Jacksonville University will present its Presidential Global Citizen Award to documentary filmmaker Ken Burns Tuesday.
As he accepts the award, Burns will also premier footage from two new documentaries and answer students’ questions.
JU Dean of Fine Arts Henry Rinne says the filmmaker joins a large group of artists and other notables who have shared their life’s passion with JU’s students.
“We can sit in the classroom and educate them but it is often those times where they interact with the people who are really involved in the art form and creating great works of art, that it is that interaction that I think changes students’ outlook about their own art and about the possibilities that they can have in the world," he says.
Burns pioneered the use of archival materials and photos in his 1990 television documentary about the Civil War.
He joins a long list of distinguished speakers at JU, including former Presidents Gerald Ford and Lyndon Johnson; Chemistry Nobel Prize winner LinusPauling; anthropologist Margaret Mead; Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke; Czech Republic Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus; Carl Sandburg; musician Dave Brubeck; Arthur Fiedler; Aaron Copland;, Bob Hope; Jack Benny; Duke Ellington; Billy Joel; Patricia Neal, Emmett Kelly Jr.; Charlton Heston; U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky and Pulitzer Prize winner Sonia Nazario.
Jacksonville University gave its first Presidential Global Citizen Award to PepsiCo Chairman and Chief Executive Indra K.Nooyi in 2014.
