ALPHA will celebrate its 20th anniversary at NIU by holding an anniversary symposium Saturday.

ALPHA, which stands for art, literature, philosophy, history and archaeology of the past, will hold the symposium at the Jack Arends Visual Arts Building in Room 102.

“ALPHA has been NIU’s link to the cultural past for the last twenty years,” said ALPHA President Jean Scherpf.

The symposium, entitled “Ancient Greece and its Legacy,” will include presentations of papers and panel discussions by graduate students and faculty.

Following the symposium, there will be an anniversary banquet in the Sky Room of the Holmes Student Center.

The program will begin at 9:30 a.m. with the distribution of information and abstracts to all participants. Nine papers will be read during the morning and afternoon sessions.

Following the reading of the papers, there will be a panel discussion of faculty and graduate students entitled, “Classical Athens and the Age of Pericles.”

The discussion will be moderated by Joseph Lo Cascio, assistant superintendent of the DeKalb Public Schools.

“We picked Mr. Lo Cascio because he has always been active in ALPHA,” Scherpf said.

During the past 20 years, ALPHA has offered about 200 lectures presented by qualified speakers in all fields. These lectures, which are usually very well-attended, are free and open to students, faculty and residents of DeKalb, Scherpf said.

“The purpose of these lectures is to bring scholars to NIU who otherwise would never be able to come here,” Scherpf said.

Scherpf said she hopes ALPHA can continue “taking the past and making it a living thing for today for many years to come at NIU.”