Dr. Wilfred M. McClay

McClay to Address December Graduates

Congratulations to our December graduates. Questions about commencement? The Records and Registration Office has answers.

Dr. Wilfred M. McClay , SunTrust Bank Chair of Excellence in Humanities and history professor at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, will deliver the commencement address before approximately 500 graduates on Sunday, December 14, at 2 p.m. in McKenzie Arena. The title of McClay’s address is "A Land of Second Chances."

McClay has been with the University since 1999. He has also taught at Georgetown University, Tulane University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Dallas.

In 2002, McClay was nominated by President Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve on the National Council on the Humanities, the 26-member advisory board of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). McClay is coeditor of the book Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in Modern America, released in 2002.

McClay is author of The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America (North Carolina, 1994), which won the 1995 Merle Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians for the best book in American intellectual history published in the years 1993 and 1994. He is coeditor of Rowman and Littlefield's book series entitled American Intellectual Culture, serves on the editorial boards of the Wilson Quarterly, American Quarterly, and Continuity, and is a frequent contributor to such journals as The Public Interest, First Things, American Scholar, Commentary, Reviews in American History, and Wilson Quarterly.

McClay was selected for inclusion on the 1997-98 Templeton Honor Rolls, awarded by the John Templeton Foundation for distinguished teaching and scholarship in American higher education. In addition, he has been the recipient of fellowship awards from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Academy of Education, the Howard Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, and the Danforth Foundation. He was educated at St. John's College (Annapolis) and the Johns Hopkins University, where he received a Ph.D. in history in 1987.