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Souls in Transition: Understanding the Religious and Spiritual Lives of College-Age Americans - Christian Smith
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Christian Smith is the author of Young Catholic America: Emerging Adults In, Out of, and Gone from the Church, a new book based on the National Study of Youth and Religion. He offers insight into the wide variety of religious practices and beliefs among young adults today and the influences and events that lead them to embrace religion or abandon it. Christian Smith is a professor of sociology and director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at Notre Dame University. He is the author of several books on religion in emerging adulthood, including Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood and Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults. Msgr. James A. Supple Lecture Series

From Cuba to Iowa: One Man's Fight for Freedom - Rafael Cruz
2:00 PM – Pioneer Room, Memorial Union - Rafael Cruz is the father of US Senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz. Cuban born, he has been active in conservative politics for many years. He is also a pastor in North Texas, a professor of Bible and Theology, and the president of Kingdom Translation Services. Part of the Presidential Caucus Series which provides the university community with opportunities to question presidential candidates or their representative before the precinct caucuses.

Drawing Lessons: The Comics of Everyday Life - Alison Bechdel
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Alison Bechdel has a thirty-year career writing, drawing, and self-syndicating the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. That generational chronicle ran regularly in over fifty LGBT publications in North America and the UK. After setting aside Dykes to Watch Out For in 2008, she edited Best American Comics 2011 and published a second graphic memoir, Are You My Mother: A Comic Drama, in 2012. She has drawn comics for Slate, McSweeney's, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times Book Review, and Granta, and her work is widely anthologized and translated. She is a 2014 MacArthur Fellow, a five-year grant to individuals who show exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future. The fellowship is designed to provide recipients with the flexibility to pursue their creative activities without obligations.

Citizenship: The Solution to Global Warming - Marshall Saunders
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Marshall Saunders is the founder and president of the Citizens' Climate Lobby and Citizens' Climate Education. CCL is a grassroots, nonpartisan organization that educates and supports citizens to lobby their members of Congress, the media and their fellow citizens to address climate change. Citizens' Climate Lobby now has more than 280 groups of volunteer lobbyists in the United States, Canada, and around the world. They are working toward the passage of a Carbon Fee and Dividend proposal supported by climate scientists and economists alike. Marshall retired from a career in business in 1990 and served as a director for several microcredit lenders in Latin America and Asia. He was trained to deliver Al Gore's Climate Reality slideshow, but soon realized that the solutions offered didn't match the problem and established Citizens' Climate Lobby in 2007.

Prison Chronicles: Working with Incarcerated Women - Rachel Williams
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Rachel Williams will share her experience as an artist, researcher, and teacher working with women in prison. An associate professor in Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa, Williams provides opportunities for these women to discuss domestic violence, sexual assault, relationships, and tools for making better decisions. The intersections of race, class, and gender play an important role in these discussions and have implications for the future landscape of corrections. Her talk will touch on such topics as the Prison Industrial Complex, marginalized women, and the inherent tensions of working with women who are students at the university and women who are in prison.

Beyond Farm-to-Table: The Future of Food - Dan Barber
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Dan Barber is the author of The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food and the award-winning chef of Blue Hill, a restaurant with locations in Manhattan's West Village and at the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture, a nonprofit farm and education center. He will discuss why we need to radically transform our approach to cooking for the sake of our food, our health, and the future of the land, and how we can move beyond "farm-to-table." Barber's opinions on food and agricultural policy have appeared in the New York Times and other publications. He has been honored with multiple James Beard awards, including the country's top chef award, and was named one of TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people in 2009. Shivvers Memorial Lecture

Ali Rahimi for Mon Atelier: Master of Couture - Ali Rahimi & John Barle
7:00 PM – Dolezal Auditorium, 127 Curtiss Hall - Ali Rahimi is the creative designer behind the brand Mon Atelier and creates one-of-a-kind pieces for celebrity A-List clientele, including Jane Lynch, Queen Latifah, and Anjelica Huston. He is known for his design of the famous pink "Jackie O" suit featured on Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde 2, as well as his work with the television shows Glee and America's Got Talent. Rahimi has more than two decades of experience crafting couture clothing and perfecting designs through multiple fittings and the near-lost art of hand finishing. He and partner John Barle own an independent studio in Los Angeles. They will discuss the how their career in the apparel industry took them from the Virginia Marti College of Art and Design in Lakewood, Ohio, to running and operating a niche boutique for Hollywood celebrities. Fashion Show 2015

Children, Technology and the Changing Definition of Play - Doris Bergen
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Doris Bergen is a Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology Emerita at Miami University in Ohio. Her work focuses on learning and human development, with a special focus on how technology-enhanced toys affect play, adult memories of childhood play, and the development of humor, especially in gifted children. Bergen served as chair of Miami University's Educational Psychology Department for ten years and for many years codirected the university's Center for Human Development, Learning, and Technology, which was subsequently named in her honor. A Miami University Distinguish Scholar, she is the author of eleven books, including Educating and Caring for Very Young Children: The Infant/Toddler Curriculum and Human Development: Traditional and Contemporary Theories. Barbara E. (Mound) Hansen Early Childhood Lecture Series

Measuring the Elusive: How to Catch Neutrinos and What They Tell Us about the Universe - Mayly Sanchez
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Mayly Sanchez is an experimental particle physicist at Iowa State whose research may help answer one of the most fundamental questions in nature: Why is the universe dominated by matter and not anti-matter? Her research focuses on measuring the properties of neutrinos, subatomic particles that rarely interact with matter and have the unique ability to change identities. Sanchez earned a PhD in physics from Tufts University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a staff scientist at Argonne National Laboratory before joining the faculty at Iowa State. She has been awarded an NSF CAREER grant and recognized with a Presidential Early Career Award for her work on the application of new photodetector technologies to particle physics. College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Dean's Lecture Series

Eating Wildly: Foraging for Life, Love and the Perfect Meal - Ava Chin
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Ava Chin, a native New Yorker, is the author of Eating Wildly, a memoir about urban foraging. The book catalogs the variety of edible and medicinal plants she discovers in parks and backyards and includes recipes and culinary information. It's also a story of self-discovery and self-reliance. Chin is an associate professor of creative nonfiction and journalism at CUNY and writes as the "Urban Forager" for the New York Times. She is a former slam poet and is the editor of the nonfiction essay collection Split: Stories From a Generation Raised on Divorce.