Conference and Event Services

Upcoming Events

William McKibben – Author
Thursday, February 16, 2012
7:30 p.m.
Shafer Auditorium

Bill McKibben is an American environmentalist and writer who frequently writes about global warming and alternative energy and advocates for more localized economies. In 2010 the Boston Globe called him “probably the nation’s leading environmentalist” and Time magazine described him as “the world’s best green journalist. In 2009 he led the organization of 350.org , which coordinated what Foreign Policy magazine called “the largest ever global coordinated rally of any kind,” with 5,200 simultaneous demonstrations in 181 countries. The magazine named him to its inaugural list of the 100 most important global thinkers, and MSN named him one of the dozen most influential men of 2009.
Bill grew up in suburban Lexington, Massachusetts. He was president of the Harvard Crimson newspaper in college. Immediately after college he joined the New Yorker magazine as a staff writer, and wrote much of the “Talk of the Town” column from 1982 to early 1987. He quit the magazine when its longtime editor William Shawn was forced out of his job, and soon moved to the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York.

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FOP (Fraternal Order of Police) Country Music Show
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Shows at 1:00 and 6:00 p.m.
Shafer Auditorium

ALL TICKET SOLD THROUGH THE FOP. Call 814-337-5650 for tickets and more information.

Starring: John Michael Montgomery
Opening: NOMAD (North of Mason Dixon)

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Misery Bay Big Band – Local Community Jazz Jam and Master Class
Saturday, March 31, 2012
7:30 p.m.
Shafer Auditorium

The Misery Bay Big Band represents the best in big band entertainment. With 16 – 20 of the area’s finest musicians, the band boasts a huge repertoire from big band to standards, jazz to latin, dance to concert, or just pleasant easy listening. They can swing and scream, or they can melt their audience with controlled finesse.
Saxes: Dr. Allen Zurcher Dr. Scott Meier Doug Dinberg John Cross John Marszalek
Trombones: Doug Dressler Kent Tucker Chris Dempsey Dr. Ron Stitt Mark Dressler
Trumpets: Jeff Gibbens Keith Lenz Ron May Brian Hannah Joe Miller
Rhythm: Brad Amidon – Drums John Huegel – Bass Marilyn Marszalek – Piano

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Tom Borrup – Consultant and Community Activist
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
7:30 p.m.
Schultz Banquet Hall

Tom Borrup is a consultant to arts organizations and to foundations and cities around the U.S. He has been a community activist and nonprofit arts administrator for over 25 years, including thirteen years with Minneapolis-based Intermedia Arts. Tom has written extensively on culture and community. His newest book is The Creative Community Builder’s Handbook.

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Laurie McCants – Actor/playwright
April 26, 2012
7:30 p.m.
Gladys Black Theatre, Vukovich Communication Arts Building

In a shadowed attic, crammed with curio cabinets, work tables, chests and drawers (containers for mementos and unmentionables), a daughter searches for what it is that ties together her mother, herself, and an elusive poet. A story about the crafting of stories, INDUSTRIOUS ANGELS was conceived by actor/creator Laurie McCants on a visit to Emily Dickinson’s home, where the poet wrote, in secret, the almost 1800 poems that were found after her death. The story unfolds through puppetry, paper-cutting, music, movement, light and dark, and the weaving together of words. It is a dance of the hands honoring women’s handiwork: mending, preserving, ordering, adorning, writing, hiding.

Developed at the Ko Festival of Performance in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, INDUSTRIOUS ANGELSis hand-made by Laurie McCants, in collaboration with director/lighting designerSabrina Hamilton, scenic designer F. Elaine Williams, and composer Guy Klucevsek, who has created a haunting score with piano, violin, accordion, and toy piano.

An elite group of musicians, from as far afield as Vienna, have gathered to recordKlucevsek’s score for INDUSTRIOUS ANGELS. They include Todd Reynolds on violin, pianist and toy piano prodigy Isabel Ettenauer, and the composer on accordion.

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PAST EVENTS:

One World Tribe
Saturday, September 24, 2011 – Family Weekend
8:00 p.m.
Shafer Auditorium
Pre-Ordered Tickets – $7.50 for adults, $5.00 for students and children under 18
Tickets at the door – $10.00 for adults, $5.00 for students and children under 18

One World Tribe began performing in 1994, started by bandleader Kennedy Thompson with diversity, justice and great music in mind. Covering music by Bob Marley, Santana, Ruben Blades, The Meters, Stevie Wonder and Johnny Klegg, the group quickly developed a fan base in Erie, Buffalo, Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas of Northwestern Pennsylvania and Upstate New York.
Original music gradually replaced much of the cover material, as the Tribe’s fan base continued to expand. Rochester and Syracuse became regular stops, with frequent trips to Harrisburg and State College. Songs like NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE, MONEY DON’T MAKE IT RIGHT, and Award-winning UNITY AND DIVERSITY, the title-track of their first album, made the band’s message clear, and entertained at the same time.
After some years of pounding the beat in clubs, festivals, colleges, schools, street fairs and community celebrations, One World Tribe released their second CD, The World Today, rhythmic club-tested grooves with a World Music focus. This “collection of seven stunning original tunes” brought more of the Tribe’s sound and message to a continually expanding audience.
In 2004, One World Tribe became a member of the Pennsylvania Performing Artists on Tour [PennPAT] roster, increasing the touring reach of the shows. Tours have included Lancaster, Harrisburg and Philadelphia, PA, and New Jersey, West Virginia, Baltimore, MD and Atlanta, GA.
More recently, the group has been included in the Pennsylvania Arts Council grant listing, supporting residencies in schools. This brings world-class musicianship to young people, and allows One World Tribe to teach them authentic World Music styles, and to demonstrate the acceptance for each other’s differences that the group exemplifies.
One World Tribe is hard at work, the result of these and many other projects. In addition to the expansion of the World Music frontier, the Tribe continues developing its Hiphop show representing the third CD, Armed and Dangerous with this focus.

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Colin Beavan – Author: No Impact Man
Monday, October 3, 2011
8:00 p.m.
Shafer Auditorium

Colin Beavan’s writing, speaking, and activism has encouraged tens of thousands of people to examine their lives to discover what’s really important to them. The resulting lifestyle changes that people make allow them to live more lightly on the planet, while leading more fulfilling lives. It is Colin’s mission to engage citizens, on an individual and collective level, in choosing ways of life that are healthier and happier for individuals, for our society, and for our planet.
In 2006, author Colin Beavan, a newly self-proclaimed environmentalist, could no longer avoid pointing the finger at himself. He left behind his liberal complacency for a vow to make as little environmental impact as possible for one year. No more automated transportation, no more electricity, no more non-local food, no more material consumption…no problem. That is, until his espresso-guzzling, retail-worshiping wife Michelle and their two year-old daughter are dragged into the fray! What would it be like to try to live a no-impact lifestyle? Could it catch on? Is living this way more satisfying or less satisfying? These are the questions at the heart of his endeavor, through which Colin hopes to explain to the rest of us how we can realistically live a more “eco-effective” and, by turns, more content life.
Colin’s experiment became the subject of his provocative, award-wining blog noimpactman.com (one of Time Magazine’s Top 15 environmental blogs), his book No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life Along the Way (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), and a Sundance-selected documentary by the same name. His story provided a narrative vehicle by which he could attract broad public attention to the range of pressing environmental crises including: food system sustainability, climate change, water scarcity, and materials and energy resource depletion.
Following the release of the book and the film, Colin founded the No Impact Project, an international environmental non-profit dedicated to empowering citizens to make choices which better their lives and lower their environmental impact through lifestyle change, community action, and participation in environmental politics.

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Mollie Katzen – Author
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
7:30 p.m.
Schultz Banquet Hall

Mollie Katzen, with over 6 million books in print, is listed by the New York Times as one of the best-selling cookbook authors of all time. A 2007 inductee into the prestigious James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame, and largely credited with moving healthful vegetarian food from the “fringe” to the center of the American dinner plate, Ms. Katzen has been named by Health Magazine as one of “The Five Women Who Changed the Way We Eat.”

In addition she is a charter member of the Harvard School of Public Health Nutrition Roundtable and an inaugural honoree of the Natural Health Hall of Fame. An award-winning illustrator and designer as well as best-selling cookbook author and popular public speaker, Mollie Katzen is best known as the creator of the groundbreaking classics Moosewood Cookbook, and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Her other books include the award-winning children’s cookbook trilogy, Pretend Soup,Honest Pretzels, and Salad People; Vegetable Heaven (winner of the International Cookbook Reveu Best in Category award); Sunlight Café; Eat, Drink, & Weigh Less (with Walter Willett, MD of Harvard), and the best-selling The Vegetable Dishes I Can’t Live Without.

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Louise Silk – Quilter
Residency – November 3 – 5, 2011
Quilting workshop – Saturday, November 5, 2011 (Registration necessary)
Campus Center 301/302

Louise began her quest to acquire skills as a quilter after being inspired by an article in Ms. Magazine in 1971 about quilt making as a woman’s art form. Over the past thirty years, her work has been included in Quilt National Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Quilts as well as many private corporate collections such as Usairways, Paine Webber, and PNC Bank. In addition to commissions and exhibitions, she lectures and teaches. While working on a masters degree in Leadership and Liberal Arts, she discovered self-leadership, a form of leading where the leader encourages followers to become their own leaders and lead themselves. She is a certified Integrated Kabbalistic Healer. Louise is currently living and working from her loft in the South Side of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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