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Approaching Ice - Elizabeth Bradfield
11:00 AM – Pioneer Room, Memorial Union - Elizabeth Bradfield's poetry collection Approaching Ice portrays the history of polar exploration. A finalist for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, the book conveys the wonders and dangers, physical and mental, encountered while endeavoring to reach this inhospitable region. Bradfield is also the author of Interpretive Work, which won the Audre Lorde Award. She has been awarded fellowships and scholarships from Stanford University's Wallace Stegner Program, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, and elsewhere. In 2005 Bradfield founded Broadsided Press. The 9th Annual Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness & the Environmental Imagination: The Future of Water

Gasland - Documentary & Discussion
9:00 AM – Pioneer Room, Memorial Union - The film Gasland explores the drilling technology known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," and the lucrative offers energy companies are extending to rural landowners in hopes of tapping into a reservoir dubbed the "Saudi Arabia of natural gas." But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a journey to document the real dangers that accompany the largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history. The 9th Annual Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness & the Environmental Imagination: The Future of Water.

Demons and Butterflies: Weather Predictability and Predictions - Richard Anthes
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Atmospheric scientist Richard Anthes is a former president of the American Meteorological Society and a leading spokesman on weather forecasting. His expertise includes hurricanes and other tropical cyclones. Recently, he has helped oversee the U.S.-Taiwan observation system known as COSMIC, which gathers global data about developing hurricanes, climate change, and other atmospheric events. He also co-chaired the 2007 National Research Council Committee that warned NASA's aging satellite system was inadequate for the nation's science and technology priorities. Anthes is president emeritus of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Sigma Xi Lecture Series

Agricultural Technology: Reflections on the Journey, Perspectives on the Future - Jim Tobin
7:00 PM – 1148 Gerdin Business Building - Jim Tobin is Vice President of Industry Affairs at Monsanto. During his twenty-nine-year career with Monsanto he has served in various agricultural marketing and commercial development positions, working with Monsanto's seed, biotech and crop chemical customers and products. He joined the Corporate Affairs Group in 2008. A graduate of Iowa State and member of the Farm House fraternity, Mr. Tobin served as County Extension Director for the Iowa State Extension Service early in his career. He went on to earn an MBA from Harvard University. The Carl and Marjory Hertz Lecture on Emerging Issues in Agriculture

Extra-Ordinary Experiences and the Emergence of New Visionary Movements: Mormonism & the Golden Plates - Ann Taves
8:00 PM – Benton Auditorium, Scheman Building, Iowa State Center - Ann Taves is a professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and past president of the American Academy of Religion. She studies the processes by which people attribute meaning to their experiences, approaching the study of religion from the perspectives of both the humanities and the sciences. Her work finds common ground between what our culture perceives as religion and such fields as neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Taves's books include Religious Experience Reconsidered and Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James. She earned a PhD from the University of Chicago's Divinity School and currently holds the Virgil Cordano Chair in Catholic Studies at UCSB. Donald Benson Memorial Lecture in Literature, Science, and the Arts

Technological Entrepreneurship: A Key to World Peace and Prosperity - Nobel Laureate Dan Shechtman
12:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Dan Shechtman, an Iowa State Distinguished Professor of materials science and engineering and research scientist at Ames Laboratory, won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The honor was awarded for his discovery of quasicrystals, crystalline materials with a periodic atomic structure deemed impossible in modern crystallography. His current research efforts center on developing strong and ductile magnesium alloys for a variety of applications, and deformation mechanisms in B2 intermetallics. He is also the Philip Tobias Distinguished Professor of Materials Science at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, where he has taught a course in technological entrepreneurship for twenty-seven years. He joined Iowa State and the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory in 2004.

Good without God - Greg Epstein
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Greg M. Epstein serves as the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University and is the author of Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. He currently serves as vice president of the thirty-six-member corps Harvard Chaplains. In 2005 Epstein received ordination as a Humanist Rabbi from the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, through which he studied in Jerusalem and Michigan for five years. He holds a bachelor's in religion and Chinese, and a masters in Judaic Studies from the University of Michigan, and a Masters of Theological Studies from the Harvard Divinity School. Part of the National Affairs Series.

Iowa State College in the 1890s: A Visual History - Douglas Biggs
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Douglas Biggs, associate professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Kearney, is a native of Ames and a graduate of Iowa State University. The son of a geology professor, Biggs spent much of his youth exploring the campus and later earned both a BA and an MA in history from the university before completing his PhD at the University of Minnesota. The first installment of his research on Iowa State in the 1890s, conducted in the University Archives, appeared in the Annals of Iowa in 2012. This talk, featuring a slide show of historic photographs, will highlight the Dinkey, a steam engine that ran between campus and downtown Ames from 1891 to 1907. A scale model of the Dinkey, complete with track, will be on display in the Parks Library until the end of May.

It's A Girl: Film & Discussion on Gendercide & Human Trafficking
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - "It's a Girl" are three of the deadliest words in the world. This documentary reveals how in many parts of the world today, girls are killed, aborted and abandoned simply because they are girls. It tells the stories of abandoned and trafficked girls, of women who suffer extreme dowry-related violence, of mothers fighting to save their daughters' lives, and of other mothers who would kill for a son. Global experts and grassroots activists put the stories in context and advocate different paths towards change. Teresa Downing Matibag, assistant professor of sociology and executive director of the Iowa-based Network Against Human Trafficking, will moderate a discussion on gendercide and its relation to human trafficking immediately following the 60-min film. She will be joined by Ruth Buckels, the statewide coordinator for the Achieving Maximum Potential program at Youth & Shelter Services, and Brittany, a human trafficking survivor. International Women's Day Event and Part of the World Affairs Series.

The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars - Michael Mann
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Climatologist Michael E. Mann, author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, is a member of the Penn State University faculty, holding joint positions in the Departments of Meteorology and Geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. He is also director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center. He is the coauthor of Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming and is a cofounder and avid contributor to the award-winning science website, www.RealClimate.org. He, along with other scientists, participated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That organization received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. He has also been named one of fifty leading visionaries in science and technology by Scientific American. Part of the National Affairs Series.