MOUNT VERNON — A record 95 students are scheduled to present research findings at the ninth annual Cornell College Student Symposium on Saturday, April 9, from 9 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. in The Commons. Admission is free to the event, which is open to the public.

The symposium, which originated as a way to spark intellectual conversation and growth on campus, is one of the premier events at Cornell. This year there will be 75 presentations, either as lectures of about 20 minutes apiece summarizing projects and their findings, or as poster presentations offering visual displays of projects along with explanatory comments.

The lectures will take place at three sessions (9 a.m., 10:45 a.m., 1:15 p.m.) in Hedges Conference Room, Harlan Dining Room, Shaw Lounge and the Rathskeller; poster presentations will occur at two sessions (9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 2:45 p.m.) on the Orange Carpet.

Topics include the history and efficacy of the No Child Left Behind legislation; the communist-inspired work ethic of Soviet workers in the 1930s; a biological study that proposes a common species of flies in Iowa may actually be several distinct species, lumped together under one name; and a study that seeks to understand why Caravaggio’s depiction of St. John the Baptist is so different from images of St. John created by other artists.

Several students will present observations from off-campus experiences, including a mission trip to El Salvador to observe U.S. doctors performing knee and hip replacements; research on coral reefs along the coast of western Australia; and a study of the Jordan International Police Training Center in Amman, where prospective members of the Iraqi police force are trained in tactical policing skills and concepts of human rights, democracy and social equality.

After the symposium, Cornell’s Delta of Iowa chapter of Phi Beta Kappa will hold its annual induction ceremony at 3 p.m. in Harlan Dining Room, followed by a reception. Twelve students have been selected for membership based on academic potential, scholarship, creativity, professional attitude and character. Phi Beta Kappa considers members from the top 15 percent of the senior class and the top 5 percent of the junior class.

Phi Beta Kappa is the oldest and most widely respected academic honorary society in the United States. There are 270 Phi Beta Kappa chapters in the United States, including seven in Iowa. Cornell’s Delta of Iowa chapter was the fourth chartered in Iowa, in 1923.

MOUNT VERNON — Bill Morgan, a Holocaust survivor who fled Poland, immigrated to the United States and spent a year in Cedar Rapids under the sponsorship of Jewish community leaders, will speak at Cornell on Wednesday, April 13, at 11 a.m. in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons.

Morgan, a Texas businessman who helped establish the Holocaust Museum Houston, will speak on “Living Longer Than Hate: The Personal Reflections of a Holocaust Survivor.” Admission is free.

He is also scheduled to lecture in Cedar Rapids on Tuesday, April 12, at 11 a.m. at Kirkwood Community College, 234 Cedar Hall, and at 1:30 p.m. at Jefferson High School; Wednesday, April 13, at 7:30 p.m. at Mount Mercy College, Cherry Heritage Hall; and Thursday, April 14, at 10 a.m. at Washington High School and at 1:15 p.m. at Coe College, Hickok Hall’s Kesler Room. Morgan will deliver the Yom Hashoah service Thursday night at Community of Christ Church in Hiawatha.

Morgan was one of seven children in a poor Jewish family in the Ukraine, part of Poland at the onset of World War II. All of the Jews in his village were sent to the Stanislawow ghetto. As a teen, he was forced to dig graves for Jews awaiting execution. One day he fled, leaving his family behind, and posed as a Christian under assumed names to find jobs. At war’s end, he left Poland, lived for four years in Germany and immigrated to the United States in 1949. He was brought to Cedar Rapids under the sponsorship of downtown shoe store owner Sam Cohen and other Jewish community leaders. He stayed a year, selling shoes and teaching himself English.

In 1950 he landed in Houston, and a decade later he founded a construction company. The Morgan Group Inc. became a multistate, multimillion-dollar housing construction company.

Morgan is intensely dedicated to keeping the remembrance message alive. He self-published a book in 1997, “Living Longer Than Hate,” and played a fundamental role in establishing the Holocaust Museum Houston. He raised funds for the museum and his company helped build the structure.

Morgan’s visit to eastern Iowa is sponsored by the Thaler Holocaust Memorial Fund, Cedar Rapids’ Jewish-Christian Dialogue Group and Cornell’s Chaplain’s Office, German Club and Cornell Hillel.

MOUNT VERNON — Mark Grey, a University of Northern Iowa anthropology professor who helps communities and businesses accommodate immigrants and refugees, will speak Wednesday, March 9, at Cornell College.

His lecture, “Welcoming Iowa’s Future and the Iowa Center for Immigrant Leadership and Integration,” is at 7 p.m. in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons. Admission is free.

Grey helped develop the Iowa Center for Immigrant Leadership and Integration at UNI. The center sponsors research, provides consultation to communities, conducts training programs and educates Iowans about challenges and opportunities of the state’s newest immigrants.

Grey also wrote a handbook, “Welcoming New Iowans — A Guide for Citizens and Communities.” The book discusses three issues most commonly associated with immigration – language, health and education – and advises community leaders on preparing for the change immigration brings. Success stories from Iowa communities are included in the book.

Grey’s lecture is part of Cornell’s ongoing series “Social Change in the New Century,” organized by the department of sociology and anthropology. Co-sponsors are the ethnic studies program, the Latin American studies program, the Office of Intercultural Life and the Lecutre, Artists and Cultural Events (LACE) consortium.

MOUNT VERNON — Judith Hallett, professor of classics and women’s studies at the University of Maryland, will speak at Cornell College on “Roman Women: Images and Realities” at 11:10 a.m. Monday, March 21, in Shaw Lounge of The Commons.

Hallett, author of “Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family,” will examine Roman women’s political involvements, familial and sexual roles, and literary education and engagements, plus look briefly at Roman women’s influence on later Western society.

Her presentation will address three well-known images of the ancient Roman women who lived during the classical period, focusing on the women of Rome’s political elite. The first image is furnished by the phrase “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion,” which is attested in two ancient biographies, by the Roman Suetonius and the Greek Plutarch, of Julius Caesar. The second image is from Shakespeare’s “ Antony and Cleopatra,” the characterization of Antony as “the triple pillar of the world transform’d into a strumpet’s fool.” The third image comes from Vergil’s epic poem on Rome’s mythic origins, the “Aeneid,” which claims “woman is always a different and changing thing.”

Hallett’s talk is one of many events during the second half of the academic year to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the women’s studies program at Cornell.

MOUNT VERNON — “Big Love,” a modern comic version of an ancient Greek tragedy where 50 sisters are forced to marry 50 brothers – who happen to be their cousins – opens Wednesday, March 16, at Cornell College featuring Cornell students and professional actors from Riverside Theatre in Iowa City.

Performances in Cornell’s Kimmel Theatre run daily through March 19 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $8 for adults and $5 for youth, students and senior citizens. Admission is free for Cornell students, faculty, staff, emeriti faculty and retired staff. For reservations, call 895-4293.

The play moves to Riverside Theatre, 213 N. Gilbert St., March 24-26, March 31, April 1-3 and April 6-10. Performances are at 7 p.m. Wednesday and Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. For ticket prices and reservations, call (319) 338-7672.

The play by Charles Mee is a whimsical update of “The Suppliant Women” by Aeschylus. Fifty sisters forced to marry 50 brothers make a pact to kill their grooms. The women flee Greece and seek asylum in Italy, but the men follow them to compel the marriage.

Mee is a well-known contemporary playwright who assembles his plays from various sources much like a theatrical collage. This production of “Big Love” features broad comedy, dance numbers, poetry, pop music and suspense as it examines the relationships between men and women. It explores whether one gender should be allowed to dominate another and implications of seeking and offering refuge.

“Big Love” contains brief nudity.

The co-production is the fifth Cornell-Riverside collaboration since 1996. Riverside Theatre’s artistic directors, Ron Clark and Jody Hovland, are artists-in-residence at Cornell and will appear in the play. “Big Love” director Mark Hunter, chair of Cornell’s theatre and communications studies department, has worked with Riverside for several years, including directing a production at the Riverside The atre Shakespeare Festival each summer since its inception. Assistant professor Scott Olinger, scenic and lighting designer, has showcased his work at previous Riverside productions .

“Cornell can offer a play with a wider variety of believable ages and characters, and Riverside Theatre can offer a work with a larger cast and more design support than might be typical,” Hovland says. “Students have the new perspective of what it takes to discipline yourself for a long run and the experience of playing for two very different audiences and theatrical spaces.”

“Big Love” features costume design by Jenny Nutting-Kelchen and choreography by Matthew Lindstrom, both visiting instructors at Cornell.

MOUNT VERNON — Trudier Harris, a scholar on African-American literature and folklore whose books include her recently published memoir, “Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South,” will give the keynote address at the second annual Feminist Symposium on Saturday, March 12, at Cornell College.

Harris will speak on “ ‘Cultured Hell,’ Hellish Culture: Black Women Writers and the South” at 3:15 p.m. on the Orange Carpet in The Commons. The symposium is a project of the Women’s Action Group, a student organization at Cornell.

Harris is J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Her books include “From Mammies to Militants: Domestics in Black American Literature,” “Exorcising Blackness: Historical and Literary Lynching and Burning Rituals,” “Black Women in the Fiction of James Baldwin,” “Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison,” “The Power of the Porch: The Storyteller’s Craft in Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor, and Randall Kenan,” “Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature” and “South of Tradition: Essays on African American Literature.”

This year Harris won the UNC Board of Governors’ Award for Excellence in Teaching. She is working on a book on African-American writers and the South.

The Feminist Symposium will feature art, music, research, presentations, poetry and other material that is related to women and women’s issues in academia. Presentations and displays will take place in Hedges Conference Room and Shaw Lounge from 10 a.m. to noon and 1 to 3 p.m. The symposium is open to the public and admission is free.

In addition to Women’s Action Group, symposium sponsors are the Office of Intercultural Life, Black Awareness Cultural Organization, Lecture, Artists and Cultural Events (LACE) consortium, the English department, ethnic studies program, Cultural Understanding and Exploration and the women’s studies program.

MOUNT VERNON — Grinnell College history professor Victoria Brown will speak at Cornell College on Thursday, March 17, on “The Education of Jane Addams,” the title of her 2004 book on the founder of Chicago’s Hull-House social settlement in 1889.

Brown’s lecture is at 11:10 a.m. in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons. Admission is free.

Brown’s areas of expertise include America after 1865, women’s history and immigration. Also the author of “Going to the Source: The Bedford Reader in American History,” published last year, Brown has appeared on the PBS series “American Experience” in documentaries on Woodrow Wilson and on the history of Chicago.

“The Education of Jane Addams” details a privileged prairie childhood, years as the competent spinster daughter in a demanding fatherless family and her early seasoning on the Chicago reform scene. Like other social settlements in the late 1800s, Hull-House attracted educated men and women to live in poor urban areas. The residents became a powerful lobbying tool for protective measures for women and children, and Addams’ settlement work, writing and peace efforts made her the country’s most prominent woman. She founded the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

Brown’s talk is one of many events during the second half of the academic year to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the women’s studies program at Cornell.

MOUNT VERNON — Area farmers are featured in a film, “Voices of Iowa Farm Women,” that will be screened in Iowa City and Mount Vernon and followed by panel discussions with the filmmaker and women farmers.

The Iowa City screening is Wednesday, March 9, at 7 p.m. in 106 Gilmore Hall on the University of Iowa campus. The Mount Vernon screening is Thursday, March 10, at 7 p.m. in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons on the Cornell College campus. Admission is free to both screenings.

The 20-minute video examines Iowa’s heritage and legacy told through interviews with contemporary farm women who practice small-farm, value-added and direct-marketing agriculture.

The film focuses on seven Iowans, including area farmers Laura Krouse of Mount Vernon, an instructor in the Cornell biology department who also grows vegetables for about 130 area families, maintains an heirloom variety of field corn and raises corn, soybeans and oats organically; Janette Ryan-Busch of Iowa City, who for over 20 years has run Fae Ridge Farm, a small organic herb and produce farm where she also raises angora goats and supplies hand spinners in the Midwest; and Susan Jutz of Solon, who grows vegetables for about 150 area families, plus dairy goats, hogs and lambs for direct marketing locally.

Following each screening will be a discussion with women farmers in the film, filmmaker Cynthia Vagnetti of Madison, Wis., and Atlantic farmer Denise O’Brien, executive director of the Women, Food and Agriculture Network and a member of the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame. The Mount Vernon panel will be moderated by Margaret Kim Peterson, a Mount Vernon native who is an associate professor of theology at Eastern University in Pennsylvania.

Sponsors of the screenings and panel discussions are the Women, Food and Agriculture Network, the Iowa Women’s Foundation, the University of Iowa Women’s Resource and Action Center, and Cornell’s Lecture, Artists and Cultural Events (LACE) consortium, with additional support from the Iowa Women’s Archives.

MOUNT VERNON — The acting dean of Colorado College will become the new dean at Cornell College on July 1.

Brenda Tooley, acting dean of the faculty at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, has been named Cornell’s dean of the college and vice president for academic affairs, the chief academic officer and second-ranking administrator at Cornell.

She will replace Dennis Moore, who is retiring. Moore has been Cornell’s dean since 1987. He came to Cornell from Beloit College, where he was a faculty member in the English department.

Colorado College is a private, liberal arts college that operates on the Block Plan, an academic calendar similar to Cornell’s One-Course-At-A-Time. Students study a single subject for a three-and-a-half-week term, with nine terms in Cornell’s school year.

Tooley is in her sixth year in the Colorado College dean’s office, including five years as associate dean. She came to Colorado College in 1991 as a faculty member in the English department after earning a doctorate from the University of Notre Dame. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Fort Hays State University.

“Her familiarity with the Block Plan, with grant support, and generally her experience with most aspects of our dean’s responsibilities were all important to us,” said Jim White, Cornell philosophy professor and chair of the dean search committee.

Tooley was one of four candidates who interviewed on campus for the position following a national search that began last summer.

At Colorado College, Tooley’s responsibilities have included coordinating a new-faculty mentoring program and associated faculty development initiatives, such as support for department chairs and interdisciplinary program directors; leading the First Year Experience program; working with grants officers to prioritize and design major proposals; developing international studies and interdisciplinary programs; working with the institutional research staff to develop and manage assessment practices at the college; implementing a new general education curriculum; and coordinating a $7.9 million gift from the Priddy Trust to strengthen admissions practices in the Southwest and to support student success initiatives at the college.

MOUNT VERNON — A former professor from Alaska who performs nationwide as a fiddling poet makes a stop at Cornell College on Wednesday, March 2, at 8 p.m. in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons. Admission is free.

Ken Waldman combines old-time fiddling, original poetry and storytelling. His two full-length poetry collections are “Nome Poems,” about his two years teaching writing courses by telephone to students in remote Alaska villages, and “To Live on this Earth,” featuring poems about Alaska plus old-time music and dance. His three CDs are “A Week in Eek,” “Burnt Down House” and “Music Party.”

Waldman’s appearance is part of Cornell’s ongoing Visiting Writer Series sponsored by the English department.