In Brief: Convo with Cantwell, Wonder House, Staff Council meeting
The Wonder House took over a restaurant across the street from SXSW's home in the Austin Convention Center from March 11-13.
This month's "Convo with Cantwell" will focus on how people can use social media to bring visibility to their work.
'Building Your Brand' is focus on this month's Convo with Cantwell
"Building Your Brand" will be the topic for the March 31 "Convo with Cantwell," a monthly Zoom fireside chat hosted by Elizabeth "Betsy" Cantwell, senior vice president for research and innovation.
The discussion will focus on social media, marketing your work, and best practices for building a professional brand and leveraging your identity online to form connections and bring visibility to your work. Confirmed panelists include Erika Hamden, assistant professor of astronomy, Michael D. L. Johnson, assistant professor of immunobiology, and Rocque Perez, marketing strategist in Research, Innovation & Impact.
The discussion will be held March 31 at 2 p.m. Registration is now open. Please note that you must register for each session. Registration for one does not carry forward to future sessions.
For those who missed the Feb. 25 session, it featured a discussion on the importance of experiential learning. Panelists included Brian Ellerman, founding director of Arizona FORGE, Ewan Douglas, assistant professor of astronomy and assistant astronomer at Steward Observatory, and Rebecca Lipson, TIMESTEP program coordinator in Societal Impact, which is part of RII.
Ellerman emphasized that, especially in the case of Arizona FORGE, using experiential learning is essential to teaching students to think with an entrepreneurial mindset.
"It's not that every student will become an entrepreneur," he said, "but that success in today's world depends on having a constellation of skills like those required for entrepreneurial success."
Douglas spoke about his experiences teaching in the University's astronomy camps for high school students on Kitt Peak and Mount Lemmon. Students are give "short missions" that take students all the way through conception of an idea to building something, and then to launching the project and passing it on to the next generation of students, he said.
Lipson spoke about TIMESTEP, a program in physics, astronomy and math that helps undergraduate students develop career skills such as how to write a resume, how to apply to graduate school and how to find internships.
"Mentoring young learners so they get excited about science and understand career options also engages the graduate student mentors so they learn to be science educators and communicators," she said.
Watch or listen to the February episode, and other previous episodes, on the RII website. For additional information, contact RII at research@arizona.edu.
Thousands visit University's 'Wonder House' at South by Southwest
The University of Arizona debuted its Wonder House at South by Southwest, giving attendees of one of the country's largest festivals a firsthand look at the University's research and innovation.
The Wonder House, which took over a restaurant just across the street from SXSW's home in the Austin Convention Center, welcomed more than 9,000 people between March 11 and 13, according to early attendance estimates.
Attendees heard from a range of University experts, including Dani DellaGiustina, an assistant professor of planetary sciences and deputy principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, who explained the engineering principles that made the NASA mission possible.
Goggy Davidowitz, University Distinguished Scholar of entomology, explained how insects could be the answer to a looming worldwide food shortage. Attendees had a chance to try gourmet tacos filled with crickets, made by Janos Wilder, a James Beard Award-winning Tucson chef.
Other presentations included the premiere of "StellarScape," a film directed by assistant professor of music Kay He and made in collaboration with Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of astronomy, and Win Burleson, professor in the School of Information. The film brings music, dance, science, visual art and technology together to tell the story of a massive star's life cycle.
See scenes from the Wonder House in this photo gallery, featuring photos by University of Arizona photographers Chris Richards and Kyle Mittan.
Flexible work survey, committee work are on the Staff Council agenda
The University of Arizona Staff Council will hold its monthly meeting on Tuesday, March 29, from 3-4 p.m.
The meeting will include an update on a survey being developed by one of the council's committees to collect staff input on flexible work arrangements. That effort is being organized by a working group led by Danielle Barefoot, internal grants program administrator for Research, Innovation & Impact.
Attendees will also hear updates from council members who sit on external committees.
The Staff Council was established last year when members of the Appointed Professionals Advisory Council and the Classified Staff Council voted to merge into one governing body. The group meets via Zoom the last Tuesday of each month.