The second season of the Eastern Iowa Community College District's "Viewpoint" speaker series will have an Oscar-winning movie actress, a best-selling author and a history-making head of state.

Olympia Dukakis, who won the Academy Award for her role as the mother in "Moonstruck," will speak Oct. 6. Scott Turow, whose legal thrillers include "Presumed Innocent" and "Burden of Proof," is scheduled for Jan. 26. And Mary Robinson, the first female president of Ireland as well as the first woman to chair the United Nations Commission for Human Rights, is set for April 13.

"We thought an author, an actress and a head of state would be a good variety and wouldn't duplicate any of the programs we had last year," Scott Community College President Gary Mohr said. "We think all three of them will have an excellent message, different messages for the Quad-Cities."

All of the presentations will be at the Adler Theatre in downtown Davenport.

The inaugural season of the series began last year with former NBC News television anchor Tom Brokaw and former Chicago Bears pro football great Mike Singletary, who is now the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers.

There were requests for more media personalities and sports figures this year, Mohr said, but series organizers wanted to keep a variety of topics in the mix.

"The true nature of 'Viewpoint' is to bring in an ongoing variety of speakers from different areas," he added.

A number of corporate sponsors helped make both the previous and upcoming seasons of "Viewpoint" happen, Mohr said.

Among those sponsors is Quad-City Bank & Trust.

"It's a great opportunity to bring in nationally recognized people," bank president and CEO John H. Anderson said. "We can bring national people into the Quad-Cities to talk about topics that interest all of us."

Besides expanding from two to three speakers, the ticket price for the series also is being cut, from last year's $99 to $84 for the 2009-10 season.

"That was simply because ... in these economic times, we wanted to make it more affordable to more people," Mohr said.

About 1,500 season tickets were sold for the Brokaw and Singletary appearances.

Also, individual tickets will be made available after season tickets have been purchased.

However, Mohr said, "Our hope is the community realizes that all three of them have different messages and all three of them are worth coming to hear."

He said that everyone involved with "Viewpoint" considers the first season a success.

"It seems to me there is a niche in the Quad-Cities that wasn't being met, which is why we started this," he added.