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Running in Silence: Disordered Thoughts About Food and Exercise
6:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - This event will be in person, live streamed, and recorded. The live stream link: https://iastate.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=aaf52491-1253-49b3-920d-ae2f0160265a The recording will be posted on the Lectures website at Recordings > Available Recordings for two weeks. December 16, 2012, was the day Rachael Steil stopped running in silence. It was the day she wrote her first blog post about dealing with anorexia and binge eating as an All-American runner and shared it with the world. Writing her truth invited others to share their eating disorder experiences. Rachael began to see how many athletes dealt with these issues behind closed doors–in secrecy and in shame–and it made her feel less alone. It also fueled the fire to speak louder about eating disorder experiences. Rachael speaks about how to break the wall of silence and shame that surround eating disorders.

Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - 2022 Engineers' Week Keynote This event will be in person, live streamed, and recorded. The live stream link: https://iastate.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=6edca7ad-e468-4062-8ba4-ae19016e9fa9 The recording will be posted on the Lectures website at Recordings > Available Recordings for two weeks. NASA astronaut Eileen Collins reveals encouraging perspective and insight on the leadership skills needed to break barriers and become a successful pioneer in your field. One of America’s most admired women, Col. Collins became the first female to pilot a U.S. spacecraft with the Discovery shuttle flight in 1995, and the first female commander on the 1999 Columbia shuttle flight. In 2005, NASA tapped Col. Collins to command the space shuttle Discovery’s historic “Return to Flight” mission, NASA’s first piloted flight following the loss of space shuttle Columbia in 2003. While logging 872 hours in space, Col. Collins earned a reputation for coolness under pressure. With that same calm demeanor, she shares how her career as an astronaut took shape, from her early years in the U.S. Air Force to her ground-breaking experience with NASA. Her memoir, Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars, was published in 2021. The University Book Store will be on site selling copies of Col. Collins' books, and she will do a book signing.

Electing Madam Vice President: When Women Run Women Win
5:30 PM – WebEx - WebEx Link: https://bit.ly/3stmLBg Dr. Nichola Gutgold has been researching and writing about women and the United States presidency for more than 20 years. In her new book, “Electing Madam Vice President: When Women Run Women Win,” she focuses on the communication style and campaign rhetoric of the six women who ran for president in 2020-the largest group of women candidates in one election--and the eventual election of Kamala Harris to the vice presidency, a history-making appointment. Dr. Gutgold is a professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State Lehigh Valley and a Fulbright Specialist. She is author or co-author of more than ten books and numerous research articles and has turned two of her research books into children’s books to encourage young people to reach their dreams. Her research has appeared in national and international publications, including the New York Times and NPR. She is a recipient of numerous teaching awards, including the University-wide Penn State Fellows Award. This event will be recorded. The recording will be posted on the Lectures website at Recordings > Available Recordings for two weeks.

Facing the Realities of Our World--and Surviving to Tell About It
6:00 PM – WebEx - WebEx Link: https://bit.ly/3GgdYpC Artist Chris Jordan is known for his hard-hitting photographs that confront with shocking directness the dark side of our mass culture. Having explored this territory for more than 20 years, Jordan emerges now with a powerful new message that turns environmentalism upside down. Chris Jordan is a photographic artist, filmmaker, cultural activist, and art educator whose work explores the collective shadow of contemporary mass culture from a variety of photographic and conceptual perspectives. Edge-walking the lines between beauty and horror, abstraction and representation, the near and the far, the visible and the invisible, Jordan’s images confront the enormous power of humanity’s collective will. His works are exhibited and published worldwide.

It's a Different World Out There: Leadership in the States
7:30 PM – WebEx (see below) - 2022 Mary Louise Smith Chair Webex Link: https://bit.ly/3spYpZ6 Former New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez will present “It’s a Different World Out There: Leadership in the States” on Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022, as the 34th recipient of the Mary Louise Smith Chair in Women and Politics. While states are often referred to as “laboratories of democracy,” Martinez believes that they are increasingly becoming battlefields for the nation’s most intractable and difficult policy fights. In her presentation, Martinez will discuss how state executive leadership must navigate issues such as balancing budgets, overseeing public education, making heath care decisions, competing with other states for jobs and business investment, and responding to natural disasters in today’s political climate. This event will be recorded. The recording will be posted on the Lectures website at Recordings > Available Recordings for two weeks.

Seed Sovereignty: Who Owns the Seeds of the World, Bio-Piracy, Genetic Engineering and Indigenous Peoples
6:00 PM – WebEx (see below) - WebEx Link: https://bit.ly/3EgdDSP Winona LaDuke is a Harvard-educated economist, environmental activist, author, hemp farmer, grandmother, and a two-time former Green Party Vice President candidate with Ralph Nader. LaDuke specializes in rural development, economic, food, and energy sovereignty and environmental justice. Living and working on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, she leads several organizations including Honor the Earth (co-founded with The Indigo Girls 28 years ago), Anishinaabe Agriculture Institute, Akiing, and Winona’s Hemp. These organizations develop and model cultural-based sustainable development strategies utilizing renewable energy and sustainable food systems. She is also an international thought leader and lecturer in climate justice, renewable energy, and environmental justice, plus an advocate for protecting Indigenous plants and heritage foods from patenting and genetic engineering. She has written seven books including, Recovering the Sacred, All Our Relations, Last Standing Woman, The Winona LaDuke Chronicles, and her newest work, To Be A Water Protector: The Rise of the Wiindigo Slayers. This event will be recorded. The recording will be posted on the Lectures website at Recordings > Available Recordings for two weeks.

From ISU Student to CIA Spy: The Dangers of Clandestine Government Operations
6:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - This event will be in person and live streamed. The live stream link: https://iastate.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=32c9c3dd-cddc-4d4a-aafc-ae19016df85b While an Iowa State University student, Verne Lyon was recruited by the CIA to spy on college professors and fellow students as part of Operation CHAOS, a massive domestic surveillance program carried out at the height of the Vietnam War. He was later dispatched to Cuba to subvert the Castro regime. Mr. Lyon's book, Eyes on Havana: Memoir of an American Spy Betrayed by the CIA, chronicles the actions Lyon took on campus and abroad for the U.S. government. Mr. Lyon will discuss the dangers of covert operations and how unchecked agencies threaten our country and world order. Mr. Lyon is an aerospace engineer and private pilot. He helped found and direct the Association of Responsible Dissent and the Association of National Security Alumni. The University Book Store will be on site selling copies of Mr. Lyon's book, and he will do a book signing.

Better, Not Bitter: Living on Purpose in the Pursuit of Racial Justice
6:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Martin Luther King, Jr. Keynote 2022 This event will be in person and live streamed. The live stream link: https://iastate.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=ff668d6f-89a2-43e9-9ccd-ae190166dcc3 On April 19, 1989, a young woman in the prime of her life was brutally raped and left for dead in New York City’s Central Park. Five boys—four black and one Latino—were tried and convicted of the crime in a frenzied case that rocked the city. They became known collectively as “The Central Park Five.” Their convictions were vacated in 2002 after spending between seven (7) and thirteen (13) years of their lives behind bars. The unidentified DNA in the Central Park Jogger Case, unlinked to any of the five, had finally met its owner, a convicted murderer and serial rapist who confessed. The convictions of the boys, now men, were overturned and they were exonerated. One of those boys, Yusef Salaam, was just 15 years old when his life was upended and changed forever. Since his release, Yusef has committed himself to advocating and educating people on the issues of false confessions, police brutality and misconduct, press ethics and bias, race and law, and the disparities in America’s criminal justice system. In 2013, documentarians Ken and Sarah Burns released the documentary “The Central Park Five,” which told of this travesty from the perspective of Yusef and his cohorts. In 2014, The Central Park Five received a multi-million dollar settlement from the city of New York for its grievous injustice against them. Yusef was awarded an Honorary Doctorate that same year and received the President's Life Time Achievement Award in 2016 from President Barack Obama. He was appointed to the board of the Innocence Project in 2018, and has released a Netflix Feature limited series called When They See Us based on the true story of the “Central Park Five” with Ava DuVernay, Oprah Winfrey and Robert De Niro, in May of 2019. He released a book about his experiences and philosophy of life in May 2021, called Better, Not Bitter.

Extraterrestrial Life: Are We the Sharpest Cookies in the Jar?
6:00 PM – Virtual: Link to Come - The search for extraterrestrial life is one of the most exciting frontiers in Astronomy. First tentative clues were identified close to Earth in the form of the weird interstellar object `Oumuamua in 2017. Our civilization will mature once we find out who resides on our cosmic street by searching with our best telescopes for unusual electromagnetic flashes, industrial pollution of planetary atmospheres, artificial light or heat, artificial space debris or something completely unexpected. We might be a form of life as primitive and common in the cosmos as ants are in a kitchen. If so, we can learn a lot from others out there through the new frontier of "space archaeology". Abraham (Avi) Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University and a best-selling author. He received a Ph.D. in Physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, led the first international project supported by the Strategic Defense Initiative, and was subsequently a long-term member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Dr. Loeb has written eight books, including most recently, Extraterrestrial, and about 800 papers on a range of topics, including black holes, the first stars, the search for extraterrestrial life, and the future of the universe. He was the longest-serving chair of Harvard's Department of Astronomy (2011-2020), founding director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiatieve, and Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation. Dr. Loeb is a former member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies, and a current member of the Advisory Board for "Einstein: Visualize the Impossible" of Hebrew university. He also chairs the Breakthrough Starshot Intiative and serve as the Science Theory Director for all intiatives of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation.

Crying in the Bathroom
12:00 PM – Step-a-torium, Student Innovation Center - Minka CEO and co-founder Ana Pinto da Silva drives transformational change at the intersection of housing, healthcare and technology. Minka provides a radical alternative to traditional senior housing, building intergenerational communities that seek to strengthen connections, improve health and increase wellbeing. This is part of the ISU Student Innovation Center noon talks. Attend @ SICTR or via Zoom. For details, go to https://sictr.iastate.edu/