Best-selling author, veteran, TV host Wes Moore to deliver first-year seminar lecture

POUGHKEEPSIE (October 24, 2016) – Wes Moore, author of the best-selling The Other Wes Moore, Marist's 2016-17 common reading, will deliver the First-Year Seminar Lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 26 at 11:30 a.m. in McCann Arena. 

The cornerstone of the Marist Core, the First Year Seminar (FYS) introduces students to the College as a learning community through a wide range of topics designed to expand academic horizons and fuel curiosity. The small size of each FYS course provides an opportunity for students to work closely with faculty and classmates. Workshops in the course help them learn about the College's campus life and services. Many courses also involve field trips to such destinations as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Museum and Library in Boston or, for students in our Freshman Florence Experience, the city of Florence and beyond. A campus-wide common reading provides a touchstone for FYS courses and for events and conversation throughout the Marist community as a whole. 

About Wes Moore

Wes Moore is a youth advocate, Army combat veteran, social entrepreneur, and host of Beyond Belief on the Oprah Winfrey Network. His first book, The Other Wes Moore, became instant New York Timesand Wall Street Journal bestsellers. The book looks at the lives of two men—marked by striking similarities, including the same name—and the defining moments that led to very different outcomes. 

Born in 1978, Moore and his sisters were raised by their widowed mother. Despite early academic and behavioral struggles, he graduated Phi Theta Kappa in 1998 as a commissioned officer from Valley Forge Military College, and Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins University in 2001, where he also played football and earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations. He then became a Rhodes Scholar, studying international relations at Oxford University.

After his studies, Moore, a paratrooper and captain in the United States Army, served a combat tour of duty in Afghanistan with the 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division. Wes then served as a White House fellow to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He serves on the board of the Iraq Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), The Johns Hopkins University, and founded an organization called STAND! that works with Baltimore youth involved in the criminal justice system.