Newsman Chancellor to speak at '95 ceremony

John Chancellor, former NBC news anchor and commentator, has been named a
1995 honorary degree recipient by the UI Board of Trustees at its meeting
April 8 in Urbana.

The 66-year-old Chancellor, a former student of the UI at Navy Pier,
Chicago, will receive his degree and serve as speaker at commencement
ceremonies on May 14, 1995.

Chancellor, a native of Chicago, worked for NBC News from 1950 until his
retirement in 1993, with the exception of 1965 to 1967, when he was
director of the Voice of America.

After serving in the U.S. Army at the end of World War II, he attended Navy
Pier on the G.I. Bill, from 1947 to 1948, studying history and philosophy.
He left school to work for the Chicago Times. He moved on to the NBC
television station in Chicago, WMAQ, winning awards for his coverage
of crime.

His reporting career at NBC included coverage of the civil rights movement
in the South, Castro's rise to power, the Moscow trial of U-2 pilot Gary
Powers, the building and dissembling of the Berlin Wall, the Khruschev-
Kennedy summit, the Vietnam War, the Six-Day War in the Middle East in 1967,
and the American space program.

Chancellor has reported from more than 50 countries and was the resident
NBC correspondent in Berlin, Brussels, London, Moscow and Vienna. He served
as a reporter or anchor at 20 national political conventions and was NBC's
senior White House correspondent and national affairs correspondent.

In the early 1960s, Chancellor hosted the Today program; from 1970 to 1982,
he anchored the NBC Evening News; and from 1982 to 1993, he was the
network's senior news commentator.

Chancellor and his wife, Barbara, live in Princeton, N.J. He is co-author,
with Associated Press columnist Walter R. Mears, of "The News Business," a
primer on journalism. His 1990 book, "Peril and Promise: A Commentary on
America," was a national best-seller.

Earlier, at its Feb. 11 meeting, the Board of Trustees approved the
awarding of an honorary degree at the 1995 Commencement to biochemist Edwin
G. Krebs, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.  Krebs,
75, earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the UI in 1940 and a
doctor of medicine from Washington University, St. Louis, in 1943. He
taught biochemistry and pharmacology at the University of Washington,
Seattle, from 1948 to 1990. Krebs' research on molecular cell biology has
been described as producing some of the most far-reaching breakthroughs in
the field over the past half-century.