May 10, 2021 | 6-7:30 P.M. | Virtual Event
Wave Energy: Role in Decarbonizing our Energy System and Why Oregon?
Bryson Robertson, Director and Associate Professor, Pacific Marine Energy Center, OSU
Dr. Robertson will provide an overview of the need to decarbonize our global and US energy sector, explain why wave energy has an important role in to play in this transition, and why Oregon/OSU is ideally placed to lead this effort.
April 20, 2021 | 6-7:30 P.M. | Virtual Event
EcoWellness: Optimizing time outdoors
Ryan Reese, Assistant Professor, OSU-Cascades Master of Counseling
We are increasingly aware of the importance of mental health and wellness. Join OSU-Cascades counseling researcher Ryan Reese to explore how time outdoors can have a positive impact on wellness and personal relationships. Reese will explore EcoWellness, a model he developed to study how counselors and therapists can bring nature into traditional counseling settings. He will share how in one study, fly-fishing becomes a platform for talk therapy. He’ll demonstrate how the activity and natural setting merges concepts of EcoWellness and mindfulness to bolster participant wellness. You’ll gain insight into your own EcoWellness and ways to improve your own health and wellness through everyday outdoor experiences.
April 12, 2021 | 6-7:30 P.M. | Virtual Event
Vitamin C and Health: Fact Versus Fiction
Alexander J. Michels, Research Coordinator, Linus Pauling Institute
50 years after Linus Pauling revealed to the world the health benefits of taking vitamin C, we are still learning new things about it. However, the public view of vitamin C is often shrouded in misinformation. This event will explore vitamin C and how it might be useful in treating cancer and the common cold to COVID-19 and beyond. Learn what researchers know - and what they still have left to learn - about this amazing molecule.
View Recorded Presentation
March 16, 2021 | 6-7:30 P.M. | Virtual Event
Climate Change Impacts Around (the) Bend
Larry O’Neill, Associate Professor, OSU College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences; OSU Climatologist
Larger and more frequent wildland fires, smoke severe enough to threaten air quality, and drought are signs of how climate change is changing the U.S. West. But how will a changing climate impact us here in Central Oregon? Join OSU climatologist Larry O’Neill to understand how a continuing drought and shrinking snowpack might impact future water availability issues, how weather patterns may increase rain in the region, and how temperatures and lightning storms may shape the severity of future wildfires.
March 8, 2021 | 6-7:30 P.M. | Virtual Event
The Moral Terrains of Science Activism and Environmental Justice
Rob Figueroa, Associate Professor, OSU School of History, Philosophy, and Religion
Science activism plays an active role in aiding communities vulnerable to environmental risks. Join speaker Robert Melchior Figueroa, when he discusses how environmental justice addresses the intersection of social justice and the environmental conditions in which people live, work and play. Using historical and contemporary examples – such as reformers who helped European immigrants in the late 1800s, Love Canal activists who led cleanup efforts in Niagara Falls in the 1970s, and people fighting inequities related to the COVID-19 pandemic – he’ll share how the environmental justice movement mobilizes people of color and marginalized communities impacted by a range of environmental issues.
February 18, 2021 | 6-7:30 P.M. | Virtual Event
The Promise of 3D Printing Soft Robotics
Stephanie Walker, Postdoctoral Scholar, Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems Institute, OSU College of Engineering
Soft robots are changing the face of wearable technology, medicine and the art of squeezing into tiny places. Join OSU materials scientist Stephanie Walker as she explores how advanced research in 3D printing have made amazing, real-world applications possible. She’ll share cutting-edge research that has produced new materials and 3D printing techniques that can form an array of complex devices, including electronic circuitry and actuators, the devices that operate robotics. She will also discuss real-world examples of these highly flexible robots and the work they do.
February 8, 2021 | 6-7:30 PM | Virtual Event
When Ideology Trumps Science: Why We Question the Experts on Everything from Climate Change to Vaccinations
Erika Allen Wolters, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Oregon State University; Associate Director, Public Policy Undergraduate Program, Oregon State University; Brent Steel, Professor and Director, Public Policy Graduate Program, Oregon State University
Using examples from high-stakes policy debates centered on hot-button controversies such as climate change, immunization and stem cell research, Wolters and Steel document the many reasons policymakers decline to take science into account when making decisions that affect the general population.
In addition, their research identifies the propensity of both liberals and conservatives to ignore scientific consensus when it diverges from their ideological positions. Possible approaches for overcoming this divide in policy will also be presented for discussion.
January 11, 2021 | 6-7:30 P.M. | Virtual Event
Seeing Through Clothes: Impressions Formation, Prejudice & Sexism
Regan A. R. Gurung; Professor, School of Psychological Science; OSU College of Liberal Arts; Interim Executive Director, OSU Center for Teaching and Learning
Perceptions of people depend on what it is they are wearing. Job status, sociability, income, health and fitness can be perceived from clothing. People use categories when describing others and learn what types of clothing are associated with categories or labels. Different types of clothing send different messages. For example, men perceived women in revealing clothing as being more flirtatious, seductive, and promiscuous and less capable. African American men in sweatpants are viewed more negatively than when dressed formally. A model dressed in provocative clothing is viewed as more attractive and sexually appealing, but less intelligent and competent. Can we reduce sexism and prejudice by changing what people wear?
November 17, 2020 | 6:00PM-7:15PM | Virtual Event
The Environment: How it affects you and your health
College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University
Roberta Marinelli, Dean; Maria Kavanaugh, Assistant Professor, Ocean Ecology and Biogeochemistry; George Waldbusser, Associate Professor, Ocean Ecology and Biogeochemistry
College of Public Health and Human Sciences, Oregon State University
Javier Nieto, Dean; Perry Hystad, Associate Professor, Environmental and Occupational Health and Epidemiology
When it comes to the environment and human health, everything is connected – from microbes to megafauna, and from pathogens to people. Come learn about the interrelationships of natural systems and your health from an all-star cast of Oregon State University deans and faculty experts.
November 9, 2020 - Virtual Event
Fires in the West: How to build fire adaptive communities for the future
Erica Fischer, P. E., Assistant Professor, Civil and Construction Engineering, College of Engineering, Oregon State University
The 2020 fire season brought devastation to communities in Oregon's central Cascade mountain range. Explore how communities throughout the West can adapt to wildfire hazards when the climate is growing hotter and drier. Erica Fischer looks at innovative approaches to improving the resilience of structural systems facing natural and human-caused hazards. Join her for a discussion about the wildland urban interface and choices that can be made to reduce damage to infrastructure in the future.
October 12, 2020 - Virtual Event
The Pandemic we were not prepared for: The science, politics and the future of pandemics and our life
The COVID-19 pandemic has caught most nations off guard, wreaking havoc with massive mortality and morbidity, while creating major economic damage and disruption to daily lives and work. Around the globe, countries have responded with a range of policies and attitudes, resulting in a spectrum of outcomes.
Join Chunhuei Chi, a professor in OSU’s College of Public Health and Human Sciences and director of the Center for Global Health as he analyzes how various countries have responded to the pandemic and the consequences of those responses.
You’ll learn more about the SARS-CoV-2 virus and follow it from its discovery in China to its spread to the rest of the world. Chi will explore effective pandemic control policies that some nations have implemented, as well as key social-political factors that help explain the variations we see in national responses.
Chi will share insight about how we can control this pandemic effectively, what a post-COVID-19 world may look like and how we can prepare for it and even shape it.
September 14, 2020 - Virtual Event
From Extinction to recovery: bringing golden paintbrush back from the brink in western prairies
Tom Kaye, Ph.D, Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Oregon State University
Last documented in the wild in Oregon in 1938, golden paintbrush (Castilleja levisecta) was apparently extirpated from Oregon through agriculture, urban development and habitat invasion by exotic weeds. A few small populations remain in Washington and British Columbia, but even these have been in decline in recent years. The species was listed as Threatened by the federal government in 2000, and in 2004 became one of the first plants in the country to have a reintroduction plan.
Since 2010, the Institute for Applied Ecology has teamed with the US Fish and Wildlife Service to reintroduce this iconic prairie plant to western Oregon grasslands in an attempt to bring it back to the state, and in the process contribute to its full recovery and potential removal from the threatened species list. This process has faced many challenges, including the need to restore habitat for the species in the process and unravel its basic biology, from seed germination to its parasitic relationships with host plants through root-to-root connections. This presentation will provide a tour of the history of the species in Oregon, review research breakthroughs, and a summary of reintroduction and habitat conservation successes (and failures) in Oregon and rangewide. The story of golden paintbrush and its science-based comeback will brighten your day!
July 13, 2020 - Virtual Event
Race and Politics: Reflections on a movement and an election
Christopher Stout, Associate Professor, OSU School of Public Policy
This discussion will focus on how Black Lives Matter as a movement arose, its historical antecedents and political ramifications. Christopher Stout will consider why there was a large lull in racial movements in the United States between the Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter, how Black Lives Matter has reshaped American Politics and how the movement is likely to influence the upcoming presidential election.