PBS correspondent Suarez delivers Commencement address

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PBS correspondent Suarez delivers Commencement address

Award-winning journalist addresses graduating class during the 61st Commencement ceremonies

Award-winning broadcast journalist Ray Suarez addressed Utica College’s graduating class on May 16 during the College’s sixty-first Commencement ceremonies and was conferred an honorary Doctor of Letters degree.

Suarez is the host of National Public Radio’s America Abroad and a Washington-based senior correspondent for the PBS NewsHour. His in-depth professional work has taken him all over the globe. Prior to joining PBS in 1999, he spent six years hosting NPR’s Talk of the Nation. He also had a seven-year run as a reporter for WMAQ-TV in Chicago and has spent time as a Los Angeles correspondent for CNN, a producer for ABC Radio Network in New York, and a reporter for CBS Radio in Rome.

“He is perhaps one of the most thorough and trusted journalists working in broadcast news today,” David Chanatry, associate professor of journalism, says of Suarez. “It was a great opportunity for our students to learn from his nuanced and thoughtful insights into today’s most important and pressing issues.”

Suarez has received numerous awards as a journalist and an author. He was a co-recipient of NPR’s DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton Award for his on-site coverage of the first all-race elections in South Africa and his reporting on the first 100 days of the 104th Congress. He received the Ruben Salazar Award from the National Council of La Raza in 1996 and the Distinguished Policy Leadership Award from UCLA’s School of Public Policy in 2005. His latest book, The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America, won the 2007 Latino Book Award for Best Religion Book Suarez earned a bachelor’s degree in African history from NYU, completed his master’s degree in social sciences at the University of Chicago, and has been awarded honorary doctorates from several institutions.

He is a past recipient of the Benton Fellowship in Broadcast Journalism at the University of Chicago, and has been honored with a Distinguished Alumnus Award from NYU and a Professional Achievement Award from the University of Chicago.