Sparking Campus-Wide Discussions

For more than 30 years, Grinnell's Scholars' Convocations have created academic experiences shared by the entire College community.

Each lecture covers a topic of public interest and may be part of a wider symposium or series. Convocation speakers often take part in other activities on campus, including spending time in classrooms and meeting with students to discuss related topics.

All Convocations are held at noon in the Rosenfield Center, Room 101, to allow all students, faculty, and staff to attend. They are open to the public.

The Fall 2013 schedule includes:

September 18: Angela Ruggiero, four-time Olympic medalist and president of the Women's Sports Foundation, will present "Legacies of Title IX: An Athlete's Perspective." Her talk is part of the Rosenfield Symposium, The Legacy of Title IX.

October 2: Dawn Porter, criminal justice system reformer and attorney, is the first speaker in the Rosenfield Program's year-long symposium on the war on drugs. She is the director of Gideon's Army, a powerful film about young public defenders in the criminal justice system.

November 20: In her talk, "After Science, There's Laundry," Judith Klinman will discuss the role of women in academics and in the field of science. Klinman was the first tenured female faculty member in the physical sciences at University of California, Berkeley, and is now a graduate school chemistry professor and Chancellor's Professor at Berkeley, a leader in enzymology, and the recipient of many prestigious awards in chemistry and molecular biology.

December 4: Jeffrey J. Kripal, professor of philosophy and religious thought at Rice University, discusses how we explore realities beyond our everyday understanding and science. His lecture touches on superheroes, mutants, and mystics; science fiction, mythology, and religion; fact, fiction, and fraud; and how the paranormal bridges the sacred and scientific.