AMES, Iowa – A semester full of talks will cover just about every angle of globalization: “Why Do I Need to Think Globally to be Effective in My Job?” “Technology and the Globalization of Opportunity,” “The Next Fifty Years,” “Reassessing Race and Sport within a Global Context,” and “It’s all Rock ‘n’ Roll to Me.”

The talks are part of this fall’s “Technology, Globalization and Culture” course taught by James Bernard, an Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering, and Mark Rectanus, professor and chair of world languages and cultures. The course is a multidisciplinary examination of globalism with the goal of preparing students for leadership roles in a diverse world.

The course features guest speakers from business, politics, higher education and various agencies.

“We want people in front of our students who have an influential and sophisticated world view, people with the experience and the profile to give our students as good an introduction as we can give them to globalization,” Bernard said. “There are many points of view on these matters and we do our best to introduce our students to the important ones.”

And those views aren’t limited to registered students.

Bernard and Rectanus are opening the class lectures to the public. The lectures are generally at 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the Alliant Energy-Lee Liu Auditorium of Howe Hall. The full schedule of speakers is here.

This fall’s speakers include George Strawn, chief information officer for the National Science Foundation; Mary Jane Hagenson, vice president for research and development for the Chevron Phillips Chemical Co.; Gary Stahl, deputy director of UNICEF’s Program Funding Office; Richard Longworth, senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and author of “Caught in the Middle: America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalism”; Chris Clover, president and chief executive officer of Mechdyne Corp., a Marshalltown-based computer visualization company; and James Duderstadt, president emeritus and University Professor of Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan.

“We want to expand the reach of this course,” Rectanus said. “We want to open this course to the community and to greater dialogue.”

Contacts:

James Bernard, Virtual Reality Applications Center, (515) 294-0360, bernard@iastate.edu

Mark Rectanus, World Languages and Cultures, (515) 294-4324, mwr@iastate.edu

Mike Krapfl, News Service, (515) 294-4917, mkrapfl@iastate.edu