Rod Hardy, the film-TV-digital media department’s Green Chair Lecturer, postponed his visit to the university this week to Oct. 6-9 because he fell ill, a representative for the FTDM department said.

Gregory Mansur, a FTDM instructor who helped organize the event, said Hardy’s visit was moved because he contracted the flu in Mexico while filming scenes for “The Mentalist.” Mansur said Hardy did not want to risk further infections by interacting with students.

Hardy’s visit to the university was scheduled from Sept. 22-25 to teach workshops on acting and directing, give a lecture on his life and film career and visit various FTDM media classes. Mansur said Hardy will be editing footage for “The Mentalist” next week and will be visiting the following week from Oct. 6-9.

Julie Harrison, an administrative assistant at the department and sophomore FTDM media major, said the program will be flexible in dealing with the schedule change.

“Since the change was so last notice, it was hard to contact all the students to tell them that the events have been postponed, and the facility will have to do some rearranging of their lesson plans,” Harrison said.

Despite the last minute changes, Harrison said she thought the postponement of Hardy’s visit worked out for the best.

“I would want the Green Chair to be healthy and well to help out the FTDM students for as long as possible while he is here,” Harrison said. “I know that a lot of exams happen to fall on the end of September for students, so hopefully when he visits in early October people will be less occupied and can attend the lectures and classes he has planned.”

Hardy, a television director, has directed episodes of series including “The Mentalist,” “In Plain Sight,” “Leverage,” “Burn Notice,” “Saving Grace” and “Battlestar Galactica.”