Wichita State Student Involvement will host its second annual Academic Convocation at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday in the Wilner Auditorium.

The event will feature keynote speaker Brooke Gladstone, editor and host with National Public Radio (NPR) and author of “The Influencing Machine,” a graphic novel about the media. Gladstone currently co-hosts the nationally syndicated NPR program “On the Media.”

Bob Garfield, Gladstone’s “On the Media” co-host, said that the show deals with “anything that covers First Amendment issues; anything that has to do with freedom of speech, privacy.”

Gladstone previously worked as an editor for the popular NPR programs “All Things Considered and Weekend Edition.”

The WSU Reads program chose Gladstone’s book “The Influencing Machine” as the “common reading” book for first-year students this year. The book will be used in various classes, programs, and events during the school year.

Also speaking on Thursday will be Vanessa Rials, graduate social work student and Subash Bhandari, sophomore Biomedical Engineering major.

Rials currently serves as unit director of the Boys and Girls Club of South Central Kansas.

Bhandari is a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars and does research at the WSU Biomedical Sensors, Imaging and Modeling Engineering Laboratory (BIOME). Over the summer he designed a biosensor that can detect the presence of Melanoma cancer on skin.