CNN anchor to deliver UT address

Trustees agree on honorary degree, road-improvement project

11/17/2015

CNN anchor Christi Paul, a University of Toledo alumna, will return to campus to give the fall commencement address.

UT’s board of trustees on Monday agreed to confer her with an honorary degree of doctor of humane letters at the 10 a.m. Dec. 19 ceremony at Savage Arena.

Ms. Paul, originally from Bellevue, Ohio, is a weekend anchor for the CNN’s New Day and also reports on the Daily Share on HLN.

She graduated from UT in 1993 with a bachelor’s of arts degree in communication with a focus on broadcast journalism. In 2006, she was recognized as an outstanding alumna of the former college of arts and sciences.

During her journalism career she has covered President Obama’s second inauguration and broadcast from the news desk during the first hours of school shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Newtown, Conn., in 2012, both major developing stories.

There are 1,372 candidates for bachelor’s degrees for the December commencement, 556 candidates for master’s degrees, and 138 doctoral degree candidates.

In other business, UT trustees granted right-of-way easements to the city at Douglas Road and Dorr Street for a road project at the intersection that will include new asphalt, turn lanes, median improvements, and sidewalk and curb upgrades.

The university agreed to grant perpetual right-of-way easements for two parcels of land that total 0.0098-acres.

The project will create an additional left turn lane for motorists traveling east on Dorr who want to turn left onto Douglas. A turn lane for those headed south on Douglas and turning right onto Dorr will be elongated.

The construction project timeline has not been finalized, but city officials estimate it will begin in the spring and take roughly three months to complete.

UT trustees approved a new policy to award credit to incoming freshmen who score a minimum of four on higher-level International Baccalaureate tests.

Trustees were introduced to the new interim chief financial officer of the University of Toledo Medical Center, the former Medical College of Ohio. Nickolas Vitale, who was the executive vice president and chief financial officer for Beaumont Health System in Royal Oak, Mich., started in Toledo on Nov. 1. His salary is $250,000.

Contact Vanessa McCray at: vmccray@theblade.com or 419-724-6065, or on Twitter @vanmccray.