#97-05-27
For Release: June 2, 1997
Contact: Peter Bailley

Two Knox College graduates who are career United States foreign service officers will jointly deliver the commencement address at Knox's 152nd commencement exercises on Saturday, June 7, 1997.

Virginia Canil and Eugene Tadie are assigned to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Canil is director-general for democratization, helping to build democratic institutions following years of conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Tadie is executive assistant to U.S. Ambassador Robert Frowick, the head of the OSCE mission.

In addition to Canil and Tadie, Knox will honor honor two alumni and one retired member of the Knox faculty.

Ceremonies will be opened by Morton W. Weir, '55, Chair of the Knox Board of Trustees. Weir is chancellor emeritus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and senior representative of the University of Illinois Foundation.

The commencement ceremony also will feature alumni returning to campus for their fifty-year class reunion. Members of the Knox Class of 1947 will join the Class of 1997 in the processional. Theatre professor Robert Whitlatch will serve as grand marshal, with biology professor Linda Dybas as faculty marshal.

Knox was chartered by the Illinois legislature in 1837 and graduated its first class of nine students in 1846. Today, Knox is a nationally ranked, independent, four-year liberal arts college with 1,100 students from 42 states and 33 nations, and more than 14,200 alumni worldwide.