ABC’s Christiane Amanpour is the 2011 recipient of the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, Arizona State University announced today.

Amanpour will accept the 28th annual award, given by ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, at a luncheon in Phoenix in November.

“This is an extraordinary honor,” says Amanpour in a press release. “I met the great man and benefited enormously from his wisdom. I also admire his phenomenal career as a war correspondent. His legacy is one that we should all strive to uphold and protect, and I am grateful to the Cronkite School for training future generations of journalists, the kind that would pass muster with Uncle Walter!”

Amanpour was an international correspondent for CNN for 20 years before joining ABC last year. Amanpour joins her ABC colleagues Diane Sawyer and Cokie Roberts as past Cronkite honorees. NBC’s Brian Williams, Jane Pauley and Tom Brokaw have also won the award.

Cronkite personally presented the award during its first 25 years. The CBS Newsman died July 17, 2009.