MAGNOLIA─ Dr. Stacy Clanton, the 2009 Honor Professor at Southern Arkansas University, will be the keynote speaker for the University’s fall commencement exercises to be held Friday, December 11, at the W.T. Watson Athletic Center.
Clanton received a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Arkansas A&M College (now the University of Arkansas at Monticello), with a double major in English and Speech and Drama. He earned a Master’s and Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. His doctoral specializations are in literature of the English Renaissance, the Middle Ages, and the Restoration and Eighteenth Century.
While a faculty member at Louisiana College and Louisiana State University at Alexandria, Clanton expanded his pedagogical and research interests to include rhetoric and composition. In 1991, he joined the faculty of Southern Arkansas University, where he is Professor of English. He has published and presented papers on Sir Walter Ralegh, Jonathan Swift, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Christopher Marlowe, as well as on the teaching of composition and world literature. In 2005, he received a “Teaching with Technology” grant from SAU, and in 2007, he received a research grant to study the works of Ralegh at Hatfield House in England. He also received the SAU 2008 Service award.
Clanton was born in Warren, and grew up in Camden and Blytheville. He is married to Dr. Pat Clanton, who is Associate Professor of Education at SAU. They have two grown children.
SAU is slated to confer more than 200 undergraduate and graduate degrees during two ceremonies. Students from the School of Graduate Studies, College of Science and Technology, and College of Education will participate in the first ceremony at 5:30 p.m. Students from the College of Business and the College of Liberal and Performing Arts will participate in the second ceremony at 7 p.m.
