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Past Events

Monday, 11 Apr 2016

Bugs and Bodies: The Role of Insects in Crime Scene Investigations - Richard W. Merritt
8:00 PM – Dolezal Auditorium, 127 Curtiss Hall - Richard W. Merritt is involved in the field of forensic entomology and assists police departments in crime scene investigations involving insects. He is a University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University with a joint appointment in the Departments of Entomology and Fisheries and Wildlife. While much of Merritt's research has been on aquatic insects, in particular, black fly and mosquito larval ecology, he is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. He is coeditor of Black Flies: Ecology, Population Management, and Annotated World List and four editions of the textbook An Introduction to the Aquatic Insects of North America. This presentation is not for the squeamish!

The PhD Movie 2: Still in Grad School | Piled Higher and Deeper - Film Screening & Conversation with Jorge Cham
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - The PhD Move 2: Still in Grad School is the sequel to the film adaptation of the popular comic strip "Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham. Like the comics and the first movie, the film takes a smart and humorous look at the world of Academia through the eyes of four grad students, and features real academics - including a Nobel Prize winner! - in many of the roles. The PHD Movie 2 was filmed on location at the California Institute of Technology and was produced as part of a continued collaboration between PHD Comics and the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter at Caltech. Part of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate Research Conference A Q&A discussion with Jorge Cham will immediately follow the 80-minute film.

Trans Entrepreneurship and Creating Trans-Inclusive Workplaces - Angelica Ross
2:15 PM – 2019 Morrill Hall - Angelica Ross is the founder of TransTech Social Enterprises, a company that empowers trans and gender-nonconforming people through on-the-job training in leadership and workplace skills. A leader in the movement for trans and racial equality, She has toured nationally, speaking her powerful mission into action with business leaders, educators and the President of the United States. Since studying theater at Florida Atlantic University, Angelica Ross has been featured in film, television, and live theatre. She is the breakout star of the upcoming series Her Story, which explores the lives and loves of two transwomen in LA.

Sunday, 10 Apr 2016

Murmurs at Every Turn: The Natural and Human Migrations of Northern Greece - Julian Hoffman
7:00 PM – Gallery, Memorial Union - Julian Hoffman's book The Small Heart of Things: Being at Home in a Beckoning World was awarded the 2012 AWP Award in Creative Nonfiction and the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature. Hoffman lives beside the Prespa Lakes in northwestern Greece, the first transboundary park in the Balkans. Shared with Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the lake basin is home to a rich range of people and languages, mammals and birds, wild flowers and habitats. It is a place of great diversity. Hoffman earns his living monitoring vulnerable, upland bird species where wind farms have been built or proposed. Pearl Hogrefe Visiting Writers Series

Saturday, 9 Apr 2016

Aldo Leopold: A Standard of Change - A One-Act Play
2:00 PM – ISU Alumni Center South Ballroom - The one-man play A Standard of Change explores the influences and challenges that led Aldo Leopold to penning some of the most important essays in his book A Sand County Almanac. The play is set in one evening in and around the famous Wisconsin Shack that inspired much of Leopold's writing. Jim Pfitzer, who wrote and stars in the play, skillfully captures Leopold's reflections on the effects of human progress on wildness and how we manage wild places. With over two million copies sold, A Sand County Almanac is one of the most respected books about the environment ever published, and Aldo Leopold has come to be regarded by many as the most influential conservation thinker of the twentieth century. Ames Reads Leopold Series

Thursday, 7 Apr 2016

Hertz Lecture on Emerging Issues in Agriculture - Roger Underwood
7:30 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Your future is short - don't waste it working for someone else, is the advice entrepreneur Roger Underwood, a graduate of Iowa State and former CEO of Becker Underwood, offers students. Becker Underwood was the world's leading supplier of non-pesticide specialty chemical and biological products for agricultural, turf and horticulture markets, with annual sales of nearly $200 million. Underwood and co-founder and childhood friend Jeff Becker sold the company to the German chemical company BASF in 2012. Roger Underwood has been a longtime supporter of Iowa State University, especially the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He helped establish and fund the college's Agriculture Entrepreneurship Initiative. Carl and Marjory Hertz Lecture on Emerging Issues in Agriculture

Christian Sexual Ethics at the End of Days: Promiscuous Possibilities - Richard McCarty
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Richard McCarty, an associate professor of religious studies at Mercyhurst University, studies religious perspectives on human relationships and sexual ethics. He will discuss Christian discourse about the end of days and how it impacts Christian ideas of sexual morality today. McCarty is the author of Sexual Virtue: An Approach to Contemporary Christian Ethics. His work draws on data from the natural and social sciences, insights from cross-cultural dialogues, biblical scholarship, and revisionist thinking to offer a more compassionate and inclusive notion of sexual virtue for our time. McCarty received his PhD in religious studies from the University of Iowa.

Wednesday, 6 Apr 2016

ISIS, Jihadist Violence, and the Quest for an Idealized Islamic State - Michael Christopher Low
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Michael Christopher Low will reframe the discussion of ISIS against the backdrop of more than a half century of unsuccessful jihadist attempts to topple repressive dictatorships and secular states in the Middle East. He is an assistant professor of history, specializing in Late Ottoman, Modern Middle Eastern, and environmental history. His articles, commentary, and reviews have appeared (or are forthcoming) in the Arab Studies Journal, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Jadaliyya, the International Journal of Middle East Studies, the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, and the Review of Middle East Studies. He earned his Ph.D. From Columbia University. College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Dean's Lecture Series Iowa State University faculty, staff and students may contact the Lectures Program with requests for the presentation podcast.

The Geography of Inequality: Local Governments and Community Well-Being across America - Linda Lobao
7:00 PM – Dolezal Auditorium, 127 Curtiss Hall - Linda Labao is a professor in Rural Sociology, Sociology, and Geography at The Ohio State University's School of Environment and Natural Resources. Her work focuses on how changes in industry and agriculture, as well as governments, have an impact on communities, households, and individuals. She will discuss geographic disparities in poverty and privilege and how local governments can help reduce inequality and ensure public well-being. Lobao has been a faculty member at Ohio State since 1986 and has served as chair of the rural sociology graduate program since 2005. She received her PhD from North Carolina. George M. Beal Distinguished Lecture in Rural Sociology

The Education of Indians and Unfinished Business - Norbert S. Hill, Jr.
7:00 PM – Kocimski Auditorium, 101 College of Design - Norbert S. Hill, Jr., (Oneida Nation) is the Area Manager for Education and Training for the Oneida Tribe of Wisconsin. He was one of the original Indigenous scientists who founded the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), a national organization focused on increasing the representation of American Indian in STEM studies and careers, and was awarded with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering. Hill has written about the challenges encountered by American Indian people in such publications as The American Indian Graduate and Winds of Change Magazine. He received a BS in sociology and anthropology and an MS in guidance and counseling both from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Richard Thompson Memorial Lecture