Academic, activity, and leadership awards will be presented to members of the Class of 2005, faculty, and alumni at 2 p.m. Sunday, May 1, at the annual Senior Investiture and Honors Convocation at McDaniel College.

The annual distinguished teaching award, which is kept confidential until the ceremony, is one of the top awards presented that afternoon.

Other awards, also confidential, include The Bates Prize for the most outstanding male graduating senior, The Mary Ward Lewis Prize for the most outstanding female graduating senior, and The John A. Alexander Medal for the top senior athlete.

Each academic department also recognizes its top students with an endowed prize.

The Board of Trustees will give alumni career and service achievement awards, the ceremony's only non-confidential awards, to Donald Frederick Schenk '71 of Troy, Michigan, U.S. Army Brigadier General (Ret.); and S. George Walters '49 of Hampstead, N.C., retired professor in the graduate school of management at Rutgers University, N.J., where he was the founding director of the interfunctional management program.

Schenk is among just a handful of McDaniel alumni to attain the rank of General, joining the company of such College luminaries as Robert J. Gill. During his exemplary military career, which began during his undergraduate years in the ROTC program, Schenk has been awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, and the Bronze Star Medal. Along the way, he also earned a master of arts degree in business administration and graduated from the Defense Acquisition University and Army War College. He spent the early part of his career on multiple assignments in Europe as part of the Army's forward-deployed forces during the Cold War. In 1979, he returned to campus as Assistant Professor of Military Science, where he prepared third-year students with leadership and tactical training.

After selection and graduation from the highly competitive Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he became the Army's lead officer and system coordinator for the newest and most effective weapon in the Army arsenal, the Abrams Tank. During Operation Desert Storm, Don was in charge of planning the tactical operations and logistical support for his brigade, part of the Big Red One Division, which led the final assault to secure the peace negotiation site in Iraq. In the latter part of his 33-year career, he oversaw development, production and fielding of several weapons systems, including the Stryker. He retired in July 2004.

As an undergraduate at the liberal arts college in Westminster, Walters pursued an accelerated course of study in economics, history and political science, graduating with honors, then earned a master's degree in foreign trade and history just one year later from Columbia University, followed by an M.B.A. in 1953. He completed his Ph.D. at New York University in 1960, while simultaneously teaching economics and sociology at Lehigh University and working on industry-related business-development research teams.

For a decade, Walters entered the corporate arena as a senior executive at subsidiaries of Socony Mobil Oil and General Tire and Rubber, then returned to his academic roots in 1970 as a professor in the graduate school of management at Rutgers University, where he was the founding director of the interfunctional management program, directing graduate research studies in management, manufacturing, and business development both at home and abroad. During the mid-1970s, he worked in Romania under a federal government grant to teach businessmen Western management and marketing techniques in an effort to influence and train the next generation of business leaders in Communist countries for a world after the Iron Curtain fell. During his 23-year tenure at Rutgers, he received several awards for excellence in teaching and in 1999 Rutgers established the Dr. S. G. Walters Award for Excellence in Consultancy Research in his honor.

One of his most significant achievements in his impressive career has been his ongoing work to help establish partnerships between universities and private corporations. After establishing several Industry-University Cooperative Research Center Programs in the United States , he turned his focus to foreign companies and colleges. One of the most successful is the Questor Research Center at Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which is partnered with the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He continues to monitor the various research centers for the major funding agency, the National Science Foundation.

Also recognized at the convocation ceremony are graduating members of the College's four-year honors program, as well as students inducted into the following honor societies and organizations: Phi Beta Kappa, the paramount honor society in the United States, its Delta Chapter at McDaniel celebrating 25 years; Who's Who Among Students in American Colleges and Universities; Omicron Delta Kappa, a national honor society recognizing leadership qualities; and the Trumpeters, a local honor society honoring students dedicated to service.

Senior Class President Devin Collins '05 will receive her hood during the ceremony as a symbol of the hoods she and her classmates will wear when they receive their degrees. McDaniel will graduate the Class of 2005 at the 135th commencement at 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 21.