Gov. Mark Dayton to Present Carleton College’s Opening Convocation Address

Editor's note: Submitted by Carleton College

 is pleased to announce that Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton will be the featured speaker at its annual all-college assembly celebrating the beginning of the 2012-13 academic year. Opening Convocation will be held on Monday, September 10 at 3 p.m. in the Skinner Memorial Chapel; this event is free and open to the public. It will also be streamed online.

Minnesota’s 40th governor, Mark Dayton assumed office in January 2011. He previously served as Minnesota’s United States Senator from 2001-07, and the Minnesota State Auditor from 1991-95. Dayton also currently serves on the executive committee of the National Governor’s Association.

Dayton was born in Minneapolis and raised in a house in Long Lake, Minnesota, where his father still lives today. Dayton has two grown sons and lives in St. Paul with his three German Shepherds—Mesabi, Itasca, and Wanamingo (aka “Mingo”). Dayton attended The Blake School in Minneapolis and graduated cum laude from Yale University in 1969. While there, he played goalie for the varsity hockey team and joined the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, whose membership at the time also included George W. Bush.

After college, Dayton taught for two years in New York City and then worked as the chief financial officer of a social service agency in Boston. It was during this time, he recalls, that he decided that he would devote his life to improving social equality and economic opportunity for all Americans.

For most of the past 34 years, Mark has served Minnesotans, as Commissioner of the Minnesota Departments of Economic Development and of Energy and Economic Development, as State Auditor, and as U.S. Senator. He has worked throughout Minnesota to help businesses locate or expand and create jobs, to improve local government services, to better fund public schools, to support servicemen and women, to help Minnesotans get the health care they need, and in many other ways to make a better Minnesota.

Dayton is the fourth consecutive standing Minnesota governor to present Carleton College’s Opening Convocation, continuing the legacy of former Governors Tim Pawlenty (2003), Jesse Ventura 1999), and Arne Carlson (1991).
This event is sponsored by the Carleton College Office of College Relations. For more information, including disability accommodations, contact Kerry Raadt at (507) 222-4308 or online atkraadt@carleton.edu. The Skinner Memorial Chapel located on First Street, between College and Winona Streets, in Northfield.

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