CADEN HAYNOR / NEWS EDITOR

USD sophomore Gabriel Ambrose  and  USD senior   Grant   Sobek, in conjunction with the Changemaker HUB and the Humanities Center, are organizers holding a TED-style event on Thursday,   April  30  in  the Dillabough Ministry Center. This event, named “Building Bridges,” will feature student and faculty perspectives on “Borders, Boundaries, Bridges” through speeches that connect various disciplines.

TEDx events are local and community-driven, organized independently, but follow TED’s guidelines. They cover a wide range of subjects and feature multiple speakers.

Ambrose described how this preliminary event looks ahead to possible future TEDx talks.

“TEDx wants a  program  to be  put together  to  see if a  school  like  this can put on an event, especially with the way we are doing it,” Ambrose said. “Other TEDx organizations usually bring speakers from off campus or out of their organization. What we’re trying to do is elevate the unique voices that we already have on our campus and be able to put USD on the map. They want to see us be able to put this into an actual event and after we show that we can do it, we get the licensing.”

In order to receive the licensing, TEDx organizers must be from the city holding the event and manage the entire event, from start to finish, while adhering strictly to the TED guidelines. Organizers must volunteer their time, without pay, select local speakers, make non-commercial talks and handle venue logistics.

USD is not the first university to try and get TEDx licensing. USC and CSULB are two universities with established TEDx programs. 

The USD community members that will do a  talk are USD physics and biophysics professor Shruti Singh, PhD, USD junior Eva Fouret, USD senior Rachel Schmidt and Associate University Minister Alec Hartman.

Singh will speak on the mixed disciplines under science and the humanities, using her knowledge in physics  and complex  systems  science to see how jazz music intertwines with society and resilience. Singh explained why she is researching qualitative resilience in people along with her quantitative physics study.

“If  you  look  at  a  society,  there  are things that  are  easily  quantifiable, like economics, for example,” Singh said. “We just measure money at different places and  make a   model  out   of    it.  But  then there’s interactions between people, like resistance of a society if  there’s oppression. Those are dynamics that are really hard to quantify… I really  like thinking about,  when  we’re   studying   societies and models of these places, how do we make sure that we do not lose this very valuable qualitative data?”

Fouret, a political science major with a minor in theology and religious studies, pursuing an Arabic certificate, was selected due to the intersectionality aspect of her coursework. Fouret explained how she wants her talk to resonate with the audience.

“I   want  people  to  walk  away with a  realization  that  our  society has been very anthropocentrist and that  in  order to  fight  climate  change, we  can use  science, but  we also need spirituality,” Fouret said. “And the spiritual part of ecology is that we’re all connected to the world around us… What I am most excited about is I’m going to talk about my first time skydiving and how I consider that to be a religious experience.”  

Schmidt’s talk is about how travel can change the way someone views the world. Schmidt described the most difficult part of preparing for her talk on an Instagram post run by TEDx USD.

“Narrowing down my topic,” Schmidt wrote. “I started too big, but with the help of Dr. Leeva Chung, I was able to curate a topic that I am passionate about and will hopefully resonate with others.”

Each presenter has a speaking advisor   that  is  there  to   assist them in logistical  areas of  their  talk,   such as narrowing down the topic, learning how to speak to a larger audience  or  simply  giving   an  outside perspective to their entire speech.

USD community members can attend this event in the Dillabough Ministry Center on April 30 from 12:15-1:30 p.m.

Fouret practiced her TEDx talk in the Dillabough Ministry Center. Photo courtesy of Gabriel Ambrose