Award-winning ABC News correspondent Morton Dean will be the speaker at next month’s commencement exercises, set for 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 20, at the Norfolk Scope.

More than 2,100 August and December graduates will be eligible to receive degrees.

A distinguished journalist for more than 30 years, Dean is national correspondent for “World News Tonight With Peter Jennings” and other ABC News broadcasts. Previously, he anchored the news segments of “Good Morning America.”

Dean joined ABC News in 1988 as a special correspondent. He has reported from Bosnia, from the Middle East during the Gulf War, on the scene of the first ground battle of Desert Storm and from Somalia. In addition, he covered the 1992 presidential election campaigns.

Prior to joining ABC News, Dean covered many headline stories for CBS News as an anchor and correspondent from 1967 to 1985, including Vietnam, the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran, El Salvador and the U.S. invasion of Grenada. He worked with and later succeeded the revered Walter Cronkite as the principal space correspondent for CBS.

Dean has received many awards for his reporting, including a National Emmy, an Overseas Press Club Award and a UPI Golden Mike Award.