By Melyssa Allen

Meredith College will welcome Doctors Without Borders U.S. Executive Director Nicolas de Torrenté on Thursday, Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. in Jones Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.

The lecture by de Torrenté is part of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Presidential Lecture Series at Meredith College.

Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, is an international humanitarian relief agency that was founded in 1971 by a group of French physicians. Doctors Without Borders, which currently has 2,500 volunteers working in over 80 countries, was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.

De Torrenté holds a Ph.D. in international relations from the London School of Economics. A Swiss national, he has worked extensively with humanitarian crises around the world, including Somalia, Liberia, the Congo and Afghanistan.

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Presidential Lecture series is designed to foster students' abilities to develop the knowledge, skills, values and global awareness necessary to become tomorrow's leaders, and to lead responsible lives of citizenship, learning and service.

For 2005-06, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Presidential Lecture Series at Meredith College is following a theme of "Our World, Our Responsibility: Contributing to Positive Change Around the Globe."

Speakers for the series' inaugural year are

• Documentary Filmmaker Rory Kennedy at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, November 30;
• Nicolas de Torrenté, U.S. executive director of the international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, February 16; and
• William McDonough, founding partner of an internationally recognized design firm practicing ecologically, socially and economically intelligent architecture, at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 12.

Each lecture will be held in Jones Auditorium. Events in the series are free and open to the public.