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Editor’s note: Due to unforeseen circumstances, Salve Regina’s originally scheduled Commencement speaker, Sister Helen Prejean, is unable to attend the ceremony next month. The University will present an honorary doctorate to Sister Helen at a later date.

Dr. Roger Mandle, Newport Restoration Foundation board president who is an expert in strategic planning for museums and universities, will address the graduating class and receive an honorary degree when Salve Regina celebrates its 68th Commencement Sunday, May 20.

Also receiving an honorary degree during the ceremony will be local philanthropist Hope H. “Happy” van Beuren, founder and chair emerita of the van Beuren Charitable Foundation.

Mandle, who served 15 years as president of Rhode Island School of Design, is currently president and CEO of Roger Mandle Associates LLC, a consulting firm that leads in the creation of alternative models of art and design institutions, including online education.

During Mandle’s presidency at RISD (1993-2008), new academic and museum programs were established, including a joint degree program with Brown University, and a new urban campus incorporating a number of renovated historic buildings in downtown Providence. In 2009, RISD awarded Mandle an honorary doctorate.

From 2008-2012, Mandle was executive director and chief museums officer of Qatar Museums Authority, responsible for the concept development, governance structure, staff creation, architectural planning and program execution for more than 12 museums and cultural institutions.

He served as deputy director and chief curator of the National Gallery of Art from 1988-1993, as director of the Toledo Museum of Art from 1977-1988, and as associate director of the Minneapolis Institute of Art from 1967-1974.

Mandle serves on the board of Maine Media Workshops + College and Williams College Museum of Art. He is also chair of the board of a new museum, the Massachusetts Design Art & Technology Institute in New Bedford.

A recognized scholar of 18th century Dutch art, Mandle received his Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University and his M.A. and museum training certificate from New York University. He has taught museum studies and art history at Williams College, Brown University and RISD. He has been awarded eight honorary degrees.

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Several spring concerts are on tap in the coming week, including performances from the University’s choral groups along with the Newport Community Symphonic Band and the Newport County Orchestra.

An a cappella concert will be performed at 3 p.m. Saturday, April 28 at the Casino Theatre. Music will be performed by the University’s a cappella groups Cliff Notes, Mix Tapes and Pitches with Attitude. Admission is free.

The Newport Community Symphonic Band concert will be performed at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 28 in the Casino Theatre. Directed by Peter Davis, the program will feature works by Leonard Bernstein, John Mackey, Samuel Hazo, John Williams and John Philip Sousa. The Salve Regina jazz ensemble will also perform.

The choral concert, “To Bigotry No Sanction,” will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 29 in Ochre Court. Directed by Dr. Donald St. Jean, the performance will feature the University Chorus, Madrigals Chorus and the a cappella groups Mixtapes and Pitches With Attitude.

The Newport County Orchestra concert will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 2 in the Casino Theatre. Directed by Vincent Mattera, the program will include works from Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach and Bedrich Smetana.

Unless noted otherwise, admission to all concerts is $8 for general, $5 for students and senior citizens and free for Salve Regina students with a University ID. Tickets will be available at the door. A reception will follow each performance.

For more information, call the Department of Music, Theatre and Dance at (401) 341-2295.

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Historian Heather Ann Thompson will visit Salve Regina this week to discuss her Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy,” a searing and indelible account of one of the most important civil rights stories of the last century.

Thompson’s lecture, the second in the John E. McGinty Lecture in History series, will be held at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 26 in the Bazarsky Lecture Hall. A book sale and signing will follow the lecture. To RSVP, visit the Eventbrite page.

In 1971, nearly 1,300 men took over one of the nation’s most infamous prisons, the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York, to protest years of mistreatment. That historic uprising to secure basic human rights was met with deadly force, and for the next 45 years the story of how such trauma could have taken place was hidden from the public.

Thompson will share the story of this dramatic rebellion, its tragic end and the depth of the coverup that followed it. Knowing this history, she suggests, shines needed new light on why we have more people locked up in the United States today than any other country on the globe.

“Blood in the Water” won the Pulitzer Prize in History, the Bancroft Prize, the Ridenhour Book Prize and the J. Willard Hurst Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other accolades.

Thompson has served on a National Academy of Sciences blue-ribbon panel that studied the causes and consequences of mass incarceration in the United States and has given congressional staff briefings on the subject. She has written on the history of mass incarceration and its current impact for The New York Times, Time, The Atlantic, Salon, Newsweek, NBC, Dissent, New Labor Forum and The Huffington Post, as well as for various top scholarly publications. Thompson is also the author of “Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor and Race in a Modern American City” and editor of “Speaking Out: Activism and Protest in the 1960s and 1970s.”

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