ORONO – A fund has been established at the University of Maine that is expected to revive a program to bring veteran reporters to campus to speak to journalism students, UM announced Friday.

The fund was established by alumna Anne Lucey in memory of her late husband, Alan Miller, who taught journalism at UM for more than two decades.

The Alan Miller Fund for Excellence in Communication and Journalism will revive a lecture series from the 1970s and 1980s in which outstanding journalists came to the campus to lecture, attend classes and offer career advice and insight.

Some of the participants included Rushworth Kidder, then editorial page editor for the Christian Science Monitor, and David Lamb, then foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times.

A member of the faculty from 1967 to 1991, Miller was chairman of the journalism department and adviser for the student newspaper.

Lucey earned a degree in journalism from UM in 1982. She is senior vice president for regulatory policy at CBS in Washington.

She said her goal is to celebrate her husband’s love of journalism and teaching.

“Interacting with working journalists who go into the classroom, help with writing skills and tell war stories can be a powerful thing,” Lucey said in the news release.

Lucey’s generous gift will “develop a new tradition for a new generation of journalism students, maintain and strengthen the Communication and Journalism Department’s connection to the Maine Press Association, and keep alive professor Miller’s work of connecting students with successful professionals,” department chairman John Sherblom stated.

Stories about Miller still circulate around campus, according to Ann Leffler, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “What I hear was how he mentored students and encouraged them to become journalists and to believe they had stories to tell. He reminded them journalism was a calling and encouraged them to heed that calling and its high standards.”