Each year Wittenberg University hosts a lecture sponsored by IBM Corp. to fuse liberal arts with the scientific spectrum. This year, the featured guest is Marcia McNutt, president and chief executive officer of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, who will continue this tradition during the university's next Witt Series event at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 19, in Bayley Auditorium, located in the Barbara Deer Kuss Science Center.

From uplift of the Tibet Plateau to continental break-up in the Western United States, McNutt's research is wide in its scope. She has served as chief scientist on more than half of the 15 major oceanographic expeditions in which she has participated.

Credited with more than 90 peer-reviewed scientific articles, McNutt has received numerous honors and awards, including honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Minnesota and Colorado College; membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and a recipient of the Macelwane Award from the American Geophysical Union in 1988 for outstanding research by a young scientist. More recently, she was honored as the Scientist of the Year from the ARCS Foundation in 2003 and as the Outstanding Alumnus from the University of California at San Diego in 2004.

McNutt concurrently chairs the Board of Governors for Joint Oceanographic Institutions and the University Oceanographic Laboratory System, and serves as a member of many evaluation and advisory boards for Stanford University, Harvard University, Schlumberger and Science Magazine. She is a fellow of the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the International Association of Geodesy.

All Witt Series events are free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Benham-Pence Student Center Information Desk at (937) 327-7445.