1:49 p.m., Oct. 7, 2009----The University of Delaware Black American Studies Program has announced that noted journalist and author Gwen Ifill will visit the University of Delaware on Thursday, Oct. 29, presenting a lecture at 4 p.m. in the Thompson Theatre of the Roselle Center for the Arts.

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The lecture is free and open to the public.

Ifill is the author of the book, The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.

She also is is moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and senior correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Before coming to PBS, she spent five years at NBC News as chief congressional and political correspondent, and still appears as an occasional roundtable panelist on Meet The Press. Ifill joined NBC News from The New York Times where she covered the White House and politics. She also covered national and local affairs for the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun.

"I always knew I wanted to be a journalist, and my first love was newspapers," Ifill said. "But public broadcasting provides the best of both worlds -- combining the depth of news papering with the immediate impact of broadcast television."

She has received more than a dozen honorary doctorates, and is the recipient of several broadcasting excellence awards, including honors from the National Press Foundation, Ebony Magazine, the Radio Television News Directors Association, and American Women in Radio and Television.

A native of New York City and a graduate of Simmons College in Boston, Ifill has served on the boards of the Harvard University Institute of Politics, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Newseum and the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism.

The Oct. 29 lecture is sponsored by the Black American Studies Program in cooperation with the Center for Black Culture; the College of Education and Public Policy; the Department of Communication; the Department of Political Science and International Relations; the Department of History; the Office of the Provost; the Commission to Promote Racial and Cultural Diversity; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the Office of the President.