Published: December 31, 2006 01:02 am      

FSU continues Celebration of Ideas series

FAIRMONT — Students and community members will have the opportunity to learn from an entrepreneur, a columnist and an author.

As the spring semester begins, Fairmont State’s annual Celebration of Ideas lecture series continues. The university’s annual lecture series brings in speakers from a wide array of backgrounds. Throughout the school year, the speakers share their experiences and ideas with students and the community.

Persis Bates, FSU coordinator of multicultural affairs, said the events are designed to give a variety of views and perspectives to students and community members as well. The university’s student affairs office presents the program each year. Bates explained this is the sixth year for the program.

Each year, student affairs teams up with different faculty members and academic departments to get an idea of speakers and topics that students and the community are interested in. Student affairs officials begin working on each year’s speakers a year in advance, Bates said.

The lecture series will begin again in February with Randal D. Pinkett, Ph.D., MBA, speaking at 10 a.m. Feb. 17 in the Turley Center Ballroom. His speech is part of the annual student leadership conference.

Pinkett holds five degrees. He is also the winner of NBC’s hit reality television show, “The Apprentice,” with Donald Trump. He was selected as one of 18 candidates chosen from among 1 million applicants to compete for the opportunity to run one of Trump’s companies. He is currently overseeing both renovation and information technology projects for Trump Entertainment Resorts in Atlantic City, N.J. He is also completing two books: “The Campus CEO: How to Start and Grow a Million Dollar Business on Any College Campus” and “Black Faces in White Places.”

Jeannette Walls will speak at 7:30 p.m. March 5, also in the Turley Center Ballroom. Walls is the former gossip correspondent for E! Channel and New York Magazine’s “Intelligencer.” She can now be seen on MSNBC three mornings a week and appears on MSNBC online four days a week.

Walls’ memoir, “The Glass Castle,” is an account of growing up nomadic, starry-eyed and dirt poor in the ’60s and ’70s. From her first memory of catching fire while boiling hot dogs by herself in the trailer park her family was passing through to her last glimpse of her mother picking through a New York City dumpster, Walls gives an unflinching account of her rags-to-riches life.

Author Ha Jin will speak at 8 p.m. April 2, also in the Turley Center Ballroom.

He grew up in mainland China and came to the United States in 1985 to do graduate work at Brandeis University. Since 1990, he has written exclusively in English. Jin has published a variety of poetry volumes, novels and short fiction works. His work has been translated into over 30 languages. Currently he is a professor of English at Boston University and lives in the Boston area.

E-mail Katie Wilson at kwilson@timeswv.com.