SELINSGROVE - Cynthia A. Baldwin, a former justice on the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, past chair of the Pennsylvania State University board of trustees and the first African American female judge elected to the Allegheny Court of Common Pleas, will address an anticipated 429 graduates of Susquehanna University at commencement services May 10. The event is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. in the field house of the James W. Garrett Sports Complex.

The ceremony follows a baccalaureate service at 10 a.m. in the Weber Chapel auditorium and a commencement luncheon gala from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the Charles B. Degenstein Campus Center’s Evert Dining Room.

Baldwin currently is a partner in the law firm Duane Morris LLP in Pittsburgh, where she practices appellate litigation within the firm's trial practice group and mediates all types of cases. She served as Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania from 2006-08 and in various divisions of the Allegheny Court of Common Pleas for 16 years.

Prior to her judicial appointments, she was the attorney-in-charge in the Office of the Attorney General at the Pennsylvania Bureau of Consumer Protection. She also taught at Widener University Law School in the trial advocacy program.

Baldwin received her law degree from Duquesne University, where she was a member of its Law Review. She went on to teach as both a visiting and an adjunct professor at the university’s School of Law, and is a trustee emerita of the school’s board of directors and past president of its law alumni board.

Before attending law school, Baldwin taught English and was an assistant dean of student affairs at what is now the Greater Allegheny campus of Pennsylvania State University. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Penn State in English and American Literature, respectively. In 1995, the governor of Pennsylvania appointed Baldwin to the Penn State board of trustees, where she eventually served as chair.

Baldwin formerly served on the Pennsylvania Commission for Justice Initiatives and currently is a member of the American Bar Association, Pennsylvania Bar Association, Homer S. Brown Law Association and the Women's Bar Association. She chairs the board of directors of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. Baldwin was a gubernatorial appointee to the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency from 1990 to 2002, and is a past member of the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing. She also is a former Master in the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Inns of Court and the Matrimonial Inns of Court.