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In its 203rd year, Allegheny College will award honorary degrees to three distinguished scholars — each a graduate of Allegheny — at the college’s 2018 Commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 12, at 2 p.m.

“John Aldrich, Barbara Hotham Iglewski and Carol Reardon have reflected great honor on their alma mater through their scholarly accomplishments, their commitment to educating students and their service to their disciplines and communities,” said Allegheny College President James H. Mullen, Jr. “It is an extraordinary privilege to recognize their achievements, celebrate their contributions to society, and share their remarkable stories with the Class of 2018 and their families.”

John H. Aldrich, Ph.D., Allegheny class of 1969, is the Pfizer-Pratt University Professor of Political Science at Duke University. He specializes in American politics and behavior, formal theory and methodology. Books he has authored or co-authored include “Why Parties,” “Why Parties Matter,” “Before the Convention,” “Linear Probability, Logit and Probit Models,” and a series of books on elections, the most recent of which is “Change and Continuity in 2016 Elections.” Aldrich’s articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Public Choice, and other journals and edited volumes.

He has received grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Aldrich also has served as President of the American Political Science Association, co-editor of the American Journal of Political Science, and as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Barbara Hotham Iglewski, Ph.D., Allegheny class of 1960, is professor emerita of microbiology and immunology at the University of Rochester Medical Center. She was the first woman to chair a department at the school and also was its director of international programs. In addition, she served as vice provost for research and graduate education at the University of Rochester.

In 2015, Iglewski was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. She was recognized for her work in microbiology, especially for a landmark discovery: that Pseudomonas, a type of infection, spreads by individual bacteria communicating with one another. Her work has had a global impact on research on cystic fibrosis. Iglewski has published more than 150 research papers and book chapters and served as an editor of a number of books including the “Encyclopedia of Microbiology.” She is recognized by the Institute of Scientific Information as a highly cited scientist — a group comprising less than 0.5 percent of all publishing researchers. She also has received an NIH MERIT award, which provides long-term support to outstanding, experienced investigators.

Carol Reardon, Ph.D., Allegheny class of 1974, is the George Winfree Professor Emerita of American History at the Pennsylvania State University. She specializes in military history with especially strong interests in the Civil War and Vietnam eras. Reardon has been a scholar-in-residence at the George and Anne Richards Civil War Era Center at Penn State, a visiting professor of military history at the United States Military Academy, and served twice as the General Harold K. Johnson Professor at the U.S Army War College at Carlisle Barracks.

Reardon has been involved in a variety of professional military education activities for the armed forces, most notably staff rides to Civil War battlefields to facilitate historically-based analysis of essential elements of the art of war such as leadership, logistics and decision-making. In addition to publishing seven highly-regarded books on various topics in military history, she held the position of president of the Society for Military History, the discipline’s flagship professional organization, for two terms. She also served on the Department of the Army Historical Advisory Committee and, for nearly 14 years, on the Board of Visitors of Marine Corps University at Quantico. She currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Gettysburg Foundation.

Media coverage of the ceremony is invited. For more information, contact Josh Tysiachney at (814) 332-2746 or jtysiachney@allegheny.edu.