Current News

• Puttin' on the Ritz
• Distinguished Artists Series: Arnaldo Cohen
• Fall Atkinson Lecture Series speaker announced
• Star Trees Lighting and Holiday Events
• Jane Goodall discusses the power of youth

Ira Glass, host and producer of the National Public Radio program This American Life, will deliver the spring Atkinson Lecture Saturday, April 22, in Smith Auditorium at 8 p.m.

Tickets for Willamette University students, faculty and staff will be available at the Information Desk in University Center beginning April 10. The first ticket is free with a Willamette ID and subsequent tickets are $10. Tickets for the general public will be available beginning April 17 for $10 at University Center.

This American Life premiered on Chicago's public radio station WBEZ in 1995 and is now heard on more than 500 public radio stations each week by an estimated 1.7 million listeners.

Glass began his career as an intern at NPR's network headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 1978 when he was 19 years old and held virtually every production job on site. He has been a tape cutter, newscast writer, desk assistant, editor and producer. He has filled in as host of Talk of the Nation and Weekend All Things Considered.

Under his direction, This American Life has won the highest honors for broadcasting and journalistic excellence, including the Peabody and DuPont-Columbia awards, as well as the Robert F. Kennedy Award.

Glass, one celebrity who prefers to be heard and not seen, is a 1982 graduate of Brown University.

The 2005-06 Atkinson Lecture series opened in November with a lecture by Dr. Azar Nafisi, the author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books." [learn more]

03-21-2006