Connecticut Magazine Editor-in-Chief to Give Keynote Address at NVCC Commencement Ceremony

Waterbury, Conn. - Charles Monagan, editor-in-chief of Connecticut Magazine, will be the keynote speaker at Naugatuck Valley Community College’s commencement ceremony on Thursday, May 28.

More than 500 NVCC students will be awarded associate degrees and certificates beginning at 6 p.m. in Parking Lot C at Kinney Hall on the college’s main campus.

“Education, whether formal or informal, frees us to make informed, confident choices at important points in our lives” said Monagan. “It allows us to control our own destiny rather than merely following a path that someone else has laid out for us.”

 Monagan has been a writer and editor for the past 35 years. During that time he’s had his work appear in a number of national publications, such as Harper’s, Yankee, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. He is also the author of eight books, including five humor books (The Neurotic’s Handbook, The Complete Neurotic, The Reluctant Naturalist, Poodles From Hell and How to Get a Monkey into Harvard) and Connecticut Icons.

Since becoming editor of Connecticut Magazine in 1989, the magazine has won several national awards for editorial excellence, including three gold medals for reporting awarded by the City and Regional Magazine Association. Monagan himself won the coveted Gold Medal for Reporting in 1999 for an article on Aetna Casualty Insurance Co. He has also been a multiple winner of annual awards from the Connecticut Society of Journalists, the first coming in 1974 and the most recent in 2008.

Monagan has an enduring interest in Connecticut and has written extensively about the state over the years, culminating with Connecticut Icons, a collection of 50 pieces first published in Connecticut Magazine. He also served as speechwriter for Gov. Bill O’Neill.