The Art of Mindfulness - Romapada Swami
6:00 PM – Cardinal Room, Memorial Union - Romapada Swami is a Vaishnava monk, a scholar on Eastern (Vedic) thought and philosophy, and a highly respected spiritual leader. He will discuss how mindfulness can help one achieve peace and happiness and its role as a spiritual practice for the Hare Krishnas. Romapada Swami attended the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he was introduced to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), a religious organization rooted in ancient sanskrit Vedic scriptures and formed to spread the wisdom of Bhakti Yoga. He oversees temples in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Chicago, Naperville, St Louis, Kansas City and, currently, Freeport, NY.

Refugee Stories: The Art of Mohamad Hafez - Mohamad Hafez
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Mohamad Hafez came to the United States to study architecture at Iowa State University and was unable to return to his beloved Syria. With the advent of the Syrian civil war in 2011, his home was forever changed. He will speak about his art, his refugee experience, and the stories of refugees from around the world, which he visually recreates in his exhibition Unpacked. The exhibit features miniaturized re-creations of a moment in time or a memory, each placed within a suitcase and accompanied by a recording of the refugee's story told in his or her own words.  The exhibition "Unpacked: Refugee Baggage" is in the Christian Petersen Art Museum, Morrill Hall, September 4-October 19.

The Art of Science: Bringing Pixar's Imagined Worlds to Life - Danielle Feinberg
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Danielle Feinberg, Pixar Animation Studio's Director of Photography for Lighting, uses math, science and code to bring wonder to the big screen. Go behind the scenes of Coco, Finding Nemo,Toy Story, Brave, WALL-E and more to discover how Pixar interweaves art and science to create fantastical worlds where the things you imagine can become real. Feinberg has a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science from Harvard University. In addition to her Pixar work, she mentors teenage girls, encouraging them to pursue code, math and science.

Called to Lives of Meaning and Purpose: A New Approach to Vocation - Kathleen Cahalan
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Kathleen A. Cahalan is Professor of Theology at Saint John's University School of Theology and Seminary and Director of the Collegeville Institute Seminars, for which she co-edited two recent volumes: Calling All Years Good: Vocation throughout Life's Seasons and Calling in Today’s World: Voices from Eight Faith Perspectives. Cahalan also coordinates the Lilly Endowment's Called to Lives of Meaning and Purpose Initiative, which began this year. Msgr. James A. Supple Lecture Series

The Dark Side of Big Data - Cathy O'Neil
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Cathy O'Neil is a mathematician, data scientist and the author of Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. She will discuss the unintended negative consequences of using big data, including how so-called "objective" black-box algorithms have the potential to reinforce human bias in everything from sentencing to hiring workers. O'Neil began her career in academia before moving to the private sector, where she worked as a hedge-fund analyst during the credit crisis and then as a data scientist in the New York start-up scene. She writes regularly for Bloomberg View about algorithms, and in 2017 she founded the consulting firm ORCAA to audit algorithms for racial, gender and economic inequality. Part of the National Affairs Series

The Design Process, Autism and Animals - Temple Grandin
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Temple Grandin is a person with autism, and an expert on both autism and animal behavior. She is a professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University, and has a successful career consulting on both livestock handling equipment design and animal welfare. HBO made an Emmy Award winning movie about her life starring Claire Danes, and she is the subject of the BBC documentary "The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow." The unique way Grandin's visual mind works and the connection between her autism and animal temperament is the subject of her book Thinking in Pictures. In Animals in Translation, she explores the connection between autism and animal behavior. Her latest book, The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum, addresses scientific advances in understanding autism.

Latina Memories: A Chilean Human Rights Perspective - Marjorie Agosín
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Marjorie Agosín is an author, poet, and human rights activist known for her outspokenness for women's rights in Chile. Agosín was raised in Chile by Jewish parents, and her writings demonstrate a unique blending of Jewish and South American cultures. Her family moved to the United States to escape the horrors of the Pinochet takeover. Both her scholarship and her creative work focus on social justice, feminism, and remembrance. Agosín’s many awards include the Pura Belpré Award for I Lived on Butterfly Hill; the Letras de Oro Prize for her poetry, and a United Nations Leadership Award for Human Rights. She is currently a professor of Spanish at Wellesley College.

Art and Our Culture of Ephemerality - Andrew Kozlowski
6:30 PM – South Ballroom, Memorial Union - Artist and printmaker Andrew Kozlowski will discuss how our histories are shaped by the objects we possess and the ephemerality of our human-made, constructed world. Using images from his own work, Kozlowski encourages audiences to reflect on objects of high and low culture around them, from ancient urns and artifacts of art history to the discarded beer cans and building debris of today. Kozlowski's exhibit Under (Printed) Construction will be on display at the Design on Main Gallery September 10-20 and features screen- and relief-printed images that have been wheat-pasted to the gallery wall. On Friday, September 21, he will lead a workshop during which the exhibit will be torn down and recycled into new paper on which workshop participants will print their own images. Celebrating 10 Years of the Live Green! Initiative Located in the Main Street Cultural District in downtown Ames, Design on Main is a satellite studio and gallery facility that connects Iowa State University’s College of Design with the greater Ames community.

The Symbolism of the Sand Mandala - Monks of the Drepung Loseling Monastery
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Monks from the the Drepung Loseling Monastery will create a mandala sand painting in the lobby of the Memorial Union Monday, September 24 through Friday, September 28. The process consists of opening ceremony with chants, music and mantra recitation and ends with the dismantling of the mandala and dispersal of the sand. Millions of grains of sand are poured from traditional metal funnels called chakpur to create a finished mandala approximately five feet by five feet in size. Formed of a traditional prescribed iconography that includes geometric shapes and ancient spiritual symbols, the sand-painted mandala is used as a tool for re-consecrating the earth and its inhabitants.