LifeLong Learning - San Marcos
Come Learn with Us!
Fall Brown Bag Presentation Series
Registration is Required
When: Fridays: Sept. 18, 25; Oct. 2, 9, 23 no session 10/16
Where: San Marcos Public Library, Rooms 104 & 105
Time: 12:00-1:00pm
Fee: FREE… donations appreciated
Sept. 18: Texas State Joins the PAC-12: What Changes? (Room 104)
Texas State is now a member of the new Pac-12 joining Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Gonzaga, Oregon State, San Diego State, Utah State and Washington State. This transition from the Sun Belt to the Pac-12 is about more than athletics. It is expected to provide new opportunities to grow the TXST brand, enhance student recruitment, and increase the value of a TXST degree. Join us to learn about how this move will impact student athletes, the University, and the City of San Marcos and its residents.
Presenter: Official from Texas State Athletics
Sept. 25: The Importance of Good Sleep... No Matter Your Age! (Room 104)
Sleep is an active and essential component of brain function that supports both short-term performance and long-term brain health. This presentation will explore what happens in the brain during sleep; how sleep changes across the lifespan; how sleep influences cognition and mental and physical health; and the relationships between sleep and disease. Finally, the consequences of not getting enough sleep will be addressed, in addition to strategies for improving sleep.
Presenter: Dr. Carmen Westerberg is a Professor & Associate Chair in the Texas State Psychology Department. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University before joining the Texas State faculty in 2011. Dr. Westerberg is also a Faculty Fellow of the Translational Health Research Center, Chair of the Alliance of Researchers in Aging, and Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Lab. Her research addresses how sleep contributes to changes in memory across time and how the reorganization of knowledge during sleep affects other aspects of cognition in healthy individuals and in patient populations.
Oct. 2: Artificial Intelligence: and the Democracy Dilemma (Room 105)
Artificial intelligence can simplify many tasks in everyday life, but what is its impact as we prepare to step up to the ballot box? With midterm elections upon us, learn how campaigns and other interested parties are using AI to attempt to influence what you see, hear, and believe and, ultimately, how you vote. Participants will also gain strategies to identify misinformation and help ensure those you vote for (or against) are who you've been told they are.
Presenter: Dr. Amber Hinsley is an Associate Professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communications at Texas State. Dr. Hinsley was a journalist in Los Angeles when she discovered she loved mentoring reporters as much as she loved reporting. After guest lecturing in several classes, she decided to go to graduate school to become a professor. She received her master's degree from Kansas State University and her doctoral degree from The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Hinsley loves learning new tools as the journalism industry evolves, and has taught a range of practical skills courses (e.g., Multimedia Journalism, Data Storytelling, and Social Media as Professional Tools) as well as more critical analysis courses, such as Real News, Fake News, & Media Literacy.
Oct. 9: Planning for Uncharted Waters (Room 105)
Water resources in Texas have long been challenged by drought and population growth. Lately, these challenges seem to be amplified with deeper droughts, flashier floods, and deeper dippers such as data centers. In this presentation, I will explore the history of water planning in Texas, how water planning works today, blind spots in our current approach, and ways to build a more robust water future for our homes, communities, economy, and environment.
Presenter: Dr. Robert Mace is the Exectuive Director of The Meadows Center for Water and Environment and Professor of Practice in Texas State's Geography Department. Growing up in rural Illinois, Dr. Mace’s love of math and rocks drew him to pursue a geophysics degree at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. While there, he developed an interest in water and also earned a master’s degree in hydrology. Love and music pulled him to Austin, where he earned his Ph.D. at The University of Texas at Austin and developed the first Texas groundwater availability model. This work led to an 18-year career at the Texas Water Development Board, where he rose to be Deputy Executive Administrator for Water Science and Conservation, overseeing programs in groundwater resources and management, surface-water resources and environmental flows, water conservation, flood mitigation, and innovative technology including desalination, water reuse, aquifer storage and recovery, and rainwater harvesting.
Oct. 16 No Session... support the Library's Book Sale!
Oct. 23: Migrant Deaths at the Texas-Mexico Border: Who, When, Where, and What We Do Not Know (Room 104)
Over the past 40 years, thousands of people have died along the U.S.-Mexico border while fleeing poverty, armed conflict, violence, and disasters. Establishing a more accurate count of migrant deaths is an essential first step toward understanding both the scale of this humanitarian crisis and the factors driving it. This presentation shares the results of a four-year project that aims to create a comprehensive census of this tragedy on the U.S. side of the Texas-Mexico border. A brief history of U.S. migration policies as they relate to the southern border with Mexico will be presented, followed by a series of maps that visualize spatio-temporal (location and time) trends in migrant deaths between 1982 and 2023. Going beyond the “dots on a map,” attendees will learn the causes and manners of death, who finds the remains, which agencies handle the cases, and the spatio-temporal patterns of these factors. Obstacles to producing an accurate census will be discussed, including differing state legal frameworks, overlapping jurisdictions, and agencies’ reluctance to release data.
Presenter: Dr. Alberto Giordano is a Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies and Co-director of the Grosvenor Center for Geographic Education. He is a founding member of the Holocaust Geographies Collaborative, a network of researchers dedicated to applying geographical approaches, methods, and perspectives to the study of the Holocaust and other genocides. More recently, his work has focused on the intersection of geography and forensic anthropology, particularly the tragic deaths of migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border. Dr. Giordano has served as President of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science and as a Fulbright Specialist in the Department of History, University of Vilnius, Lithuania.
