May 10, 2011

HARRISBURG – Nearly 1,400 students will graduate with an associate degree, certificate or diploma from the five regional campuses and the Virtual Campus of HACC, Central Pennsylvania’s Community College.

The commencement ceremony will take place at 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 17, in the large arena at the Farm Show Complex, 2300 N. Cameron St. in Harrisburg.

Daniel M. Ashby, senior director of pharmacy for the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, is the commencement speaker.

Ashby launched his educational career by coming to HACC where he completed an associate degree in liberal arts-life science. He then attended Wayne State University in Detroit, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy and a master’s degree in hospital pharmacy administration.

Ashby advocates for HACC through serving on the HACC Alumni Council and as a member of the HACC Foundation Board of Directors.

He has been active as an officer in a number of professional organizations and is a past president and chairman of the board of directors of the 32,000-member American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. This year Ashby received the Harvey A.K. Whitney Lecture Award, the highest honor offered by the society.

Interim President Ronald R. Young will confer the honorary doctorate of public service to Donald B. Freedman, M.D., former chairman of the board of directors of the HACC Foundation.

Throughout his years on the board, Freedman was dedicated to increasing scholarship dollars for HACC students. He and his late wife Shirley established a scholarship in their name, which enables talented, needy students from Susquehanna Township to benefit from a HACC education. He was instrumental in the success of a capital campaign in 2003-04 that resulted in HACC’s state-of-the-art Select Medical Health Education Pavilion. Freedman also was a strong supporter of HACC’s Campaign for Scholarships Golf Tournament, helping to establish and fulfill its fund-raising goals.

His volunteer service and leadership in community and statewide organizations include past presidencies of the Pennsylvania Heart Association, the Jewish Community Center of Harrisburg and the Jewish Home of Greater Harrisburg. He was a trustee of the Mary Sachs Trust for 26 years and its chair for 17 years. The trust has awarded dozens of major gifts, grants and contributions to the college over the years and its Mary Sachs Trust Scholarship provides financial assistance to HACC students enrolled in retail, marketing or business curricula.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Freedman practiced internal medicine from 1953-91, and serviced on the medical staffs of Harrisburg Hospital and Holy Spirit Hospital, the latter of which he served as president in 1970. He is founder and managing partner of Freedman, Kanenson & Lewis Associates and former managing partner of Susquehanna Internal Medicine Associates, P.C.

Freedman’s career also includes nearly half a century association with Homeland Center in Harrisburg, serving as past chairman of Homeland’s board of trustees and as its first medical director.

Student speaker for the graduating class is Carlos A. Gonzalez, a native of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He, his mother and siblings immigrated to the United States in 2002 after his father died.

Gonzalez started in the lowest level of an English as a Second Language program in the Reading School District and rapidly progressed so that by the time he began his freshman year at Hempfield High School in Landisville, he was placed in honors-level English. He graduated in the top 10 percent of his class while representing more than 2,400 students as student council president. He also was treasurer of the National Honor Society, president of the Model United Nations and Future Business of America Club at the high school.

While a full-time student he was a senator for the HACC-Lancaster Campus Student Government Association and president of the Council on Affairs of Latino Organizational Resources (CALOR). This year, he was chairman of the HACC’s college wide Student Government Association Executive Council.

Gonzalez also was an intern at the Pennsylvania Governor’s Advisory Commission on Latino Affairs and participated in the Latino Empowerment Project and Leadership Lancaster.

Gonzalez plans to complete a bachelor’s degree in political science.