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Drones: A Tipping Point of Technology - Missy Cummings
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Missy Cummings landed F/A-18 fighter jets on aircraft carriers when she was a Navy pilot. Now she studies unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones, as a professor at MIT and director of their Humans and Automation Lab. Cummings was featured in NOVA's "Rise of the Drones." She has a BS in mathematics from the United States Naval Academy, an MS in space systems engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School and a PhD in systems engineering from the University of Virginia. A naval officer and military pilot from 1988 to 1999, she was one of the Navy's first female fighter pilots. She is currently an associate professor in the Aeronautics & Astronautics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Part of the World Affairs Series and the Women in STEM Series

Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of our Wild Ocean - Julia Whitty
7:00 PM – Pioneer Room, Memorial Union - Julia Whitty is the author of Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean. Her thirty-year career as a documentary filmmaker and diver has given her sustained access to the scientists dedicated to the study of ocean life, from the Sea of Cortez to Newfoundland to the Galapagos to Antarctica. Whitty's other books include The Fragile Edge: Diving and Other Adventures in the South Pacific and A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga: Short Stories. Whitty is an environmental correspondent for Mother Jones magazine and a blogger at The Blue Marble and Deep Blue Home. Her more than seventy nature documentaries have aired on PBS, Nature, The Discovery Channel and National Geographic. The 9th Annual Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness & the Environmental Imagination: The Future of Water Following her reading, Whitty will discuss the ethics of writing about threatened places and endangered species.

Fashion Entrepreneurship - Francesca Skwark
4:00 PM – 117 Mackay Hall - Francesca Skwark is a 2009 graduate of Iowa State's Apparel, Merchandising, Design and Production Program and founder of her own fashion line, FBF by Checka. She will discuss entrepreneurship in apparel merchandising and design, including real-life expectations, job-specific tasks, and what it takes to thrive in the industry. Skwark has worked in all areas of the fashion world, from PR to merchandising to design. Before launching her own line, she was an assistant to fashion stylist April Steiner, serving the Greater Los Angeles Area.

Flood Song - Sherwin Bitsui
4:00 PM – Pioneer Room, Memorial Union - Sherwin Bitsui is the author of two books of poetry, Shapeshift and Flood Song, a recipient of a 2010 PEN Open Book Award and an American Book Award. Originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation, he is Dine of the Todich'ii'nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tl'izilani (Many Goats Clan). His work explores the tensions between the worlds of nature and man as well as the challenge Native Americans face in reconciling an inherited history of lore and spirit with a postmodern civilization. Bitsui's many honors include a 2011 Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship and a 2011 Native Arts & Culture Foundation Arts Fellowship and a Whiting Writers Award. The 9th Annual Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness & the Environmental Imagination: The Future of Water

Exploration, Empire and Environmental Justice - Elizabeth Bradfield & Sherwin Bitsui
2:00 PM – Pioneer Room, Memorial Union - Poets Elizabeth Bradfield and Sherwin Bitsui will discuss the political implications as well as the ethics and responsibilities of exploration and resource management in a postcolonial world. Elizabeth Bradfield's poetry collection Approaching Ice portrays the history of polar exploration. Sherwin Bitsui is originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. He is the author of two books of poetry, Shapeshift and Flood Song. Geetha Iyer, an MFA student in Iowa State's Creative Writing and Environment Program, will moderate. The 9th Annual Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness & the Environmental Imagination: The Future of Water

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