From authors to anchors and more, the 2017–18 Bryan Series speakers make one impressive lineup.

“I am very excited about the combination of speaker programs,” said Associate Vice President for Alumni & Constituent Relations Ty Buckner. “There’s this really interesting blend of well-known and less well-known blend of speakers on a great variety of topics.”

On March 23, Guilford released the names of four of the five Bryan Series speakers for the coming academic year: Lisa Genova, Leslie Odom Jr., Ted Koppel and Brandon Stanton. According to polls, students are most excited about Odom Jr. and Stanton.

“(He) just gives you a whole new image of the world in a way, and you kind of view everything from a different perspective,” said sophomore Hadis Daqiq about Stanton, who created “Humans of New York,” a series of photographs highlighting individual people in New York City.

“I’m very curious what he learned from it because he actually himself went there and experienced it.”

For the last six months, Associate Director of the Bryan Series Suzanne Ingram, Buckner and student workers have been creating next year’s lineup.

“Throughout the year, we take suggestions from students as they come up and pass them along,” said junior Anna Kelly in an email interview. “We help distribute and analyze the surveys that go out to students, faculty, staff and community subscribers. My job is to be a voice for the students, first and foremost, so I’m always trying to gauge what people want to see.

“When you’re trying to find speakers that will appeal to both a progressive college campus and 3,000 members of the community of different demographics and preferences, there’s a lot to consider. Those 3,000 people are the ones buying tickets and making the entire series possible, but I am always impressed by the amount of consideration given to what our students want and what would be best for our campus.”

Genova and Odom Jr. will be speaking in the fall semester. Genova, who will be speaking on Oct. 25, published her New York Times bestselling novel, “Still Alice,” in 2007. She is well-known in the fiction community for writing about mental illness.

“(Genova) is a liberal arts product who earned a degree in neuroscience from Harvard,” said Buckner. “(She) became an author by self-publishing her first book, which was ‘Still Alice,’ which became an academy award-winning movie and has led to three or four other books, including one she’s working on right now on Lou Gehrig’s disease.”

Odom Jr., who will be speaking on Nov. 15, is a Tony Award winning actor. He starred as Aaron Burr in the original cast of “Hamilton.”

“I’m a big fan of ‘Hamilton,’” said junior Lesly Vasquez. “The reason he did this musical was so he can learn more about the history of our founding fathers, which was a lot to do as a person of color because they were slave owners, and for him to do this, it blew me away.”

In addition to his presentation, Odom Jr. will also perform at the Greensboro Coliseum.

“I’m really excited about that,” said Buckner. “Just the amazing story about the creation of that musical and the history and the incredibly creative way that that history is being expressed through theater.”

“We (had) to do it in two parts, because we (had) five of six speaker programs confirmed and one about to be confirmed,” said Buckner. “We’ve been working on that program for a while.”

Author Reza Aslan, will also come to Greensboro this year on Jan. 28 as a Bryan Series special event. Aslan will present in Dana Auditorium.

“It’ll be the first time since 2008 that we’ve presented a lecture produced by our staff in Dana,” said Buckner. “It’s been since … the spring of ’05, that we’ve had an event that was truly a Bryan Series event on campus.”

As a whole, students should start getting excited for next year’s Bryan Series.

“We’ve been focusing lately on ideas that move — ideas that inspire,” said Kelly. “Sometimes you learn the most when you don’t exactly know what you’re walking into. There are a lot possibilities out there.”