The Rev. Michael J. Garanzini, S.J., Ph.D., President of Loyola University Chicago, will discuss Jesuit higher education in this Centennial Lecture Series program.

Fr. Garanzini has served as the 23rd president of Loyola University Chicago since June 2001. A seasoned university administrator, tenured professor, author, and scholar, Father Garanzini has spent the majority of his career working in higher education.

In June 2011, Father Garanzini was appointed by Adolfo Nicolas, S.J., the superior general of the Society of Jesus, to serve as the Secretary for Higher Education for the Society of Jesus. In this new role, which officially began on September 1, 2011 and is in addition to his continued service as president of Loyola, Father Garanzini assists the Father General on a part-time basis, coordinating and championing Jesuit higher-education issues around the world.

Father Garanzini's solid academic credentials combine with a rare blend of experience in teaching, research, service, and administrative leadership at some of the nation's leading Jesuit institutions of higher learning, including Georgetown, Fordham, Saint Louis, and Rockhurst universities, as well as Gregorian University in Rome.

Prior to becoming president of Loyola, Father Garanzini was a full professor of psychology at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where he had been special assistant to the president for two years. Before joining Georgetown, Father Garanzini was a visiting professor at Fordham University in New York.

Cokie Roberts is a political commentator for ABC News, providing analysis for all network news programming. From 1996-2002 she and Sam Donaldson co-anchored the weekly ABC interview program "This Week". Roberts also contributes political analysis for National Public Radio. In her more than forty years in broadcasting, she has won countless awards, including three Emmys. She has been inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame, and was cited by the American Women in Radio and Television as one of the fifty greatest women in the history of broadcasting.

In addition to her appearances on the airwaves, Roberts, along with her husband, Steven V. Roberts, writes a weekly column syndicated in newspapers around the country by U Click. The Roberts are also contributing editors to USA Weekend Magazine, and together they wrote Our Haggadah: Uniting Traditions for Interfaith Families, published in 2011. Their other book together, From this Day Forward, an account of their now more than forty-five year marriage and other marriages in American history immediately went onto The New York Times bestseller list. It followed Cokie Roberts's number one bestseller, We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, an account of women's roles and relationships throughout American history. Roberts histories of women in America's founding era--Founding Mothers, published in 2004 and Ladies of Liberty in 2008, also became instant bestsellers.

Cokie Roberts holds more than twenty honorary degrees, serves on the boards of several non-profit institutions and President Bush appointed her to his Commission on Service and Civic Participation. In 2008 the Library of Congress named her a "Living Legend," one of the very few Americans to have attained that honor. She is the mother of two and grandmother of six.