A senior White House strategist, a Botswana Parliament member, and a poet who can claim a Pushcart Prize among her many honors are three of the notable people slated to be at Beloit this spring.

David Axelrod, senior advisor to President Barack Obama, will deliver the 2010 Commencement speech on May 9. Axelrod, whose son, Michael, graduated from Beloit in 2005, was a key player in Obama’s 2008 election. A political idealist whose career has made a major impact on American politics over the past 25 years, he started as a campaign manager for the late Illinois Sen. Paul Simon, served as a longtime strategist for Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, and managed media strategy and communications for more than 150 local, state, and national campaigns, with a focus on progressive candidates and causes.

Beloit welcomed Sheila Dinotshe Tlou to campus in March, when she held the 11th Weissberg Chair in International Studies.

A member of the Republic of Botswana’s Parliament and the country’s former Minister of Health, Tlou is a professor of nursing by trade who has played a leading role in developing a national nursing curriculum and educational program in Botswana. A number of national and international awards have recognized her work, including the 2007 Woman Leading Change Award from the World YWCA, the 2004 Emang Basadi Award for Leadership in HIV/AIDS, and the 2003 Florence Nightingale Award from the International Red Cross Society. During her residency at Beloit, she speaks in classes, meets with students, participates in a panel discussion about health as a human right, and delivers a public address to a campus and community audience.

Also in March, poet Linda Gregerson began her residency as the 2010 Lois and Willard Mackey Chair in Creative Writing.

Gregerson, who teaches American poetry and Renaissance literature and directs the Master of Fine Arts degree program in creative writing at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, will work closely with Beloit students in a workshop setting. She is also scheduled to present a public reading.

Gregerson’s awards and honors include the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine, the Consuelo Ford Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Isabel MacCaffrey Award from the Spenser Society of America, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, in addition to the Pushcart Prize. Her most recently published collection of poetry is titled Magnetic North (2007).