For a long time, the Valpo Core has prided itself on bringing to campus numerous authors, speakers and activists whose work our students have encountered in the program and whose appeal extends far beyond the Valpo campus itself. People from all over northwest Indiana and the Chicago area have come to Valpo to see and hear from our campus visitors. The list of people whose visits the Core has supported includes:

• Maya Angelou, influential and inspirational poet, memoirist, activist, and performer, author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
• Tim O’Brien, National Book Award-winning author of Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried
• Sister Helen Prejean, activist and author, subject of film Dead Man Walking, directed by Tim Robbins
• Philip Gourevitch, staff writer for The New Yorker, former editor of The Paris Review, author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda
• Sonia Nazario, journalist and author of Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite With His Mother
• Elias Chacour, Archbishop of Galilee of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, Palestinian peace activist, author of Blood Brothers and We Belong to the Land
• Ishmael Beah, activist, speaker, and writer, author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
• James McBride, memoirist, novelist and jazz musician, author of The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother
• Luma Mufleh, inspirational coach of the Fugees soccer teams from Clarkston, GA and subject of bestselling book Outcasts United by Warren St. John
• Tim King, founder, President and CEO of Urban Prep Academies, a nonprofit organization operating a network of public college-prep boys’ schools in Chicago
• Iris Chen, President and CEO of the "I Have a Dream" Foundation
• Our keynote speaker for the 2013 Martin Luther King Day Convocation (January 21, 2013) will be Eboo Patel, founder of Interfaith Youth Core and author of Acts of Faith: The Story of An American Muslim, the Struggle For the Soul of a Generation and the recently published Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America.