Lyon College will honor the accomplishments of 102 graduating students at the Spring 2023 Commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 13, at 8:30 a.m. on Couch Garden of the Lyon College campus, 2300 Highland Rd., Batesville.
Crystal Johnson (pictured), president and CEO of the Batesville Area Chamber of Commerce, will serve as the commencement speaker. The chamber is a business network of 500 organizational members dedicated to business advocacy and promotion of those members as well as economic and community development.
As president and CEO of the BACC since July 2009, Johnson provides strategic leadership and vision for the organization and facilitates the IMPACT Independence County community and economic strategic plan. She is also responsible for developing and facilitating the Leadership Batesville Program and leads the City of Batesville Economic Development Program.
Her accomplishments as president and CEO of the BACC include partnering with the City of Batesville to lead a successful community development tax campaign to raise $30 million for community use facilities, including a community center, regulation-size gymnasium multiplex, aquatics park, and an MLB replica youth baseball complex. She also led a legislative campaign to pass Act 456 of 2019, also known as the Arkansas Concurrent Challenge Scholarship Act, that resulted in financial incentives awarded to eligible high school students, removing financial barriers and increasing speed of entry into the workforce.
Johnson is a certified professional community and economic developer (PCED) and is a 2018 graduate of the Institute for Organization Management (IOM), a program of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation fostering individual growth and interactive learning and networking opportunities as the premier non-profit professional development program for chambers and associations. She holds a master’s degree in Community and Economic Development from the University of Central Arkansas and is a graduate of the Leadership Arkansas program and Community Development Institute (CDI). She most recently earned a Strategic Doing Workshop Leader Certification from the University of North Alabama, Center of Learning and Professional Development in 2022.
Rev. Dr. Stuart Higginbotham, an Episcopal priest and a 2001 Lyon College alumnus, will serve as the guest speaker for the 2023 Baccalaureate service on Friday, May 12, at 7:30 p.m. on Couch Garden.
He received a master’s degree in Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., in 2005 and then transferred to the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, where he completed a year of Anglican Studies at The School of Theology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn. He was ordained an Episcopal priest in 2008 and then completed the Doctor of Ministry program at Sewanee in 2017.
Dr. Higginbotham’s vocation is grounded in the wisdom of the ancient Christian contemplative tradition and the way it nurtures the present context of congregational development. He is the author of “The Heart of a Calling: The Practice of Christian Mindfulness in Congregational Ministry” and the co-editor of “Contemplation and Community: A Gathering of Fresh Voices for a Living Tradition.”
He has been the rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Gainesville, Ga., since 2014 and will begin this August as Assistant Professor in the Practice of Spiritual Formation and Ministry at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology.
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