CNN’s Anderson Cooper gives YSU Skeggs Lecture Sept. 24

Tickets are expected to go quickly as Anderson Cooper, host of CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” presents the Youngstown State University Skeggs Lecture 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 24, in Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown.

Tickets are free but required for admission. Tickets are available starting Friday, Aug. 12 at the Stambaugh Auditorium box office and also at www.stambaughauditorium.com. Tickets are limited to four per person.

Cooper, who has a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Yale University, previously worked as chief international correspondent for Channel One News and as a correspondent for ABC News. He also was host of ABC’s reality program, The Mole. Cooper anchored ABC’s overnight newscast World News Now, and was a correspondent for World News Tonight as well as 20/20.

Her joined CNN in December 2001, serving as CNN’s weekend anchor before moving to prime time in March 2003 after the war in Iraq. He then moved to a two-hour late evening timeslot in November 2005, following Hurricane Katrina. His current program airs weeknights at 8 p.m.

In his 24-year career, Cooper has worked in more than 40 countries, covered nearly all-major news events around the world and played a pivotal role in CNN’s political and election coverage, including convention coverage and moderating several presidential debates and town halls. He also a regular correspondent for CBS’s 60 Minutes.

He has won several major journalism awards and helped lead CNN’s Peabody Award-winning coverage of Hurricane Katrina and DuPont Award-winning coverage of the 2004 tsunami. Additionally, he has been awarded nine Emmy Awards, including two for his coverage of the earthquake in Haiti, and an Edward R Murrow award.

The Skeggs Lecture was established in 1966 in memory of the late Leonard T. Skeggs Sr. Skeggs came to Youngstown in 1919 as educational secretary of the YMCA. In 1924, he became general secretary, a position held until his death in 1933. It was Skeggs who prompted Howard W. Jones to become the first president of the university.