Meliora 2026 announcement
MELWKND26
CONNECT HERE OCT 1–4
MELWKND26
CONNECT HERE OCT 1–4
The texts, likes, and occasional catch-up calls are great. But nothing compares to being back together on campus for Meliora Weekend. Reconnect with classmates, traditions, and the Rochester community that continues to bring us together.
Connect here. Registration opens August 5.
Headliners
Amna Nawaz: PBS News Hour co-anchor and co-managing editor
Amna Nawaz is an Emmy, Peabody, and Cronkite award winning journalist who currently serves as co-anchor and co-managing editor of the PBS News Hour.
In addition to anchoring PBS News’ flagship national news broadcast, Nawaz co-hosts the podcast “Settle In,” featuring thought leaders from all walks of life. She’s also hosted a primetime arts show, and documentaries on everything from America’s childcare crisis to global plastic pollution to life after incarceration.
Her reporting ranges from politics and foreign affairs, to immigration and education, to culture and sports. She has anchored the show from the US southern border, Israel after the October 7th attacks, and Kyiv, Ukraine during its war with Russia. Nawaz has interviewed presidents and heads of state, White House officials and lawmakers, professional athletes and musicians, and citizens around the world in the communities they call home.
In 2020, she made history as the first Asian American and first Muslim journalist to moderate a US presidential debate. Nawaz first joined the News Hour in 2018 as a senior correspondent and substitute anchor, before being named co-anchor in January 2023.
Prior to joining PBS, Nawaz was an anchor and correspondent at ABC News, anchoring breaking news coverage and leading the network’s livestream coverage of the 2016 presidential election. She also hosted the “Uncomfortable” podcast and reported a documentary on the Texas county with the highest rate of support for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Before ABC, Nawaz was a foreign correspondent and Islamabad bureau chief for NBC News, where she regularly reported on the war in Afghanistan and the broader region.
She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where she captained the varsity field hockey team, and later earned her master’s degree from the London School of Economics.
She lives in the Washington, DC area with her husband and their two daughters.
Andrew Ross Sorkin: New York Times bestselling author, journalist, & co-anchor of Squawk Box
Andrew Ross Sorkin is an award-winning journalist for The New York Times and a co-anchor of Squawk Box, CNBC’s signature morning program. He is also the founder and editor-at-large of DealBook, an online daily financial report published by The New York Times that he started in 2001.
He is the author of 1929: The Inside Story of the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History–and How It Shattered a Nation, the instant New York Times bestseller praised as a “vivid and forensic account . . . a real eye-opener” (Financial Times). With unparalleled access to historical records and newly uncovered documents, Sorkin’s book takes readers inside the chaos of the crash, behind the scenes of a raging battle between Wall Street and Washington, and the larger-than-life characters whose ambition and naivete in an endless boom led to disaster. The dizzying highs and brutal lows of this era eerily mirror today’s world—where markets soar, political tensions mount, and the fight over financial influence plays out once again. The Wall Street Journal calls it “one of the best narrative histories [we’ve] read.” It was named a Best Book of 2025 by TIME, The Economist, The Financial Times, and Bloomberg.
Hailed as a landmark book, Too Big to Fail: How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System–and Themselves, is considered the definitive account of the 2008 financial crisis. It won the 2010 Gerald Loeb Award for Best Business Book and was shortlisted for the 2010 Samuel Johnson Prize and the 2010 Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award. The book spent more than six months on the New York Times bestseller list in hardcover and paperback and was adapted as a movie for HBO Films in 2011. Sorkin was a co-producer of the film, which was nominated for 11 Emmy Awards.
Sorkin is also co-creator of the drama series Billions on Showtime, starring Paul Giamatti and Damien Lewis.
Sorkin is one of the preeminent interviewers in the nation, known for his incisive, nuanced long-form conversations with the biggest newsmakers in the world, from Elon Musk to LeBron James to Kim Kardashian and Hillary Clinton. In 2022, he won the Emmy award for “Outstanding Live Interview” for his DealBook Summit 2021 conversation with Adam Neumann, the WeWork co-founder’s first public interview after the company’s collapse.
Over the years, Sorkin has broken news of many major mergers and acquisitions in the pages of The Times and has been at the forefront of Wall Street news. He reported extensively on the financial crisis of 2008, its aftermath on Wall Street and the government bailout of major investment banks, with coverage including the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, and the A.I.G. bailout. He has broken news of deals, including Chase’s acquisition of J.P. Morgan and Hewlett-Packard’s acquisition of Compaq. He also led The Times’s coverage of Vodafone’s $183 billion hostile bid for Mannesmann, resulting in the world’s largest takeover ever.
As a leading voice about Wall Street and corporate America, Sorkin is a frequent guest on national television and radio programs, as well as a lecturer at universities across the country. He has appeared on NBC’s The Today Show, PBS’s News Hour, HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, NPR’s Talk of the Nation, and many others.
He won a Gerald Loeb Award in 2004 for breaking the news of I.B.M.’s historic sale of its PC business to Lenovo. He was also a finalist in the commentary category for his DealBook column, and won a Society of American Business Editors and Writers Award for breaking news in 2005 and again in 2006. In 2007, the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader. He is co-chair of The New York Public Library’s Business Leadership Council and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Sorkin began writing for The New York Times in 1995 under unusual circumstances: he hadn’t yet graduated from high school. He is a graduate of Cornell University.
Nick Offerman: actor, author, humorist, and woodworker
Nick Offerman is an actor, author, humorist, and woodworker whose credits include the Emmy Award-winning role of Bill in The Last of Us (HBO), Ron Swanson on NBC’s Parks and Recreation, Forest in Devs, and Karl Weathers in the FX series Fargo.
He has written six New York Times bestselling books, including his latest, Little Woodchucks: Offerman Woodshop’s Guide to Tools and Tomfoolery.
Recent screen projects include Margo’s Got Money Troubles (Apple), Death by Lightning (Netflix), Sovereign, Voicemails For Isabelle (Netflix), Civil War (written and directed by Alex Garland), The Pout Pout Fish, Origin (written and directed by Ava DuVernay), Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Fargo (FX), Smurfs, The Umbrella Academy (Netflix), and NBC’s Making It (co-host and executive producer). He is the voice of Beef Tobin in the FOX animated series The Great North and audiobook narrator for Wendell Berry’s latest, The Need to Be Whole. In 2026, he will co-star in the new musical Iceboy! opposite his wife, Megan Mullally, at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and hosts the WNYC radio series A Wonder Is What It Is, dedicated to Wendell Berry.
In his spare time, he can be found at his woodshop in Los Angeles, building hand-crafted items from wood, ranging from spoons and canoes to ukuleles.
Alarm Will Sound: Grammy Award-winning contemporary chamber ensemble
Founded at Eastman School of Music 25 years ago, contemporary chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound returns to Rochester for Meliora Weekend to celebrate with a new award in hand and a new program on offer. The winners of the 2026 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble present New Acoustica, an innovative program featuring live performances of complex electronica on acoustic instruments.
“With New Acoustica, we present the music of Aphex Twin, Jlin, King Britt, Marcos Balter, SOPHIE, Tim Exile, Lucrecia Dalt, and more, bringing the work of these outstanding and groundbreaking artists to you in a way that you’ve never heard before.” — Alarm Will Sound
Alarm Will Sound’s visit is generously supported by the Elizabeth Ward Chicares ’86 Distinguished Visiting Artist Program.
This program is part of the Eastman Presents Kodak Series and Eastman Explores America, and features Eastman alumni.