Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin and L.A. Times columnist/Emmy recipient Patt Morrison are among commencement speakers at three Catholic college graduation ceremonies this weekend.On May 11, at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, Cardinal DiNardo, the second archbishop of Galveston-Houston, will preside at the 9 a.m. Baccalaureate Mass in Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel. Commencement will follow at 11:30 a.m. on the academic quadrangle, where the cardinal will address 91 men and women members of the largest graduating class in the college’s history.Cardinal DiNardo will also receive the school’s highest award, the Saint Thomas Aquinas Medallion, at the ceremony in recognition of his life-long fidelity and service to the Catholic Church. Also receiving the Saint Thomas Aquinas Medallion will be the college’s head chaplain, Jesuit Father Cornelius M. Buckley, in recognition of a lifetime of faithful service to young people on Catholic campuses in California and Washington.Loyola Marymount University’s undergraduate commencement speaker will be renowned historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin, who will address more than 1,400 members of the 2013 graduating class and their families and friends on May 11, 9:30 a.m., in LMU’s Sunken Garden.Goodwin is a biographer and political commentator whose most recent book, “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” was the basis for the Academy Award-winning film, “Lincoln.” She is also the author of several other works, including the book, “No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt,” which was awarded the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for History.Rocket scientist Tom Mueller, M.S. (mechanical engineering) ’92, will address LMU’s graduate commencement, scheduled for 10 a.m. on May 12. Mueller is co-founder and vice president of propulsion and development at SpaceX, a space transport company based in Hawthorne. In 2012, SpaceX became the first private company to send a cargo payload to the International Space Station.Marymount College will hold its 2013 graduation exercises on May 11, 11 a.m., at the college’s main campus in Rancho Palos Verdes, with Patt Morrison as its commencement speaker. Morrison, a journalist, author and radio-television personality, is a writer and columnist for the Los Angeles Times. She has a share in two of the Times’ Pulitzer Prizes, for writing about the 1992 riots and the 1994 Northridge earthquake.In her television work, Morrison has won six Emmys and four Golden Mike awards as founding host and later as commentator on “Life & Times,” the news and current affairs program on KCET-TV. She is a special correspondent at KPCC, interviewing prominent personalities and hosting “Comedy Congress,” the award-winning political humor show that she created.Mount St. Mary’s College held its 2013 graduation exercises on May 6 at the Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal Studios. Maria Contreras-Sweet, founding chairwoman of PROAMÉRICA BANK, gave the commencement address.{gallery width=100 height=100}gallery/2013/0510/grads/{/gallery}
