Event Timing: Thursday, July 29, 6:30pm ET

Rex Smith, chair, Columbia Journalism School Alumni Board, will serve as emcee of the virtual event. He will interview Mel about his life and career—from his Depression-era childhood in New York City to college in New Mexico; meeting his future wife, Helen Chamberlain, at the University of Colorado; and work as a journalist that led to a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard and a tenured professorship at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.