Bellisario College of Communications

Two Pulitzer Prize winners highlight Foster Conference

Two award-winning journalists will deliver free public lectures during the fall 2008 Foster Conference of Distinguished Writers at Penn State.

The lectures, which bring distinguished writers to the University Park campus to share their experiences with students, faculty and the public, are scheduled Tuesday, Oct. 7, and Wednesday, Oct. 8. Both events will be in the HUB-Robeson Center Auditorium.

William Raspberry will speak at 7 p.m. Oct. 7. A columnist for The Washington Post for four decades before his retirement in 2005, Raspberry taught for the next two years at Duke University as the Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy Studies. At the Post, his nationally syndicated columns, often on public policy issues such as education, crime, justice, drug abuse and housing, earned the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1994.

The National Press Club gave Raspberry its highest honor, the Fourth Estate Award, and the National Association of Black Journalists inducted him into its Hall of Fame. He retired from teaching in order to give more time to Baby Steps, a program he created in his hometown of Okolona, Miss., to help parents and promote education for the young.

Amy Goldstein will speak at 10:10 a.m. Oct. 8. A staff writer at The Washington Post, Goldstein writes nationally about social policy issues. She divides her time between in-depth pieces on social policy and other high-profile national stories. This year, she co-wrote a series about flawed medical care for immigrants detained by the U.S. government.

She has covered the White House through two different administrations and was part of a Post team in 2002 that won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on national affairs for the newspaper’s coverage of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the government’s response.

In 1997, Larry Foster, a 1948 Penn State graduate, and his wife, Ellen Miller Foster, a 1949 graduate, gave $500,000 to endow the Foster Professorship in Writing and Editing. The program was designed to support new strategies for improving students’ writing skills and enables the University to host the annual Foster Conference of Distinguished Writers.

In addition to the series, the couple endowed the Larry and Ellen Foster Communications Librarian and funded the Foster Auditorium, a tiered 134-seat facility in the Pattee Library designed to support library instruction and programming. They also provided the lead gift for renovations to the Carnegie Building, home of Penn State’s College of Communications.
 

Last Updated March 19, 2009

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