ANN ARBOR—NBC Sports anchor Andrea Joyce and CBS “Early Show” anchor Harry Smith will emcee the finale of the Michigan Difference campaign from 2:30-4 p.m. Nov. 14 at Hill Auditorium at the University of Michigan.

The campaign, which officially ends at midnight Dec. 31, has been one of the most successful in the history of public higher education. More than 300,000 individual donors have helped transform the U-M campus through their gifts for student support, programs, professorships and new facilities.

Joyce, a 1976 U-M graduate, and her husband Smith are among the leading figures in network sports and news programming, respectively. NBC sports anchor and reporter Joyce, a Dearborn Heights native who attended Fordson High School, began her national broadcast career with ESPN in 1988when she covered the Olympic Summer Games in Seoul. She has covered eight Olympics since then, including co-hosting CBS’s coverage of the 1992 Games in Albertville, France, and the 1994 Games in Lillehammer, Norway, before moving to NBC, for whom she reported from the 2008 Games in Beijing. She also has covered virtually every major sport or competition in America, including NCAA men’s and women’s basketball, college football, figure skating, professional boxing, the U.S. Open and the NBA playoffs.

Smith, the Emmy award-winning co-anchor of CBS’s “The Early Show,” reported extensively from the Gulf Coast region in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. A native of the Chicago suburb Lansing, Smith has filed stories from almost every part of the globe, including Kosovo, Kuwait and Baghdad on the eve of the war with Iraq. Smith has interviewed celebrities from Madonna to Lance Armstrong and former presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, among other leading public figures.

As emcees, Smith and Joyce will introduce an afternoon of special programming at Hill celebrating the impact of The Michigan Difference campaign. The convocation-style event, which is open to the public, will feature performances by students, insights from President Mary Sue Coleman on how the campaign has transformed the University and a student video. Paul Schervish, director of Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy and a nationally renowned expert on philanthropy and values, will be the keynote speaker.

Doors open at 2 p.m.; the program begins at 2:30 p.m. The event will be followed by a public reception at the Michigan League.

U-M Campaign website