Upcoming Events
Title IX and 50 Years of Women’s Athletics at the UI - Paula Jantz
Monday, April 3, 2023 10:00am
This presentation discusses the history of women’s athletics at the University of Iowa and will celebrate the career of Dr. Christine Grant as a leader in the advancement of equality in women’s sport at Iowa and nationally.
Paula Jantz joined the University of Iowa Athletics Department in 1980 and retired in 2017 as senior associate director of athletics. As senior women’s administrator, she was responsible for individual sport supervision, personnel supervision, and management of various units...
New Program at the Stanley Museum of Art
Tuesday, April 4, 2023 10:30am
Stanley Sage is a new program at the Stanley Museum of Art where local older adults will tell their art story and connect them to the Stanley collection.
The inaugural event will be Tuesday, April 4 at 10:30 a.m. with Linzee Kull McCray.
Linzee is curious about everything! She’s been an art teacher, bartender, author of two books on textiles, curator of museum exhibitions, fabric designer, and writer. People’s stories and the opportunity to share them gets her up in the morning and keeps her...
Engaging with Today’s Students - Steph Beecher
Wednesday, April 12, 2023 1:00pm
Basic needs, including food, housing, mental health, sleep, hygiene, and financial literacy, are critical to students’ success. When students are basic needs insecure, they do not have access to these essentials, adversely affecting their well-being, college persistence, and college completion. On our campus, the Food Pantry has been instrumental to fighting food insecurity. In fact, more than 40 percent of UI students are food insecure. We will discuss what basic needs insecurity looks like on...
State of the Iowa City Community School District - Matt Degner
Wednesday, April 19, 2023 1:00pm
Join this Zoom presentation to hear from Matt Degner, superintendent of the Iowa City Community School District, as he discusses the state’s new “voucher” system and how it will affect the public schools, the new magnet school, how well students are bouncing back from COVID, and more.
Matt Degner has been superintendent of the Iowa City school district since July 2020. Matt was principal of South East Junior High for the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 school years. Since that time he has served as...
EFC Lecture: The Complex Relationship of Humans and Horseshoe Crabs -- Jerrold Weiss, PhD
Thursday, April 20, 2023 4:00pm to 5:30pm
All multicellular organisms use “innate immune” receptors to detect and mobilize defensive responses to invading microbes. This includes proteins recognizing lipopolysaccharides (LPS) of Gram-negative bacteria. LPS-recognizing defense systems have been characterized in both humans and horseshoe crabs that have inhabited the Earth for 300+ million years.
The ability of horseshoe crab LPS-binding protein to detect minuscule amounts of LPS has prompted pharmaceutical development of the horseshoe...
Tour of Hancher Auditorium
Wednesday, May 3, 2023 11:00am
(Reservations required. RSVP by April 19 to Ellie Herman, ellen-herman@uiowa.edu.)
Phebe Timber Spring Hike
Monday, May 15, 2023 10:00am
Upcoming Outing
Phebe Timber Spring Hike
Monday, May 15, 10 a.m. (Reservations NOT required.)
Other EFC News
Note: Videos of past lectures may be available on the EFC Lecture Series page.
Past Events
EFC Lecture: Walt Whitman Left to His Own Devices — Ed Folsom, PhD
Thursday, March 23, 2023 4:00pm
When you reach for your smartphone, is your hand reaching for it, or is the device now reaching for your hand, with its alerts, beeps, vibrations, and suddenly glowing screen? Does your hand want it, or does it want your hand?
In this talk, I want to think about Walt Whitman’s most intimate passages, with his claims of a sentient physical book (codex) in mind—a kind of proto-smartphone—and see how his words work to evoke, to enact, the physical interaction between a living reader and a book...
EFC Lecture: Our Medical System is Frayed — Victoria Sharp
Thursday, March 9, 2023 4:00pm to 5:30pm
**CANCELED due to weather **
Our Medical System Is Frayed:
Why Did Humpty Dumpty Fall Off The Wall?
Victoria Sharp, M.D., M.B.A.
Professor Emeritus, Department of UrologyActing Chief of Staff, Iowa City VA Healthcare System
Living in the United States, great health care is something we all expect to be available and reliable. Busy in our lives focusing on what is important to us and what we are good at, in general, you wouldn’t think we would need to do much more than eat healthy, exercise...
Canceled
EFC Lecture: Retirement Time Management: Oxymoron or Essential? — Susan R. Johnson
Thursday, November 17, 2022 4:00pm to 5:30pm
In popular culture "time management" means planning every minute, being efficient, and getting everything done. It's something you need for your career, not your life.
This time management does not fit with anyone's vision of "retirement."
But there is another, more useful, more accurate version of time management: Time is all we have. We want to use our time to create a life worth living. To do that, we need to decide what to do, plan (enough) to make those things happen, and do them with...
EFC Lecture: Gun Safety is on the Ballot in November: Unpacking the Proposed "Right to Keep and Bear Arms" Amendment — Patricia Zebrowski
Thursday, October 20, 2022 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Patricia M. Zebrowski
On Nov. 8, 2022, Iowans will vote on the addition of an amendment to the state constitution. The "Right to Keep and Bear Arms" amendment uses language that goes beyond the protections laid out in the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment.
Specifically, the measure on the ballot will read: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes this right to be a fundamental individual right. Any and all...
EFC Lecture: Climate Change and the Future - Jerald Schnoor
Thursday, September 15, 2022 4:00pm to 5:30pm
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called the recent UN report on climate change a “code red for humanity.” Among its many findings, “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land."
Furthermore, greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are the highest concentration in the atmosphere for at least 2 million years; methane and nitrous oxide are the most in more than 800,000 years; and our average temperature on earth is the warmest in at least 2,000 years. All...
Association of Emeritus Faculty annual meeting
Monday, May 16, 2022 10:00am to 12:00pm
The Annual Meeting of the Association of Emeritus Faculty will take place on Monday, May 16 from 10 a.m. until noon, via Zoom (meeting ID 825 854 6688). In addition to updating you on Emeritus activities, at 11 we will have a guest speaker, Professor Harleah Buck from the College of Nursing and Director of the Csomay Center for Gerontologic Excellence. Her presentation is titled Envisioning a Future of Optimal Aging and Well-Being for Older Adults and Their Caregivers: The Barbara and Richard...
EFC Lecture: Empowering a Victim of Domestic Violence to Terminate a Lease - Shelly Kurtz
Thursday, April 21, 2022 4:00pm
In most states, tenants who are victims of domestic violence have NO right to terminate their leases. This forces victims to choose between remaining in their homes and risking more violence and possibly death, or leaving their apartments and incurring substantial debt to their landlords for unpaid rents.
Reforming landlord tenant law to allow tenants who are victims of domestic violence to terminate their leases without owing further rents seems like a sensibile solution. As with all reforms...
EFC Lecture: Centennial Tensions in Theatre Arts - Kim Marra
Thursday, March 24 4:00pm to Friday, March 25, 2022 5:00pm
Centennial Tensions: A Wider Reckoning
with the History of the University of Iowa’s Theatre Arts Department
Kim Marra, PhD
Professor Emeritus of Theatre Arts and American Studies
How does an academic department commemorate its history amid this world-changing time of COVID-19 and ever more urgent need for greater diversity, equity, and inclusion? How can it muster remembrance to account for its past at a predominately white, Midwestern land-grant institution while engaging current...