MOUNT VERNON — A record 117 students are scheduled to present research findings at the 10th annual Cornell College Student Symposium on Saturday, April 29, 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 96 presentations, as lectures of about 20 minutes apiece, as musical performances or as poster presentations offering visual displays of projects along with explanatory comments.

The lectures or performances 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, Berlin Room, Stockholm Room and Paris Room; 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 pandemic influenza, Iowa’s ghost towns, nuclear waste storage methods, sleep deprivation, the music of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” and women’s body image, the media and attitudes toward beauty. Several students will present observations from their work during spring break helping hurricane victims in New Orleans.

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. Seventeen 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 — Two Cornell College jazz ensembles will perform Sunday, April 30, at 3 p.m. in Kimmel Theatre of Youngker Hall on the Cornell campus. Admission is free.

The 3 O’clock Big Band will feature two tunes by Duke Ellington, “Do Nothin’ Til You Hear From Me,” with sophomore vocalist Amelia Engelbert, and “The Star-crossed Lovers.” The band will close its part of the program with the burning funk of “Chicken Scratch” by Kris “El Pollo Loco” Berg.

The 5 O’clock Experimental Jazz Combo will present an eclectic set including the Superblue arrangements of “Open Sesame” and “Blue Bossa,” the modern stylings of John Mill’s “Hover-Speed” and Ed Wilson’s “Jump and Jive” and the New Orleans’ heat of “Basin Street.”

The ensembles are directed by Don Chamberlain, associate professor of music.

MOUNT VERNON — Money, lust and a woman in drag are critical elements in the classical Roman comedy “Poenulus, the Little Latin Loverboy,” to be staged by Cornell College Latin classes Sunday, April 30, at 6 p.m. and Monday, May 1, at 11:45 a.m. in front of Allee Chapel on campus. Admission is free.

In the play, by Plautus, Agorastocles is wild for his neighbor, Adelphasium. The only problem is her pimp, a possessive and lusty man named Lycus. Looney and lovesick, Agorastocles puts himself at the mercy of his devious slave, Milphio, who decides the best way to please his master and possibly win his freedom is to destroy the pimp. Milphio cunningly uses all the lures of money, lust and a woman in drag in his attempt to achieve his goal. However, two characters arrive who may change his plans: an interesting eunuch with a story to tell that may eliminate Lycus as a threat, and a puny and mysterious foreigner whose search for his daughters reveals shocking information about the relationship between Agorastocles and his beloved, Adelphasium.

The play will be performed in Latin and English. In case of rain, the performances will be moved to the Plumb-Fleming Studio Theatre, the black box theater in Armstrong Hall.

MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College will mark Mozart’s 250th birthday in a spring choral concert Sunday, April 23, at 3 p.m. in King Chapel. The choirs are under the direction of Lisa Hearne, associate professor of music. Admission is free.

The Concert Choir will perform three movements from Mozart’s “Requiem,” featuring college organist Lynda Hakken. The Chamber Singers will sing Mozart’s motet “Regina Coeli,” featuring a solo quartet: junior Sarah Brungard, soprano; junior Kara Stumpff, alto; senior Joe Okell, tenor, and freshman Matt Roberts, bass.

Works by the Chamber Singers include two spirituals, “I Been in the Storm So Long,” with senior soprano soloist Erin Prall, and “Daniel, Servant of the Lord,” with soloists Justin Gohdes, senior, and Whitney Thiessen, junior. Also included are “Two Japanese Proverbs” by Gary Kent Walth, choral conductor at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, and “The Coolin,” a movement from “Reincarnations” by American composer Samuel Barber.

The 75-voice Concert Choir will perform a major work by British composer Benjamin Britten, “Hymn to St. Cecilia,” featuring four soloists: soprano Prall, alto Stumpff, tenor Okell and bass Robert Fisher.

The concert will close with a Cajun love song, “Tender Love,” arranged by Norman Luboff, and a spiritual by New Orleans composer Moses Hogan, “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel.”

MOUNT VERNON — Indian Creek Nature Center will celebrate Earth Day weekend with the dedication of a seven-acre prairie Sunday, April 23, for Paul Christiansen, emeritus professor of biology at Cornell College who devoted his career to studying, managing, preserving and restoring the tall-grass prairie.

The dedication is from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Nature Center in Cedar Rapids, with a ceremony at 1:30 p.m. and a prairie planting from 2 to 4 p.m. Plants and shovels will be provided. There also will be light refreshments and live music.

The area to be known as the Paul Christiansen Prairie sits north of Otis Road and east of Bena Brook. The site will be marked with a large, engraved glacial boulder.

Christiansen, a Nature Center board member, retired in 1996 after 29 years at Cornell. He was born and raised on a farm in Iowa. He earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Iowa, doctorate at Iowa State University and taught at Humboldt (Iowa) High School before arriving at Cornell.

In the 1970s he launched a project to help more than half of Iowa’s counties re-introduce prairie along county roads. Iowa’s 19th-century landscape was abundant with prairie wildflowers and tall grasses. Aside from their natural beauty and link to Iowa’s past, prairies are critical as erosion control and a deterrent of noxious weeds – plus the native plants are easier to maintain than foliage being introduced 30 years ago along road easements. Christiansen also conducted numerous studies on state parks and prairies for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and consulted on the restoration of tall-grass prairies across the state for both public and private entities.

Cornell, the Iowa Nature Conservancy and the Department of Natural Resources join the Nature Center in hosting the prairie dedication. For directions and information about the Nature Center, go to www.indiancreeknaturecenter.org.

MOUNT VERNON — Artist Harmony Hammond, author of the first history of lesbian art in the United States, will lecture on “Speaking Braids: Gender, Sexuality, and Artistic Practice” on Monday, April 24, at 7 p.m. in Cornell College’s McWethy Hall, Room 222A.

Her 2000 book, “Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History,” profiles 18 prominent lesbian artists. The book earned a Lambda Literary Award for this painter, sculptor, teacher, writer and curator.

Hammond is a Chicago native who received a bachelor of fine arts degree in painting from the University of Minnesota. She spent time in France and Belgium, where she was influenced by African, Oceanic and Native American art. She helped found the A.I.R. Gallery, the first women’s cooperative gallery in New York in 1973, where she had her first show. She is a Guggenheim fellow and recipient of two awards from the National Endowment for the Arts. She co-edited the groundbreaking “Lesbian Art and Artists” issue of Heresies magazine in 1977 and curated the first exhibition of lesbian art in New York in 1978. She taught at the University of Arizona for 17 years, retiring as a full professor. She lives in northern New Mexico.

This lecture is sponsored by Cornell’s art department; it is free and open to the public.

MOUNT VERNON — Elane Geller, a Holocaust survivor who as a child was interned at the Bergen-Belsen death camp in Nazi Germany, will speak at Cornell College on Wednesday, April 26, at 11 a.m. in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons. Admission is free.

Geller was 4 years old when she and her father were taken by force to the town square in their small community in Poland. She and her father watched as the Nazis shot and killed many people, including Geller’s elderly grandparents and her mother.

The Nazis then separated Geller from many in her family and took her to a series of camps in Poland. One of those internment camps was the infamous Bergen-Belsen, where an older girl named Anne Frank was also held and eventually executed. When Geller was 9 years old, she was rescued from the camp by British soldiers.

Geller did not speak out about her experiences for many years due to the horrible memories. “Revisionists arose that tried to say the Holocaust did not happen. I share my scars because of those revisionists,” Geller has said.

Today, Geller is a representative of the outreach program of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. She travels across the country sharing her experiences with others so they can understand the effects of discrimination.

She is also scheduled to speak in Cedar Rapids on Tuesday, April 25, at 11 a.m. at Kirkwood Community College, Cedar Hall Room 234, and at 1:30 p.m. at Kennedy High School; Wednesday, April 26, at 1:30 p.m. at Xavier High School and at 7 p.m. at Mount Mercy College, Cherry Heritage Hall; and Thursday, April 27, at 10 a.m. at Washington High School and at 1:15 p.m. at Coe College, Kesler Lecture Hall, Hickok Hall. Geller will deliver the Yom Hashoah service Tuesday night at First Lutheran Church in Cedar Rapids.

Geller’s visit to eastern Iowa is sponsored by the Thaler Holocaust Memorial Fund and Cornell’s Chaplain’s Office, German Club and Cornell Hillel.

MOUNT VERNON — American Indian poet Kimberly Blaeser will read from her book, “Absentee Indians & Other Poems,” and discuss her work Wednesday, April 26, at 7:30 p.m. in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons at Cornell College. Admission is free.

Blaeser’s publications include three books and more than 60 appearances in anthologies and journals. An award-winning writer and speaker, she is a past vice president of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers and currently serves on two American Indian literature series boards for university presses.

Blaeser’s visit to Cornell is part of the Visiting Writer Series sponsored by Cornell’s English department.