Campus and Local Community Spaces as Collaborative Lab for Environmental Research—Inspiration from Leaders at Other Campuses

April 5, 1:30–3 pm

Iowa City Public Library

Around the country, visionary faculty members and administrators are finding inspiring ways to engage students, artists, researchers, staff, and community partners in learning about and responding to climate change and its environmental effects through the very landscapes in which they live and work. As part of this year’s Obermann series, “Interdisciplinary, Experiential Environmental Education and Research,” we are thrilled to welcome two leaders whose brilliant cross-sectoral, cross-disciplinary collaborations offer inspiring ways to conduct research, teach classes, and connect campuses with their communities. Their work promises that through expansive, intentional collaborations here at the University of Iowa, we can leap over the usual obstacles to working together and design projects that will not only change hearts and minds, but directly address the impacts of climate change and environmental challenges.

Speakers

• Kathleen Socolofsky, Director of the University of California Davis Arboretum and Assistant Vice Chancellor in the Office of Administration and Resource Management
• Bethany Wiggin, Founding Director of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities and Professor of German at the University of Pennsylvania with affiliations in Comparative Literature, English, and International Studies

Prairie Lights Reading with Visiting Scholar Lesley-Ann Noel

April 12, 7:00 pm

Prairie Lights Bookstore

Free books for the first 30 attendees!

What motivates you as a changemaker? What forces are preventing you (and others) from thriving? How do your history, personality, and ethics affect your approach to designing social change?

These questions are essential to the work of creating social change, and they are exactly what Lesley-Ann Noel asks you to explore in her new book, Design Social Change: Take Action, Work Toward Equity, and Challenge the Status Quo (Ten Speed Press). In the book and at her Prairie Lights reading, Professor Lesley-Ann Noel shares essential design strategies for making a lasting impact. This work starts with knowing yourself and builds outward into making change in your community and the larger world. Design Social Change gives you tools to tailor your approach to design, taking into account your history, personality, ethics, and goals for a better future.

After the reading, Noel will engage in a discussion with Adele Vanarsdale, Director of Campus Project Planning, University of Iowa, and take questions from the audience.