Is the last lecture of a professor's career delivered with more passion, poignancy and insight than those before it? Audiences will soon find out when DePaul University faculty test their mettle in the Fifth Annual Last Lecture series, which opens Jan. 26, from noon until 1 p.m. in Stuart Center, 2311 N. Clifton Ave., Room 220. The last lecture series gives professors the opportunity to speak with an uninhibited veracity usually reserved for faculty at the end of their careers.

     Communication Professor Bruce Evensen will give open the series with a lecture titled "Child of Revival: Captive of the Mass Media." A former broadcast journalist, Evensen will share his impressions as a student of journalism in the 1960s and '70s in comparing the profession of yesteryear with the "celebrity-oriented atmosphere of the news" today.

     Evensen plans to examine the latest media merger between AOL and Times-Warner in addressing the dangers of what he terms "merger mania" that has taken place in the last few years. "The big brother component present in these mergers should cause us to pause a little," said Evensen. "In this union of old and new media, we should be concerned about choice and the narrowing of the air waves by a handful of corporations largely driven by profit."

     Evensen said that if journalism does not abandon the marketing model and continues to be "a hand maiden of capitalism," then public contempt of the profession will only heighten.

     DePaul's Last Lecture series is organized by Jeffery Carlson, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. "I've been involved in this series since its inception, and this podium has been the site of some of the most entertaining and edifying lectures I have ever heard," said Carlson.

     The series is extremely popular among DePaul faculty, even though, according to Evensen, preparing for a last lecture does conjure a sense of finality. "I jokingly asked whether or not you had to have a terminal disease to give one," he said. "I was told that mortality was the only requirement."

      Future lecturers are: David Gitomer, associate professor of religious studies and director of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program (Feb. 9); Sumi Cho, associate professor of law (Feb. 15); and Linda Camras, professor of psychology (Feb. 24).

     DePaul University's Last Lecture series is free and open to the public. For more information about upcoming lectures, call 773/325-7927.