<p>Brown University will host TEDxBrownUniversity on Oct. 20, 2012, from noon to 6 p.m. in the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts. Titled “Life, Learning and Liberal Education,” the event will feature a panel of alumni, faculty, and student speakers. A limited number of tickets will be available to the general public at the door. The event will be livestreamed at <a href="http://www.brown.edu/web/livestream">www.brown.edu/web/livestream</a>.</p>

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Brown University will host TEDxBrownUniversity on Saturday, Oct. 20, 2012, from 12:30 to 6 p.m. in the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts. Titled “Life, Learning and Liberal Education,” the event will feature a panel of alumni, faculty and student speakers who will offer their individual perspectives in a conversation about how liberal education experiences have influenced their intellectual, personal, and professional development.

A limited number of tickets will be reserved for the general public at the door on a first-come, first-served basis at noon and, depending on availability, at 4 p.m.

The event will be livestreamed at www.brown.edu/web/livestream, and to two overflow spaces on campus: the newly renovated CareerLAB in the Hemisphere Building (167 Angell St.) and at the Nathan Marcuvitz Auditorium in Sidney Frank Hall (185 Meeting St.).

Press passes are available for journalists. Contact Courtney Coelho at 401-863-7287 or [email protected] to make arrangements.

More information about TEDxBrownUniversity can be found at www.brown.edu/campus-life/events/tedx/home

Schedule
Granoff Center for the Creative Arts
154 Angell St.

12:30 p.m.
Organizer’s Welcome and Introduction

  • Vanessa Ryan, assistant professor of English
  • Katherine Bergeron, dean of the College
  • TED video introduction to TEDx

Session One

  • Richard Morrill: “Liberal Learning and Human Capabilities”
  • Katherine Chon: “Reinventing the Underground Railroad”
  • Philip Gruppuso: “Life, Learning and a Liberal Medical Education”
  • Ria Mirchandani: “Putting Liberal Education in Perspective”
  • Nawal Nour: “Development Studies and International Relations: How Do they Lead to Obstetrics”
  • Brad Simpson: TBA
  • Jill Huchital: “How Technologists Untangle Complexity”

4:30 p.m.
Session Two

  • Eduardo Diaz-Santana: “An Educational Diagnosis: Crafting my Brown Experience”
  • Sonja Santelises: “Latent Power in Human Vessels”
  • Amanda Anderson: “Practicing the Humanities”
  • Tom Gardner: “Liberal Arts in the 21st Century”

Speakers

Alumni Speakers

  • Katherine Chon is the co-founder and president emerita of Polaris Project, a leading nonprofit organization combating modern slavery in the United States and Asia.
  • Tom Gardner is co-founder and CEO of The Motley Fool, which he founded with his brother David in 1993. The Motley Fool’s mission is to help the world invest better by focusing on long-term investments in world-class businesses.
  • Jill Huchital is the head of engineering for a Silicon Valley startup building a content discovery and launch platform. Until recently, she was the engineering and product director for Google.org, responsible for projects that use Google’s technology to address global challenges.
  • Richard L. Morrill is president of the Teagle Foundation, a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting new thinking in higher education. He also continues to serve as chancellor of the University of Richmond, a largely honorary position that he assumed in 1998 to serve as an ambassador of good will for the university following his 10-year presidency.
  • Nawal Nour researches health and policy issues regarding female genital cutting. With support from a 2003 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, she established the African Women’s Health Center, which provides appropriate health and outreach programs to the African community in Boston; the clinic is the only center of its kind nationwide.
  • Sonja Brookins Santelises has been chief academic officer for Baltimore City Public Schools since 2010. Her work has focused on setting academic priorities for city schools to bolster the achievement of students across all schools.
  • Brad Simpson is a film producer and partner in Colorforce, which is responsible for The Wimpy Kid franchise, One Day, and Hunger Games.

Faculty Speakers

  • Amanda Anderson, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and English, is a literary scholar and theorist who has written on 19th-century literature and culture, as well as on contemporary debates in the humanities. She is the director of an interdisciplinary summer institute, The School of Criticism and Theory, currently hosted by Cornell University.
  • Philip A. Gruppuso, is currently professor of pediatrics, professor of molecular biology, cell biology and biochemistry (Research), and associate dean for medical education at the Alpert Medical School.

Student Speakers

On Oct. 2, 2012, TEDxBrownUniversity invited students to give five-minute talks on a topic of their choice to be considered for the conference line-up. The following students were selected to present on Oct. 20:

  • Eduardo Diaz Santana is a junior concentrating in anthropology at Brown University. He is part of the Program in Liberal Medical Education and plans to work in international health, focusing on immigrant and refugee health.
  • Ria Mirchandani is a sophomore from Mumbai, India, who is undecided about her concentration. She’s taken a range of classes in departments covering everything from literary arts to engineering to archaeology.

About TED and TEDx

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 26 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. At TED, the world’s leading thinkers and doers are asked to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Talks are then made available, free, at TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Benoit Mandelbrot, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Isabel Allende, and former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Two major TED events are held each year: The TED Conference takes place every spring in Long Beach, California (along with a parallel conference, TEDActive, in Palm Springs), and TEDGlobal is held each summer in Edinburgh, Scotland.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x is the independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized, subject to certain rules and regulations.

TED’s media initiatives include TED.com, where new TEDTalks are posted daily; the new TED Conversations, enabling broad conversations among TED fans; and the Open Translation Project, which provides subtitles and interactive transcripts as well as the ability for any TEDTalk to be translated by volunteers worldwide. Information about TED’s upcoming conferences is available at www.ted.com/registration, on Twitter at twitter.com/TEDTalks, or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TED.