Pontiac mayor, OU alumnus Mike McGuinness to keynote 7th annual Tim Larrabee Memorial Lecture
Mike McGuinness, mayor of the City of Pontiac and a former Oakland University student body president, will be the featured speaker at Oakland University’s 7th annual Tim Larrabee Memorial Lecture from 5-6:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 19, in 159 North Foundation Hall. McGuinness made history when he was elected Pontiac’s first openly gay mayor in November 2025. Prior to becoming mayor, he served as president of the Pontiac City Council from 2022-2026, president of the Pontiac Board of Education from
Governor Whitmer appoints two new members to Oakland University’s Board of Trustees
Governor Gretchen Whitmer has made two new appointments to the Oakland University Board of Trustees. These appointments are subject to the advice and consent of the Senate. The first appointee is Nate Engle of Lansing, who will serve a term from March 5, 2026 through August 11, 2028. He succeeds Joe Jones, who resigned from the board last month. Nate Engle Engle currently serves as director of community engagement for the Michigan Department of Agriculture. His professional background includes
OU’s Dunya Mikhail selected to serve as Holmes Visiting Professor of Poetry at Princeton this fall
Dunya Mikhail, special lecturer of Arabic in Oakland University’s Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and of creative writing in the Department of English, Creative Writing, and Film, will spend the Fall 2026 semester teaching at Princeton University as the Holmes Visiting Professor of Poetry. The professorship is an honorary position that invites a distinguished contemporary poet to come to Princeton for one semester to teach a class, give a talk and/or poetry reading and mentor students on
