University of Massachusetts grad Audie Cornish, a National Public Radio reporter since 2006, will take over the anchor chair of NPR's Sunday morning news and feature program, the network announced this past week.

Cornish is a 2001 grad of UMass. This fall, she will step in to the Weekend Edition Sunday job that Liane Hansen has held for 22 years.(At left, Audie Cornish; photo by Steve Barrett of NPR)

The assignment means the end of any late Saturday nights for the new host. In a conversation this week that can be heard on an NPR blog, Hansen notes that her rule on Saturday night -- to ensure a wide-awake start Sunday -- "is to be horizontal by 8 p.m. and unconscious by 9."

Valley listeners may recall Cornish's service with WFCR as an intern while at UMass, a tenure that UMass Magazine described in 2001. Cornish also interned during college with NPR in Washington. While in Amherst, she had earlier worked for campus radio station WMUA.
After school, she took jobs with the Associated Press in Boston and with WBUR, a public radio affiliate.

Her work with WBUR lead to her move to NPR in 2006. Cornish spent three years based in Nashville covering the American south. She and her husband, former Gazette reporter Theo Emery, moved to Washington in 2009 when she became a Congressional correspondent.
Emery is now a national political reporter with the Boston Globe.

In early April, Emery appeared on a WRKO radio program to talk about the potential of a government shutdown.

Though Cornish won't start fully as anchor until the fall, she is expected to make appearances on the program over the summer. Hansen departs after May 29.