View Past Events here
The Peter Mortensen Endowed Lecture
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
September 19, 2017 at 7:30 in the Timken Gymnasium in the PEC
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer and a Basketball Hall of Fame inductee. Since retiring, he has been an activist and in-demand speaker, a basketball coach and the author of nine books for adults and three for children, many of them New York Times best sellers, including What Color Is My World?, which won the NAACP Image Award for Best Children’s Book. Abdul-Jabbar is also an essayist for such publications as TIME, the Washington Post and The Hollywood Reporter, writing on a wide range of subjects, including race, politics, aging and pop culture. In 2012, he was selected as a U.S. Cultural Ambassador. He lives in Southern California.
This event is made possible by the Peter Mortensen Endowed Lecture Fund, with additional support from the Arthur Bambridge Wyse Endowed Lectureship. The Peter Mortensen Endowed Lecture Fund was established in 2006 with a gift from Peter Mortensen, class of 1956, with gratitude for the contribution of The College of Wooster to the success and happiness of four generations of the Mortensen family. The fund supports public lectures and/or performances related to the First-Year Seminar.
This is a ticketed event, with limited seating. The free tickets will be available at the Wilson Bookstore on a first come first served basis. Guests with mobility issues may request tickets for accessible seating at the bookstore. There will be a sign language interpreter, if you need this service, please inform the bookstore when you pick up your tickets. Campus and community members will be able to pick up 2 tickets, any requests for group tickets must be sent to Karen Parthemore.
You can follow Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Facebook or on Twitter. See more at KareemAbdulJabbar.com
Confronting America’s Racial Paradox: The Civil Rights Movement in Popular Film and Political Imagination
Kirt H. Wilson
Tuesday, October 24, 2017, McGaw Chapel at 7:30 PM
Kirt H. Wilson is Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Political Communication in the Communication Arts & Sciences Department at the Pennsylvania State University. He has published widely in the areas of African American public discourse, civil rights rhetoric, collective memory, and US presidential communication. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, he is the author of The Reconstruction Desegregation Debate: The Politics of Equality and the Rhetoric of Place (2002), associate editor for The Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies (2009), and co-editor of Making the Case: Advocacy and Judgment in Public Argument (2012). Professor Wilson has won numerous awards for teaching and research, including Penn State’s Malvin and Lea Bank Outstanding Teaching Award, the National Communication Association’s New Investigator Award, the Karl R. Wallace Memorial Award, the Winans-Wichelns Memorial Award, and the Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award. Professor Wilson is currently writing a book manuscript that analyzes the public discourse that constitutes collective memory of the U.S. civil rights movement.
Learn more about Kirt Wilson
Lindner Lecture
Debra Satz 
Wednesday, October 25th, Lean Lecture Room at 7:30 PM
Our lecturer this year is the eminent political philosopher, Debra Satz. She is the Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society, Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at Stanford University. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of Stanford’s McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. Professor Satz is very widely respected for the rigor and clarity of her work, for its profound interdisciplinarity (involving the disciplines of philosophy, political science, biomedical ethics, and economics), and for the seriousness of moral purpose that it typically exhibits. She cares deeply about bringing disciplined philosophical thinking to bear on the injustices and inequities of our world, and her work always reflects this. She is the author (among many other works) of Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale, Oxford University Press, 2010. Her lecture is entitled “Distributing Schooling: The Place and Meaning of Equal Educational Opportunity”
The Lindner Endowment was established in 2007 by Carl H. Lindner of Cincinnati, Ohio, to benefit the Department of Philosophy. The purpose of the Lindner Lectureship is to support the teaching of ethics.
More about the Lindner Lecture.
Helen Murray Free Endowed Lecture
Bassam Z. Shakhashiri
Thursday, October 26, 2017, Gault Recital Hall
Technical Lecture at 11:30 AM; Public Lecture at 7:30 PM
Bassam Z. Shakhashiri is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea. He is the Director of the Wisconsin Initiative for Science Literacy and a past President of the American Chemical Society. Shakhashiri is a vocal advocate for science education whose SCIENCE IS FUN! presentations have been shown at schools, malls and many other public venues and have been viewed by tens of thousands.
More about the Helen Murray Free Endowed Lecture.
Medea
By Euripides
October 26, 27, & 28, 2017
November 1, 2, & 3, 2017
7:30 P.M., Shoolroy Theatre
Directed by Shirley Huston-Findley
Follow Euripides’ Medea as she negotiates the spectrum between logic and
emotion when betrayed by the man for whom she sacrificed it all. As a
foreigner in a foreign land, she is ultimately left with the only choice possible.
More about Theatre and Dance.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?” The College of Wooster honors the National MLK Day of Service theme with events centered on service, justice, and equity each year.
In 1983 a federal holiday marking the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was created and in 1994 Congress designated the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday as a national day of service and charged the Corporation for National and Community Service with leading this effort.
Taking place each year on the third Monday in January, the MLK Day of Service is the only federal holiday observed as a national day of service – a “day on, not a day off.” The MLK Day of Service is a part of United We Serve, the President’s national call to service initiative.
The College of Wooster will be celebrating MLK day on January 15, 2018. For more information please visit The College of Wooster’s MLK Jr. Day webpage.
Osgood Lecture
Maureen Raymo 
Spring 2018
The Richard G. Osgood, Jr., Memorial Lectureship in Geology was endowed in 1981 by his three sons in memory of their father. Dr. Osgood was a paleontologist with an international reputation who taught at Wooster from 1967 until 1981. Funds from this endowment are used to bring a well–known scientist interested in paleontology and/or stratigraphy to the campus each year to lecture and meet with students.
More about the Osgood Lecture.
Senior Independent Study Symposium
Check out this video from the Independent Study Symposium from 2017:
Each year, the College of Wooster cancels classes on a Friday in April to celebrate the accomplishments of the senior class. The college itself becomes a classroom as hundreds of senior share the projects they have developed during the academic year. Students, faculty, staff, parents, and community members are encouraged to visit campus that day and listen to presentations, view art exhibits, ask questions about research posters, and explore the work of the senior class.
This school year The College of Wooster will be holding the Senior IS symposium on April 27, 2018. For more information about the symposium please visit The College of Wooster’s IS symposium webpage.