Martha McCarthy, President’s Professor in the School of Education at Loyola Marymount University, was conferred an honorary Doctorate of Pedagogy by Lehigh University at the commencement ceremony in May 2014, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In honoring McCarthy, Lehigh paid tribute to her distinguished career in education law and policy, and the reform of educational leadership preparation programs.
“I am honored that Lehigh is recognizing me, and the field of education law, in this way,” said McCarthy, whose area of scholarship includes examining the legal tensions between school personnel and students. She is the first education faculty member to receive an honorary degree from Lehigh.
McCarthy joined LMU in 2011 as one of a select group of President’s Professors that includes a Nobel laureate in literature and a Pulitzer Prize winning-playwright.
She was a teacher and school administrator before joining the faculty at Indiana University, where she served as a Chancellor’s Professor and chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in the School of Education. McCarthy has served as president of the Education Law Association and the University Council for Educational Administration and as vice president for Division A (Administration) of the American Educational Research Association. She has received the Living Legend Award from the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration and the Roald Campbell Lifetime Achievement Award from the University Council for Educational Administration, among numerous awards.
The annual Education Leadership Summer Conference at Indiana University has been renamed in her honor: starting in 2014, the conference, which draws a national audience of education leaders, will be known as the Martha McCarthy Education Law and Policy Institute.
McCarthy was one of four honorary degree recipients from Lehigh; the others were Martin Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post, a Lehigh alumnus who gave the commencement address; Arvind Sharma, author and internationally recognized scholar on Hinduism, comparative religion and the role of women in religion; and Daniel E. Smith Jr., an alumnus and widely recognized pioneer and leader in the optical networking industry.
Originally posted on LMU.edu.
