Garth Fagan, founder and artistic director of Garth Fagan Dance and SUNY Brockport Distinguished Professor Emeritus, will receive an honorary doctorate at SUNY Brockport's 140th Undergraduate Commencement exercises, Saturday, May 12. "Garth Fagan's artistic, professional and academic achievements, so closely tied to SUNY Brockport, demonstrate creativity, innovation, excellence and an untiring commitment to student success at the highest level, said SUNY Brockport President John R. Halstead. Fagan was a member of the SUNY Brockport Department of Dance faculty from 1969 until his retirement in 2002. He was named Distinguished Professor of Dance in 1985, the first dance faculty member in all of SUNY to earn SUNY's highest faculty rank. Most recently, Fagan's choreography for Disney's The Lion King received a host of awards and honors including the Tony Award for Best Choreography as well as the Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Astaire Award, Laurence Olivier Award, Ovation Award and the Helpmann Award. He is a past recipient of a Fulbright 50th Anniversary Distinguished Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bessie Award, the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award and was inducted into the American Academy for Achievement. The Commencement ceremony will be on Saturday, May 12 at 1 p.m. in the Special Olympics Stadium on the campus of SUNY Brockport. The featured speaker will be SUNY Brockport alumnus Vince Gonzales 1990, a CBS News correspondent in Los Angeles. He is best known for his work on numerous investigative reports, which have been broadcast on the CBS Evening News. April 15, 2007 |
