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No Apology: The Case for American Greatness - Mitt Romney
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney will speak on his new book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. Romney was CEO of Bain & Company, a management consulting firm, and cofounder of Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm. He left the private sector to organize the 2002 Winter Olympics as President and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. As Massachusetts governor from 2003 to 2007, he presided over a reversal of the state's economy, enacted education reform, and proposed and signed into law private, market-based healthcare reform. Romney was a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2008 presidential election. No audio recording available for download or podcast.

Climate Change and Grasslands: What We Think We Know is NOT What We Need to Know - Alan Knapp
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Alan Knapp's research on plants focuses on understanding ecological patterns and processes from the leaf to the landscape. It reflects his training as a plant physiological ecologist and a twenty-year association with the NSF Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program. He is also involved with the Konza Prairie Long-Term Ecological Research Program, which looks at the dynamics and sustainability of grasslands as they are influenced by phenomena such as changes in land use, climate change, nutrient enrichment and invasive species. Knapp is the coauthor of Long-Term Ecological Research in Tallgrass Prairie. He is a professor and senior ecologist in the Department of Biology at Colorado State University. Midwest Ecology and Evolution Conference Keynote Address.

College of Business 25th Anniversary Distinguished Scholar Series - Shyam Sunder
9:30 AM – Schaller Seminar Room, 3164 Gerdin Business Building - Shyam Sunder is the James L. Frank Professor of Accounting, Economics, and Finance at the Yale School of Management. An accounting theorist and experimental economist, he is a pioneer in the fields of experimental finance and experimental macroeconomics. Sunder's current research includes the problem of structuring U.S. and international accounting and auditing institutions to achieve balance between regulatory oversight and market competition. Sunder is the author of six books, including Experimental Methods: A Primer for Economists and Theory of Accounting and Control. Part of the College of Business 25th Anniversary Distinguished Scholar Series

Be Not Afraid: An Alternative to the War on Terror - Tom Cordaro
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Tom Cordaro, the author of Be Not Afraid: An Alternative to the War on Terror, has been involved with faith-based peace and justice work for over thirty years as a local, regional and national organizer. He was named as an Ambassador of Peace by Pax Christi USA, a national Catholic peace and justice organization, and he is a member of the Pax Christi Anti-Racism Team. Cordaro has authored many publications, including To Wake the Nation: Nonviolent Direct Action for Personal & Social Transformation; Reading the Signs of the Times: The Challenge of Peace Continues; and A Shoot Shall Rise Up: Building An Alternative to the New World Order. Cordaro is an Iowa State alum and worked Father Supple as a student leader and later a campus minister at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish & Catholic Student Center in Ames. Msgr. James A. Supple Lecture.

College of Business 25th Anniversary Distinguished Scholar Series - Morgan Swink
10:00 AM – Schaller Seminar Room, 3164 Gerdin Business Building - Morgan Swink is the Eli Broad Legacy Fellow of Operations and Supply Chain Management at Michigan State University. His research interests include product/process innovation, operations strategy, and supply chain decision support systems. He is coauthor of Value-Driven Operations Management: An Integrated Modular Approach and the forthcoming Managing Operations across the Supply Chain. Before his academic appointment, Swink worked for ten years in manufacturing and product development at Texas Instruments. He earned a PhD in operations management from Indiana University. Part of the College of Business 25th Anniversary Distinguished Scholar Series

The Crisis in American Foreign Policy - Seymour Hersh
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Seymour Hersh is an investigative journalist, author, and regular contributor to the New Yorker on topics of U.S. military operations and national security. In 2004 he broke the story of the U.S. military's mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, which he also covered in his book Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. His most recent New Yorker report, "Defending the Arsenal," questions the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Hersh has won more than a dozen major journalism prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting and five George Polk Awards. His books include The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House; The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and America's Foreign Policy; The Dark Side of Camelot; and Against All Enemies: Gulf War Syndrome. Part of the World Affairs Series.

The Mathematics of Financial Derivatives and the Wall Street Crisis - Roselyn E. Williams
4:10 PM – 305 Carver Hall - Financial derivatives are contracts whose values are derived from the values of assets such as stocks. The derivative market grew into a massive bubble from about $100 trillion to $516 trillion between 2002 and 2007. What impact did the derivative market have on the Wall Street crisis? In this talk we discuss the mathematical theory of simple financial derivatives and look at the relationship between the derivative market and the stock market. We investigate the impact that the derivative market may have had on the Wall Street crisis. Roselyn Williams is an associate professor of mathematics at the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. Mathematics Department Undergraduate Colloquium and part of the Women in STEM Speakers Series.

Laughing Without an Accent - Firoozeh Dumas
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Firoozeh Dumas, author of Funny in Farsi and Laughing without an Accent, is a humorist with a serious message. She was born in Abadan, Iran, and moved to Southern California with her family in the 1970s. Dumas grew up listening to her father, a former Fulbright Scholar, recount the many colorful stories of his life in both Iran and America and decided to write her stories as a gift for her children. She was a finalist for the prestigious Thurber Prize for American Humor, the first Middle Eastern women to be considered for this honor. Funny in Farsi was a 2004 finalist for the PEN/USA award and a 2005 finalist for an Audie Award for best audio book. Her memoir Laughing without an Accent began as a one-woman show, opening to sold-out audiences. Part of the International Women's Day Celebration and Women's History Month.

Free Land: Race and Land in America - Ariel Luckey
12:00 PM РSun Room, Memorial Union - Ariel Luckey's multimedia presentation provides background information on the Homestead Act, post-Slavery Reconstruction programs, and the Indian Wars, illustrating how racially discriminatory federal land policies of the nineteenth century directly established the patterns of land ownership present today. Ariel Luckey is a hip hop theater artist who weaves storytelling, spoken word poetry, dance, acting, and hip hop music into compelling narratives of personal and political transformation. Luckey's diverse performance locations have included the WTO demonstrations on the streets of Seattle, Caf̩ Cantante in Havana, Cuba, and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York City. Part of the Iowa State Conference on Race and Ethnicity, ISCORE.

Promoting Religious Pluralism - David Fraccaro
7:30 PM – South Ballroom, Memorial Union - David Fraccaro has worked in the United States and abroad on issues related to human rights, conflict resolution and interfaith collaboration. He currently works with the Stranger to Neighbor initiative sponsored by the Interfaith Youth Core of Chicago. It seeks to strengthen relationships between diverse communities of faith and their immigrant and refugee neighbors. He has also worked with detained immigrants and asylum seekers as a coordinator for the Sojourners visitation program in New York City, the program that inspired the movie The Visitor. Fraccaro has served such organizations as the National Council of Churches, United Caring Shelters, the UCC Council of American Indian Ministries, and No More Deaths on the Arizona-Mexico border. He is a graduate of Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University.