Marsalis, Walesa, Varmus Headline Lawrence University Convocation Series

APPLETON, WIS. -- A music maker, a history changer and a life saver highlight the 2001-2002 Lawrence University convocation series.

Jazz legend Wynton Marsalis, freedom fighter Lech Walesa and Nobel Prize-winning cancer researcher Dr. Harold Varmus join actor/playwright Anne Deavere Smith and nationally acclaimed poet Edward Hirsch as speakers in the upcoming series.

Lawrence President Richard Warch opens the 2001-2002 series Sept. 27 at 11:10 a.m. with his annual matriculation address. All convocations are held in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel at 11:10 a.m. and are free and open to the public.

Marsalis, the artistic director of the internationally respected arts organization Jazz at Lincoln Center and music director of the world-renowned Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, delivers his convocation address on October 9.

In addition to being a distinguished classical musician -- he began his classical studies on the trumpet when he was 12 -- Marsalis is widely considered the most accomplished jazz musician and composer of his generation. He began playing with the acclaimed Art Blakely and the Jazz Messengers at the age of 17 while still a first-year student at The Julliard School. In 1983, Marsalis became the first and only artist to win both a classical and jazz Grammy Award in the same year, repeating that unprecedented feat the following year. Since making his recording debut in 1982, Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awards. In 1997, he became the first jazz artist to earn a Pulitzer Prize in music.

In addition to his convocation address, Marsalis will lead the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in the opening concert of Lawrence's Jazz Series that evening at 8:30 p.m.

As a shipyard electrician in Gdansk, Poland, Walesa sparked a social revolution during a labor strike in 1980 that eventually led to the end of Communist rule in his country and helped fueled the end of the Cold War. He will speak at Lawrence on October 25.

Walesa's historic efforts in Poland to form independent unions and gain the right to strike -- he spent 11 months interned under house arrest -- earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and Time magazine's "Man of the Year" award.

In the late 1980s, amidst widespread chaos and labor unrest, Communist leaders invited Walesa's underground organization, Solidarity, to form a coalition government. In the resulting election, Solidarity won nearly every contest and Walesa became Poland's first democratically elected President, receiving nearly 75 percent of the votes. Under Walesa's leadership, Poland became a model of economic and political reform for Eastern Europe, earning it one of the first invitations to join an expanded NATO.

Smith, whose work as a playwright explores America's multifaceted national identity, speaks at Lawrence on February 21, 2002.

Described by Newsweek magazine as "the most exciting individual in American theatre," Smith's work examines controversial events from multiple viewpoints. Over the past two decades, Smith has created a body of theatrical work she calls "On the Road: A Search for American Character." She has written plays based on the racial clashes between Jews and blacks in Brooklyn and the civil unrest that developed after the Rodney King verdict.

She was awarded a prestigious $500,000 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1996, earned an Obie Award and was the runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in 1993.

Varmus, president and chief operating officer of New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, visits the Lawrence campus on April 30, 2002.

A student of Elizabethan poetry as an undergraduate before turning his attention to medicine, Varmus established himself as a pioneer in cancer research in the mid 1970s at the University of California Medical Center. His research focused on the belief that cancerous cells grew not as a result of an invasion from outside the cell, but rather a misuse of a normal gene by a retrovirus, triggered by exposure to a carcinogen such as smoke or radiation.

His research, credited with greatly advancing the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of a variety of cancers, earned Varmus the Nobel Prize in 1989. Before taking over the leadership of Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Varmus spent six years as the director of the National Institutes of Health, the largest medical research entity in the world.

Hirsch, a poet, scholar and professor of English at the University of Houston, concludes the series May 21, 2002 in a return visit to campus as the speaker at Lawrence's annual Honors Convocation. Last October, he served as the first guest lecturer in a new series established by the Mia T. Paul Poetry Fund.

Hailed as a "poetic genius," Hirsch has written five books of poems, each of which has earned critical acclaim. In 1999, he released his handbook, "How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry," which became a national best seller.

His many honors and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, a National Book Critics Circle Award and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

Hirsch also writes regularly for The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review and American Poetry Review. He has been a member of the English department at the University of Houston since 1985.