Elon is set to host several professionals in the media, music and business fields during the 2015-2016 academic year.

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. will be speaking in McCrary Theater on Thursday, Sept. 24 at 7:30 p.m as a part of the "Baird Pultizer Prize Lecture."

Pitts is a Miami Herald newspaper columnist whose articles on pop culture, social issues and family life is syndicated daily across the country in more than 150 newspapers.

Pitts is also a bestselling author, penning "Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood," a look inside the meaning of black fatherhood in the contemporary United States.

Along with Pitts' Pultizer Prize for his Miami Herald column, he has received accolades from the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists, the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors and the Simon Wiesenthal Center,

Pitts was last on campus in 2009 for an event sponsored by Elon's School of Communications and the Truitt Center.

Elon's annual Fall Convocation is set to feature the Emmy and Grammy award-winning Itzhak Perlman in Alumni Gym.

Perlman has performed with every major orchestra, and has also performed on live television with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, clarinetist Anthony McGill and pianist Gabriela Montero during President Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration.

A Four-time Emmy award winner and 15-time Grammy award winner, Perlman works at the "Perlman Music Program," a musical training school for young string players to attend summer programs and have mentoring opportunities.

Perlman was born in Israel in 1945, and completed his initial training at the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. He has a long list of honorary degrees, from institutions including Harvard, Yale, Brandeis, Roosevelt and Yeshiva.

President Ronald Reagan honored Perlman with a "Medal of Liberty" in 1986, and in late 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded Perlman the "National Medal of Arts." He was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor in 2003 by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

MSNBC host and author Melissa Harris-Perry will be the 2016 Winter Term Opening Speaker, at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016 in McCrary Theatre.

A 1994 Wake Forest graduate, Harris-Perry is the Presidential Endowed Chair in Politics and International Affairs at Wake Forest. She also served as executive director of the Pro Humanitate Institute, and was founding director of the "Anna Julia Cooper Center on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South."

Harris-Perry is the host of "Melissa Harris-Perry," which broadcasts on MSNBC from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays and Sundays. She is also the author of "Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought," and "Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America."

Since receiving her doctorate in political science from Duke University in 1999, Harris-Perry has served on the faculty of the University of Chicago, Princeton University and Tulane University.

CEO of the Aspen Institute, Walter Isaacson, will be giving the annual Spring Convocation address on March 31, 2016 in Alumni Gym.

The Aspen Institute is a nonpartisan educational and policy studies institute in Washington, D.C. He is the former chairman CEO of CNN, and editor of TIME Magazine.

Isaacson has written a number of communication-minded books in his career. His most recent book, "The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution," is a story of the people who invented the computer, Internet, and other innovations of the 21st Century.

Isaacson was a political correspondent, national editor and editor of new media for TIME Magazine before becoming the magazine's 14th editor in 1996. He became chairman and CEO of CNN in 2001, and president and CEO of the Aspen Institute in 2003.

Isaacson is chair emeritus of Teach for America and was appointed by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate to serve as the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other international broadcasts. He served in this role until 2012. Issacson also is vice-chair of Partners for a New Beginning, a public-private group tasked with forging ties between the United States and the Muslim world.

Tickets for the Fall and Winter Term events will be available to the Elon community at the Performing Arts Box Office beginning in September 2015. Ticket information for Spring Convocation is not yet released.