Af­ter more than 35 years in the art form, so­ca king Machel Mon­tano is be­ing award­ed an Hon­orary Doc­tor­ate in by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT).

Mon­tano, who will cel­e­brate his 44th birth­day on No­vem­ber 24, is among five peo­ple who will be re­ceiv­ing aus­pi­cious awards for their con­tri­bu­tion to so­ci­ety in ed­u­ca­tion, cul­ture, fine arts, sci­ence and sports at the UTT’s pre­sen­ta­tion of grad­u­ates next week.

Mon­tano, who be­gan his singing at age sev­en, has been giv­en sev­er­al awards lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly dur­ing his ca­reer.

The oth­er spe­cial awardees are ac­tivist Ein­tou Pearl Springer (Hon­orary Doc­tor of Fine Arts), for­mer na­tion­al foot­baller and coach Alvin Corneal (Hon­orary Doc­tor of Hu­mane Let­ters), for­mer teacher and politi­cian Roy Au­gus­tus (Hon­orary Dis­tin­guished Fel­low) and Leo Mar­tin (Hon­orary Doc­tor of Sci­ence).

Over 1,700 stu­dents will be award­ed un­der­grad­u­ate and post­grad­u­ate de­grees, in­clud­ing two Mas­ters of Phi­los­o­phy and sev­en Doc­tors of Phi­los­o­phy de­grees.

The grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies are card­ed for No­vem­ber 14 and 15 at Grad­u­a­tion Pavil­ion, UTT’s O’Meara Cam­pus, Ari­ma and some 1,700 stu­dents will grad­u­ate.