Berry College President Stephen R. Briggs announced Tuesday that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will be the inaugural speaker for the Gloria Shatto Lecture Series. Dr. Albright will address a campus audience in the Berry College Chapel on Thursday, April 12, the night before Dr. Briggs' formal inauguration as Berry's eighth president.
      The Shatto Lecture Series is named for the late Dr. Gloria Shatto, Berry's president from 1980 to 1998. William B. Stokely III, then chairman of the Berry College Board of Trustees, and Dr. Shatto's husband, Bob, led the drive to endow a lecture series in her honor.
      "This news is the culmination of a dream for all those who supported the Shatto Lectureship during Berry's recently completed $100 million Century Campaign," Dr. Briggs said in his announcement to students, faculty and staff. "The resulting $1 million endowment makes it possible for our students to gain insight from and interact with speakers who have stood at the crossroads of history."
      Dr. Albright has done exactly that. At the time she was named secretary of state by then-President Bill Clinton in 1997, she was the highest ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government. Prior to that appointment, she served from 1993-97 as the United States' permanent representative to the United Nations.
      Dr. Albright is the first Michael and Virginia Mortara Endowed Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service and founder of The Albright Group LLC, a global strategy firm. She also chairs The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and The Pew Global Attitudes Project, and serves as president of the Truman Scholarship Foundation.
      "This lecture series is a fitting tribute to Dr. Shatto, who believed strongly in the notion that there is more to an education than what can be found in textbooks," Dr. Briggs stated. "As Bob Shatto once noted, 'She loved to find ways to help broaden the education of the students she loved so much.'"
      Dr. Albright's speech will be one of the highlights of a weeklong series of activities leading up to Dr. Briggs' inauguration. That event is scheduled for Friday afternoon, April 13. Additional information will be posted on the Berry Web site (www.berry.edu) as it becomes available.