North Carolina A&T State University faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends will celebrate the institution’s 122nd year of existence at its Founders’ Day Convocation on Thursday March 21, from 10 a.m. – noon in the Richard B. Harrison Auditorium. The keynote speaker for the event will be The Honorable Edolphus Towns Jr.

At the convocation, the university will recognize alumni, one from each school and college, with an Alumni Achievement Award. This award is given to alumni that have made significant contributions to the growth and development of the university.

A native of Chadbourn, N.C., Towns earned a bachelor’s degree from N.C. A&T in 1956. He received his master’s degree from Adelphi University.

Towns, a democrat from New York, served in the United States House of Representative from 1983 to 2013. He was chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee from 2009 to 2011. During his 30 years in Congress, he represented districts based in Brooklyn: first New York’s 11th congressional district, from 1983 to 1993, and then the 10th district from 1993 to 2013.

He worked as an administrator at Beth Israel Medical Center, a professor at New York’s Medgar Evers College and Fordham University and a public school teacher. He is a veteran of the United States Army and an ordained Baptist minister.

Towns served on the Energy and Commerce Committee and was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. He co-sponsored and enacted several pieces of federal legislation including the Student Right To Know Act, which mandated the reporting of the rate of graduation, among student athletes, creating the Telecommunications Development Fund, which provides capital for minority business initiatives and the development of a federal program for poison and control centers.

Towns is the recipient of the 2012 Chair’s Leadership Award (formerly the Presidential Award). He is married to the former Gwendolyn Forbes. They have two children, Darryl and Deidra.