Business college to feature national editor

Contact: Sammy McDavid

The head of the nation's first personal finance periodical will speak Oct. 7 at Mississippi State University.

Knight A. Kiplinger, editor in chief of Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, will give the College of Business and Industry's fall semester Leo W. Seal Jr. Distinguished Executive Lecture. The public program begins at 2 p.m. in the Rogers Auditorium of McCool Hall.

Also co-editor of the Kiplinger Washington Letter, he will help dedicate the college's James O. Mayo Fund for Excellence in Business Education. Mayo, the letter's retired director, is a 1941 Mississippi State business administration graduate now living in McLean, Va.

The magazine, founded in 1947, has a circulation of one million. The letter, a business forecasting weekly published since 1923, has some 300,000 subscribers.

Kiplinger joined the publishing organization in 1983 following 13 years in newspaper journalism. He was chief of the Washington bureau for Ottaway Newspapers Inc., as well as supervisor of Ottaway's capital bureaus in Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania.

"Mr. Kiplinger has moved the organization into several new fields, including videotapes, computer software and electronic information," said Dean Harvey S. Lewis. "In fact, 'Kiplinger's Tax Cut' software is among the most highly rated tax preparation programs."

A frequent guest on national radio and television programs, Kiplinger is co-author of several best-selling books, including "Kiplinger's Looking Ahead" (1993), "America in the Global '90s" (1978), "The New American Boom" (1986), and "Washington Now" (1975).

Mayo, for whom the business excellence fund is named, is a former Quitman resident who was the business college's first student body president. He also holds master's degrees in economics and international affairs from the University of Virginia and George Washington University, respectively. A retired rear admiral, he was chief of staff for U.S. naval forces in the Atlantic.

For more information on the program, telephone (601) 325-2589.