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Now in its 24th year, the annual Honors Forum Lecture Series brought six distinguished and diverse speakers to visit Maricopa in 2004-2005. Throughout the year, honors students explored such diverse topics as why The Simpsons has had such an impact on American popular culture. They discussed how editorial cartoons and political satire can influence how people view a political issue or even an election. Students examined stereotypes in popular culture, specifically the depiction of love and marriage in various forms of media.
For 2005-2006, the Honors Program will continue to explore the theme, Popular Culture: Shaping and Reflecting Who We Are. Each invited speaker has the opportunity to visit and participate in informal discussions with students and faculty at two of the colleges before the day's activities culminate with the keynote presentation at Phoenix College.
The lectures, which begin at 7:00 p.m. in the Bulpitt Auditorium at Phoenix College, are free and open to the community.
The speakers scheduled for next year will continue to challenge our students and faculty to explore popular culture and its impact on society.
 Ray Suarez
The Old Subdivision? American Life
and American Culture in the First Suburban Century
September 21, 2005
Ray Suarez joined The NewsHour in October 1999 as a Washington-based senior correspondent responsible for conducting newsmaker interviews, studio discussion and debates, reporting from the field, and serving as a backup anchor.
He also is an essayist for BBC Radio, joining a group of US-based writers on a new program called State of the Union. The weekly commentaries are the successor to the late Alistair Cooke's Letter From America.
Suarez has more than twenty-five years of varied experience in the news business. He came to The NewsHour from National Public Radio where he had been host of the nationwide, call-in news program Talk of the Nation since 1993. Prior to that, he spent seven years covering local, national, and international stories for the NBC-owned station, WMAQ-TV in Chicago.
Suarez wrote the book The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, and has contributed to several others, including Brooklyn, Saving America's Treasures, Las Christmas: Favorite Latino Authors Share Their Holiday Memories, and About Men. His essays and criticism have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and The Baltimore Sun, among other publications.
Suarez holds a Bachelor of Arts in African History from New York University and a Master of Arts in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by four colleges and universities, most recently by Xavier University in Cincinnati. He has also been honored with a Distinguished Alumnus Award from NYU, and a Professional Achievement Award from the University of Chicago. A life member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Suarez is a founding member of the Chicago Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Bill Goodykoontz
Birth, School, Work, Death: Television as Ubiquitous Popular Culture
October 19, 2005
Bill Goodykoontz learned to read using his grandmother's books of Addams Family cartoons. That's as good an explanation as any for his sense of humor. The television critic and columnist for The Arizona Republic, Goodykoontz has never seen a single episode of Leave It To Beaver. He also spent a few years without a TV set. Thanks to Nick at Nite and TV Land, it did not take long to catch up. Now he comments on anything and everything that is on TV. Since almost everything is, it's a wide-open opportunity.
Goodykoontz has been at The Arizona Republic since 1990. His first assignment was living in Kingman, covering the western part of the state. He has also served as a police reporter, a government reporter, a sports columnist and a general features columnist, traveling to the Final Four, a couple of Super Bowls, Woodstock '94 and, perhaps most impressively, the National Spam-Carving Contest.
Before coming to the Republic, Goodykoontz worked for the Winston-Salem Journal, in North Carolina. He worked as a police reporter, a government reporter, and a features columnist. He graduated from James Madison University, in Harrisonburg, Virginia, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English.
 Camille Cooper
Discover the Truth About "Beauty" in Popular Culture
November 16, 2005
Camille Cooper has worked professionally in film and television for the past ten years, starring in five motion pictures and more than ten television series including General Hospital and Knots Landing. She has been featured in numerous commercials and print ads. She has been interviewed and photographed for such publications as Premiere Interview, Egg, and The New York Times, and has appeared on the cover of Working Mother.
Cooper has co-chaired the Committee for Empowerment of Young Women since 1994, and has lectured across the country, educating and encouraging young women to question what they see, to define themselves by their abilities and dreams, and to take action to promote positive change.
Steve Bell
Media Influence on Politics: Campaign 2004
February 15, 2006
Steve Bell is Professor of Telecommunications at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. He is also Endowed Chair Emeritus in Telecommunication and former chair of the department. He is active as a public speaker, panelist and writer, and involved in special projects for television, radio, and multi-media. He has received two national Emmy nominations, numerous local Emmy awards, an Overseas Press Club award and a Headliner's Award for his reporting. A native of Oskaloosa, Iowa, he has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Central College in Iowa and a Master of Science in journalism from Northwestern University.
Professor Bell's prestigious network and local news career has made him an eyewitness to many historic events. From 1967-1986, he served as news correspondent for ABC News. For more than a decade, he was familiar to millions of Americans as the anchorman for ABC's World News This Morning and the news segments ofGood Morning America. With host David Hartman, he regularly interviewed major newsmakers.
After joining ABC News in 1967, Bell covered the social upheaval then reshaping the nation, including the Newark and East Harlem riots and anti-war protests in Washington. His coverage in Newark was described in Variety as "one of the most moving and chilling examples yet of on-the-scene reporting." He also covered the assassination and funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr., and was on the scene when Robert Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in 1968.
Serving as a war correspondent in 1970, Bell reported extensively from Vietnam and Indochina. In Cambodia in 1970, he and his camera crew were captured by the Viet Cong. Although held briefly at gunpoint, he managed to tape-record the incident. While covering the 10th anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam in 1985, Bell filmed the first live satellite report from Vietnam. Recently, he wrote and produced a Vietnam documentary for Public Television based on a study trip by Ball State University students and faculty.
 Dan Moldea
Beyond 'The Sopranos': Investigating the Real Mafia
March 22, 2006
Most people are unaware of the insidious influence of the underworld on much of our daily lives. Dan Moldea, one of the country's leading investigative reporters, has devoted his career to exposing corruption in politics, big business, and organized labor; the entertainment industry; and professional sports.
Over the past 25 years, Moldea has become well known for his uncompromising investigations of formidable institutions such as the Teamsters, the Mafia, the Reagan White House, the National Rifle Association, the Los Angeles Police Department, the National Football League, The New York Times, and the illegal gambling community.
Moldea has authored many celebrated and controversial books. His works include: The Hoffa Wars: Teamsters, Rebels, Politicians and the Mob; Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan, MCA and the Mob; The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy: An Investigation of Motive, Means and Opportunity; Evidence Dismissed: The Inside Story of the Police Investigation of O.J. Simpson (co-written with Tom Lange and Philip Vannatter); and Washington Tragedy: How the Death of Vincent Foster a Political Firestorm. In addition, Moldea's articles have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The London Observer, and the Boston Globe. Moldea has been featured on numerous national television programs including Nightline, Good Morning America, The CBS Evening News, Unsolved Mysteries, ABC's World News Tonight, and Crossfire.
 Tim Riley
Find the Cost of Freedom: Censorship
in the Arts
April 19, 2006
Author, speaker, and NPR Critic, Tim Riley is currently the music critic for NPR's Here And Now, and has written for the Washington Post, Newsweek, Boston Magazine, the Boston Phoenix, Monitor Radio, The World, and Studio 360 (PRI).
Riley is the author of Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary, which was hailed by The New York Times as bringing "new insight to the act we've known for all these years..." He has also written Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary, Madonna: Illustrated, and Fever: How Rock'n'Roll Transformed Gender in America. His work is widely used in college courses on pop culture, and he gave a keynote address at Beatles 2000, the first international academic conference on the band in Finland. He is currently working on a major new biography of John Lennon for W.W. Norton.
 2Betsy Hertzler, Ed.D., Mesa Community College
and Eric Leshinskie, MCLI
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