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| David Wilkins (left) and Dick Riley greet one another at the first annual Forum and Awards Dinner in Columbia on Jan. 9. |
GREENVILLE, S.C. – South Carolina Educational Television (SCETV) will broadcast highlights of the first annual David H. Wilkins Forum and Awards Dinner on three different occasions during the month of April.
The event, which was sponsored by the Richard W. Riley Institute of Government, Politics and Public Leadership at Furman University, took place Jan. 9 at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.
The SCETV broadcasts will be Wednesday, April 12 (9 p.m.) and Saturday, April 29 (7 and 11 p.m.). The program will show the Wilkins Awards Dinner in its entirety and include interviews with U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins, former U.S. Secretary of Education Dick Riley, and Furman president David Shi.
During the awards dinner, the David Wilkins Award for Excellence in Legislative Leadership was presented to Sen. John Drummond, President Pro-Tem Emeritus of the South Carolina Senate. More than 500 people, including state legislators and business leaders, were in attendance.
January’s forum and awards dinner is part of a new legislative program created by the Riley Institute. It bears the name of Wilkins, a Greenville native and former Speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives.
In addition to the annual forum and awards dinner, the program will create fellowships to allow Furman students to work as interns in the state’s legislative offices, and establish an endowed professorship in South Carolina politics.
The Riley Institute at Furman is a non-partisan program affiliated with the university’s Department of Political Science. The Institute’s broad array of programs is designed to engage students in the various arenas of politics, public policy, and public leadership.
For more information, contact Furman’s News and Media Relations office at 864-294-3107.
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4-11-06
