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Past Events

Thursday, 4 Nov 2010

Inspiration for Athletes On and Off the Road - Scott Gall
6:00 PM – 124 Ross Hall - Coach Scott Gall is a world class runner with more than a dozen years of experience coaching runners. Originally from Colorado Springs, Scott still regularly wins Snow Shoe races at the national level. In recent years he has taken up the sport of Triathlon as an elite racer and Xterra as a professional racer. Scott and his wife are the proprietors of The Runner's Flat store. He is sponsored by a number of well known and established companys and has impressive career bests including running a marathon in 2:20:42 at the Olympic Trials Qualifier. He has competed and placed among the top in several road races, trail races, along with competing in multi-sport and MTB races.

Wednesday, 3 Nov 2010

The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Big in Business - Jeffrey Ma
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Jeffrey Ma is a strategy expert and subject of Bringing Down The House and the movie 21 about the MIT Blackjack Team. He is co-founder of Citizen Sports, the sports media company that is changing how businesses today use numbers and metrics to build their brand and retain customer loyalty. Citizen Sports brought the fantasy sports industry to Facebook and digital sports information to the iPhone and Android. Ma shows companies how harnessing the power of these technology-driven platforms, using not only social media but concrete data and numbers, can create incredible success. His new book is The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Big in Business. Greater Iowa Credit Union Business Lecture Series.

Monday, 1 Nov 2010

Bo Burnham's Bo Burnham and (no) Friends Tour
9:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Comedian Bo Burnham is an Internet phenomenon - and just hitting his twenties. His YouTube videos, which have nearly 70 million views, feature him performing uproarious songs with ingenious wordplay and bad puns. Burnham posted his first video four years ago, when he was just sixteen years old. Four days after his eighteenth birthday, he became the youngest person to record a Comedy Central special, which was followed by a comedy album. His CD Words, Words, Words will be released this month in conjunction with the premiere of a new Comedy Central special by the same name. He is currently working on a movie script with Judd Apatow as well as his own show on MTV.

Thursday, 28 Oct 2010

Fixing Financial Markets: Views from Freddie, Finance and the Fed - Panel Discussion
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Three panelists with distinguished careers in the financial sector will discuss the future of the mortgage market and financial regulation. Donald J. Bisenius is executive vice president of the Single Family Credit Guarantee Business at Freddie Mac. He is accountable for the overall performance of Freddie Mac's $1.8 trillion single-family credit guarantee business. Dan Laufenberg is former chief economist and vice president of Ameriprise Financial, where he worked for nearly twenty-two years. Prior to joining Ameriprise Financial, Laufenberg served on the research staff of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C, including as special assistant to Henry C. Wallich. Kevin L. Moore is senior vice president in charge of the Supervision and Risk Management Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. He is responsible for the supervision and regulation of the District's state member banks and bank holding companies, as well as the Bank's discount window and risk management functions. Part of the National Affairs Series.

Wednesday, 27 Oct 2010

Building an Enduring Platform for Leadership - Neil Harl
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Neil Harl, emeritus professor of economics at Iowa State, is a recognized expert in farm finance, agricultural law, estate planning and business planning. As the founder and director of the Center for International Agricultural Finance he is often credited with helping lay the foundation for Eastern European countries transitioning to a market economy. His many publications include the fifteen-volume treatise Agricultural Law, Farm Income Tax Manual and the single volume Agricultural Law Manual. He earned a JD from the University of Iowa and a PhD in economics from Iowa State, where is now a Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor in Agriculture and Life Science. He is also a member of the Iowa State Bar Association. William K. Deal Endowed Leadership Lecture

Tuesday, 26 Oct 2010

Whither the Global Economy? Kazuhide Ishikawa
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Kazuhide Ishikawa is Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, and Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of Japan in Washington DC. He is a career diplomat who has served for more than thirty years in Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including positions with the Economic Affairs Bureau and Foreign Policy Bureau. Most recently he served as Consul General at the Consulate General of Japan in Detroit. Kazuhide Ishikawa is a graduate of the University of Tokyo and holds an MA in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania and studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Economics. The 2010 Manatt-Phelps Lectures in Political Science.

Design and Build in China - Broc Smith
6:00 PM – Alliant Energy-Lee Liu Auditorium, Howe Hall - Broc Smith has over twenty years of experience in costume, prop and stage design and construction, and theatre performance. He began working in Asia in 1992, beginning with exhibitions and events in Singapore. He helped create China's first world-class water park in Shanghai, interiors for Asia's largest aquarium in Pudong, and was a principle designer for Happy Valley Beijing, China's largest theme park to date. Smith has been a senior designer for multinational companies as well as an independent freelancer. The author of The Tragic Kingdom, he is currently the Design Director for Longri Landscape Company based in Shenzhen. Part of the Technology, Globalization & Culture Series.

Thursday, 21 Oct 2010

Climate Change: What Could Happen and What Can Earth's Past Tell Us? Bette Otto-Bliesner
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Bette Otto-Bliesner is a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. She uses computer-based models of Earth's climate to investigate past climate change and climate variability across a wide range of time scales. She is particularly interested in the naturally forced climate change of the glacial-interglacial cycles of the last million years. Otto-Bliesner was a lead author on the Fourth Assessment Report generated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore in 2007. She received her PhD in meteorology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Sigma Xi Lecture and part of the Live Green! Sustainability Lecture Series and Women in STEM Series.

Understanding Diversity and Complexity - Scott Page
6:00 PM – Alliant-Lee Liu Auditorium, Howe Hall - Scott E. Page is a fresh voice in the long-running debate on affirmative action. His book The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies uses mathematical modeling and case studies to show how variety in staffing produces organizational strength. He argues that a creative environment with individuals from different backgrounds and life experiences is essential to progress and productivity. Scott Page is director of the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan where he serves as Leonid Hurwicz Collegiate Professor of Complex Systems, Economics, and Political Science. His other books include Complex Adaptive Systems and the forthcoming Diversity and Complexity.

Wednesday, 20 Oct 2010

Crossing Arizona - Film and Panel Discussion
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Crossing Arizona is an in-depth look at the divisiveness that occurs when immigration and border policy fails everyone. Heightened security in California and Texas has pushed the number of illegal border-crossers into the Arizona desert to an estimated 4,500 a day. Most are men in search of work, but increasingly they are women and children seeking to reunite with their families. Crossing Arizona examines this crisis through the eyes of those directly affected, including ranchers who own the land, humanitarian groups attempting to save lives, farmers who depend on the illegal work force, political activists, and armed citizen patrols. The film was directed by Joseph Mathew and Daniel DeVivo. A discussion led by Iowa State faculty and graduate students will follow the 75-minute film.