit organization representing Indiana’s 29 private, non-profit, regionally accredited colleges and universities. They handle public policy advocacy, public information and research, corporate and foundation fundraising, development of collaborative services, and administration of the Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship Program along with other scholarships and grants. His role at ICI is directing, encouraging, and sustaining the services provided by ICI. Wantz advocates on behalf of Indiana’s students at the Indiana State House and Washington, D.C., and works to strengthen relationships with people and organizations who can assist the ICI institutions. He holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Milligan College, a master’s degree in education from Indiana University, a master’s degree in business administration and management from the University of Indianapolis, and a doctoral in education and counseling psychology from Indiana University.

John Nally, Ed.D., is the Director of Education at the Indiana Department of Correction (IDOC). Throughout his career, he has taught in male and female adult correctional facilities and male and female juvenile correctional facilities. Before becoming the IDOC Director of Education in 2003, he also served as the IDOC Education Technology Director and the IDOC Director of Special Education. In addition to his role at the Indiana Department of Correction, he has served on the Indiana Department of Education’s State Advisory Committee for Special Education for 20 years and provided national leadership within the Correctional Education Association (CEA) as the President of the Council of State and Federal Directors and a member of the CEA Executive Board. Nally received the “President’s Award” in 2008 and 2013 recognizing his national leadership within CEA, is a past recipient of the IAACE (Indiana Association of Adult and Continuing Education) Administrator of the Year award, and received the 2019 CEA Lifetime Achievement Award.

Barbara O’Connor has been a Trustee of Holy Cross College since 2014 and is the Chair of the Academic Affairs Committee. In addition to her service, she has also been the leading benefactor of the College in the last fifteen years, and the third-largest benefactor in the history of the College, most significantly, the gift of the family to fund the O’Connor Commons here on campus. She has also endowed the O’Connor Family Fund for the Center for Discernment and the John O’Connor Eagle Scout Scholarship. O’Connor graduated from Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with her bachelor’s degree in chemistry and earned her master’s degree in organic chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has worked as a consultant for Sojourner Associates, and as the associate director of Elan Pharmaceuticals, as a senior manager and associate director at Protein Design Labs and was an early employee of the then-fledgling Genentech, Inc. O’Connor holds several patents in pharmaceutical drug development.

Miles Folsom ’22, who majored in Liberal Studies, was this year’s valedictorian. For most of his semesters, he was a Holy Cross student in the Moreau College Initiative on our campus at Westville Correctional Facility. This program, a highly selective collaboration between Holy Cross College and the University of Notre Dame, draws from the entire state to find those individuals with both exceptional academic talent and the desire to use education to return to society and make a difference. Folsom has excelled on both fronts, earning a cumulative GPA of 3.96 and even published an essay on the 17th-century poet John Milton that was selected for mention in the prestigious HarperCollins Best American Essays of 2021.

We had three Salutatorians, each representing one of the three areas of our academic departments. Allison Hano ’22 in Natural and Quantitative Sciences, Dane Litchfield ’22 in Humanities, and Mireya Robles ’22 in the Social Sciences.