After last year’s inaugural TEDxUM, the team that put together the event didn’t waste time in making next year’s even better. A team of more than 40 people helped organize the event this year, according to Georgia Norfleet, who has led efforts to hold TEDx at the university since planning the 2016 one.
“Choice, Chance, Change” is the theme for 2017 TEDxUM, reflecting the many steps and decisions one might make in college to achieve his or her goals.
“Our theme speaks to our campus community in so many ways,” Norfleet said. “As a university, we influence change across the state, and as students we make decisions during our four years here that shape the rest of our lives.”
TEDxUM, in fact, is meant to promote great ideas and disseminate them to the benefit of the university community. Norfleet said the eight speakers chosen to speak at the event have raised the bar.
“Each of them are of such high caliber and are bringing incredibly engaging ideas to the stage,” she said.
Dr. Joe Campbell
Dr. Joe Campbell
Ole Miss is hosting a series of TEDx speakers including Dr. Joe Campbell, the chief of anesthesia at Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg. Campbell said that he decided to go into the medical field after breaking his leg in junior high. He went on to attend UMMC for medical school in the ‘80s and went to the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston for anesthesia.
Campbell has been working in the medical field for roughly 41 years after starting work at a hospital when he was 18 years old. He’s now been a doctor for 33 years and has been in his practice for almost 30 years.
Campbell’s talk will discuss the new uses of the old anesthetic drug known as Ketamine. Campbell has found a link between the use of Ketamine and its effect on patients suffering from depression. Campbell believes that Ketamine reduces suicidal tendencies in patients who have depression.
“We are on the cusp of a new type of treatment for one of the leading causes of death,” Campbell said.
He started doing research on this medical phenomenon when he came across an article in Bloomburg which he will discuss more during his upcoming talk. “This will be a revolutionary way to not only treat depression, but suicidal ideation,” Campbell said.
-Lexi Purvis
Josh Mabus
Josh Mabus
Although many TED Talk speakers are heralded for their success and persistence in their respective fields, TEDxUM speaker Josh Mabus admits that he has not fit this bill for most of his life.
“I am speaking from the platform of being an expert quitter,” Mabus said. “In working with everything from our region’s best and brightest startups, some of our worst, some of our region’s best long-term legacy businesses. I’ve seen so much… failure and quitting.”
And although things may have not worked out so much in the past for Mabus, his latest business in Tupelo has seen an unprecedented level of success.
It was 2008 when Mabus identified what he calls a “creative vacuum” in the Southern region of the United States. It was this realization that pushed him to create the Mabus Agency, an advertising agency unlike anything Mississippi has seen before.
“There were plenty of people who needed advertising and creative services and were not being served well just because [reputable agencies were located too far away],” Mabus said. “Because of that, the level of creative work was abysmal in the area… We are in business to raise the creative bar and to help people.”
The agency has since worked with some of the South’s biggest and most up-and-coming brands and has expanded to form a second office in Jackson.
As an Ole Miss alum, as well as a volunteer for the Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which is a part of the school of business, Mabus was a natural candidate to speak at this year’s TEDx event. He received multiple nominations from various faculty members at the business school and was eventually selected as one of the final speakers for tomorrow’s event.
“We are going to be unpacking the difference of quitting and failing and why that is important,” Mabus said. “There is a sense that people have convinced themselves that those two are interchangeable when they are absolutely not.”
-Austin Hille
Dr. Katherine Dooley
Katherine Dooley
If you attend TEDxUM this Saturday (and you definitely should), you will hear from Katherine Dooley, an associate professor of physics and astronomy here at Ole Miss. If those two subjects hold no sway in your mind, her topic will impact you regardless of your major.
“Even though science is often portrayed as having its heroes like Einstein,” Dooley said, she’ll talk about how scientific breakthroughs more often “depend on the collaborative work of people from all over the world with all sort of expertise.”
Dooley and her associates have just this past year benefited from a partnership with Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory Labs. Because of the collaboration between the Ole Miss physics department and LIGO, among others, their discovery “signifies the opening of a new type of astronomy” that allows scientists to now “listen to the universe.”
Physics might not be the first thing that pops in your head when you think of the University of Mississippi, but this discovery could possibly impact history more than any football game ever could. While gravitational wave research might not apply in your day-to-day life, Dooley cites the far-reaching impact the cutting edge technology used for the research might have.
Funding through universities can “often tackle more fundamental aspects” of research than research in the private sector. “Through questioning the very basis of which our knowledge is built…we can make breakthroughs in science.”
Dooley and her colleagues did indeed make that breakthrough, and viewers can learn all about it at this Saturday’s TEDx presentation.
– Hannah Willis
Dr. Anne Quinney
Anne Quinney. Courtesy Anne Quinney
French author Albert Camus— and his work published in English— was the central starting point of Ole Miss French professor Anne Quinney’s TEDx talk. She’s researched how the philosopher and author’s work, through editing, translation and cutting, was censored by editors and translators in the 1950s and 60s. Some of his work was cut by up to 40 percent, Quinney said.
“When I was reading the reviews of his works that first came out, his critics were complaining about how unsubtle his arguments were. The arguments didn’t make sense, but they do in the original. If you’re cutting out half of it, there’s no way for it to sound smooth or logical or coherent, and so that’s not his fault, but it’s in the editorial process that that happened, and then he wasn’t allowed to see it when it came out. And a lot of very famous works of literature were kind of butchered in this way,” Quinney said.
She pointed out that the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales also fell victim to cycles of censorship through mistranslations and cuts. “Those two things together… you can wind up with something that looks nothing like the author wrote,” she said.
While the editing process is still rigorous today, Quinney said, authors are often more involved. Now, she says people should look out for books getting censored and banned by citizens, libraries and municipalities.
“Ultimately, it’s about how our access to information, our access to books, has always been limited in one way or another,” Quinney said.
-Zoe McDonald
Dr. Susan Grayzel
Susan Grayzel
What is the relation between a phrase that became popular in the 2000s and World War I? A lot, according to Susan Grayzel, who will be presenting a TEDx talk on the slogan and poster “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
The slogan was designed during the air raids in WWI and was never publicly displayed during the second World War, according to Grayzel, who is a professor of history at the university.
“I have a longstanding interest in the costs that war inflicts on non-combatants, especially women. I was finishing research for my book ‘At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz‘ and was struck (like many others) by the appearance of this sign and its many variations.
“What seemed missing from public conversations was an exploration of what caused states to need to tell their entire populations (men, women and children) to ‘Keep Calm and Carry On,’” Grayzel said.
Saturday, Grayzel will explore the relation between air raids and the innocent civilians who were involved in them.
-Zoe McDonald
Shannon Cohn
Shannon Cohn
Shannon Cohn, esteemed filmmaker and activist, will be speaking on endometriosis, a debilitating disease that affects millions of women worldwide.
The rural Mississippi native earned a law degree from Vanderbilt University and practiced international law before discovering her true passion of filmmaking. She attended the graduate film program at Tisch School of Arts in New York City and was inspired to create a documentary called “Endo What?” to change the “devastating narrative” of endometriosis. An estimated 176 million people are affected worldwide by the condition, but most people have never heard of it.
She described the documentary as “the first step in creating widespread awareness and education about endometriosis.”
It takes an average of 10 years and eight doctors to diagnose the disease, and within that time frame, sufferers are forced to leave careers and abandon dreams and relationships. Often, they are told that the pain is normal or they are imagining it.
Cohn created “Endo What?” to inform audiences of the disease and provide accurate knowledge about steps people can take to make the best choices about their health.
“It’s more than a film— it’s a tool to take control of your health,” Cohn said. “I have endometriosis, and my two daughters have an increased risk of developing symptoms. I’m trying to work toward a future where they and millions like them don’t have to needlessly suffer.”
During her TED Talk, she will ask and attempt to answer the questions, “What does the widespread prevalence of this misunderstood, devastating disease say about the world we live in and what do we all risk by ignoring the voices of so many women?” She plans to explore the troubling phenomenon and why women’s pain has been often historically dismissed.
“To date, it’s screened on six continents and started a global conversation,” she said. “We’re currently in production on a second film to be released later this year, which approached endometriosis as a social justice and human rights issue. That’s the next step.”
Cohn is excited about the opportunity to educate a wider audience.
“I consider it worthwhile if even one person recognizes the symptoms and seeks appropriate care,” she said.
-Devna Bose
Patrick Woodyard
Patrick Woodyard
According to Patrick Woodyard, CEO and co-founder of Nashville-based fashion and lifestyle brand Nisolo, the possibilities after graduating with a Croft degree from Ole Miss are endless.
A graduate of the University of Mississippi, Woodyard was a member of the Croft Institute of International Studies and the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College while he attended Ole Miss, and he studied global economics and business, Latin American studies and Spanish. Woodyard was inducted into the Student Hall of Fame and served as the Associated Student Body director of community service as well as the philanthropy chair and vice-president of Sigma Chi Fraternity. Woodyard was the founder and president of Hope for Africa and a founding member of Respect Mississippi.
He was struck with the idea for Nisolo after working in microfinance in Trujillo, Peru, where he met a group of shoemakers who possessed “remarkable talent yet lacked access to consistent work, capital and established markets.” Woodyard created Nisolo with the vision of “delivering a superior product to consumers, while at the same time maintaining the well-being of producers at the forefront of brand’s philosophy.”
Nisolo has become a respected brand on the forefront of the ethical fashion movement. Leather shoes and accessories for men and women by Nisolo have sold out in all 50 states in the United States of America and more than 60 countries, and the livelihoods of more than 300 men and women are supported by the company.
Woodyard has been recognized as an “Innovator Changing the South” by Southern Living Magazine and named a Global Accelerator Entrepreneur by the United Nations for his work with Nisolo.
-Devna Bose
Rory Ledbetter
Rory Ledbetter
Rory Ledbetter, an associate professor and head of recruiting for the department of theatre arts here at Ole Miss, will also be giving a TEDx talk Saturday.
Ledbetter has studied acting and voice all around the country, including comedy group The Groundlings in Los Angeles. Ledbetter also tours around the United States and Canada performing his one man show, “A Mind Full of Dopamine.” Ledbetter is also an associate teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework, where he studied voice acting. Ledbetter focuses on teaching voice acting, which plays into the topic of his upcoming talk.
Ledbetter is not only a teacher but also a self-development coach. He studies the effect the desire of speaking has on one’s mental and physical health. He emphasizes the importance of silence and deep breathing and will present different breathing techniques for those who need to find a quick way to calm their minds. Ledbetter will also discuss how negative talk can negatively effect your brain and the way you think.
-Lexi Purvis
