Rev. France Davis
Reverend France Albert Davis serves as Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Salt Lake City. Davis earned his M.M. degree in ministry from Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho in 1994. During the 1960s, Davis participated in the Civil Rights Movement and marched from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama promoting voting rights for African Americans. At the onset of the Civil Rights Movement, he met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Davis is the author of several publications including Light in the Midst of Zion: A History of Black Baptists in Utah 1892-1996 and his autobiography, France Davis: An American Story Told.
11:30 AM - Gilbert Great Hall of the Hunter Conference Center
Susan Merson
is the founding Director of New York Theatre Intensives, a summer conservatory providing university students an immersive experience focused on the art of new play cration. Merson started her career in the Broadway cast of Franco Zeffirelli's Saturday Sunday Monday. She went on to co-found the Lion Theatre Company in New York City, helping to create the existing Theatre Company in New York City, helping to create the existing Theatre Row complex on 42nd Street. Among her featured televion and film roles are Grey's Anatomy, True Blood, and Terminator 3.
11:30 AM - Sterling Church Auditorium
Jeff Lieberman
Thirty-year-old Jeff Lieberman is a musician wrapped in a roboticist sculptor wrapped in a photographer. The host of Discovery Channel's Time Warp may already have four degrees (two bachelors of science and two masters) behind him, but that hasn't stopped him from pursuing yet another in the form of a doctorate at MIT's Media Lab. And when he isn't studying, teaching or filming, Jeff is making music, inventing robotics-related stuff and creating "technological sculpture."
But it has been a lifelong struggle to get the perfect mix of art and science in his life.
Presented in coordination with University College & SUU Creativity and Innovation.
Jeff Lieberman Bio on Discovery Channel
11:30 AM – Gilbert Great Hall, Hunter Conference Center
Dustin Heuston
Inspired by a desire to help as many children as possible overcome the challenges of learning, Dustin founded the Waterford Institute in 1976. In 1981 he established Waterford School. In 2011 Dustin authored The Third Source: A Message of Hope for Education, which discusses the potential for technology to empower parents and teachers, and to deliver an individualized curriculum to children around the world.
Presented in coordination with the SUU Michael O. Leavitt Center for Politics
Dr. Heuston Bio on Waterford Institute
11:30 AM - Gilbert Great Hall, Hunter Conference Center
Richard Oppel, Jr.
Richard Oppel, Jr. is currently reporting for The Times on the 2012 contest for the Republican
presidential nomination. He joined The Times's bureau in Washington in 2002, and did his first
Iraq rotation the following year. Through 2011, Mr. Oppel has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan,
Pakistan and, Israel-Lebanon. Oppel also writes on domestic terrorism.
In Partnership with SUU News, The Society of Professional Journalists, SUUSA, Office of the Provost, and the Michael O. Leavitt Center for Politics and Public Service.
11:30 AM – Gilbert Great Hall, Hunter Conference Center
Mellor Willie
Mellor Willie is currently serving as the Executive Director of the National American Indian Housing Council, a non-profit organization that advances housing policy for those of American Native decent in Washington, D.C. and abroad. Before that, Willie helped develop and raise funds for the National Congress of American Indians and served and continues to serve on the advisory board for the Washington Internships for Native Students at American University for George Washington University. In addition to attending George Washington University, Willie is also a Southern Utah University alumni.
Presented in coordination with Native American Week
11:30 AM - Sterling Church Auditorium
Jared Diamond
His Collapse lecture discusses the ruined cities, temples, and
statues of history's great, vanished societies (Easter Island,
Anasazi, the Lowland Maya, Angkor Wat, Great Zimbabwe and many more).
They are the birthplace of endless romantic mysteries, but these
disappearances offer more than idle conjecture: the social collapses
were due in part to the types of environmental problems that beset us
today.
Presented in coordination with the Grace A. Tanner Center
11:30 AM - Gilbert Great Hall, Hunter Conference Center
Ambassador John Price
John Price focuses on his years as an ambassador and includes his thoughts on the future of sub-Saharan Africa.
Presented in coordination with the Michael O. Leavitt Center for Politics
Ambassador John Price Autobiography
11:30 AM - Gilbert Great Hall, Hunter Conference Center
Claudia Bushman
Nationally known American author and women’s historian, Claudia Bushman, will deliver the fourth annual Howard R. Driggs Memorial Lecture. A native of California, Dr. Bushman will come to SUU from her home in New York City where she co-teaches with her husband Dr. Richard L. Bushman at Columbia University. The Driggs Memorial Lecture honors the life’s work of Dr. Howard R. Driggs, English professor at in 1897-1905 at the BNS (now SUU). Driggs was also a westerner who lived and taught in New York City, but championed the lives of common people who pioneered the West.
Dr. Bushman is the author of twelve books on social and cultural history and was professor of American Studies in recent years. Her books include America Discovers Columbus: How an Italian Explorer Became an American Hero, In Old Virginia: Slavery, Farming, and Society in the Journal of John Walker, Mormon Sisters: Women in Early Utah, and Building the Kingdom: A History of Mormons in America (with Richard Bushman), and others. She is one of the founders of Exponent II, a Boston-based magazine focusing on Mormonism and women’s issues. Since “retiring” in 2007, the Bushman’s have taught courses on contemporary Mormonism at Claremont College and Columbia University.
Presented in coordination with the Howard R. Driggs Memorial Lecture
Claudia Lauper Bushman on Wikipedia
7:00 PM - Gilbert Great Hall, Hunter Conference Center
James H. Quigley
Description of presentation
In collaboration with: Wells Fargo Business Executive Speaker Series & SUU Convocations
James H. Quigley bio on Deloitte
11:30 AM - Gilbert Great Hall, Hunter Conference Center
