The university announced this week that the Omnibus lecturer scheduled for October, medical commentator Isadore Rosenfeld, would be replaced with economist William Dunkelberg. The day before this information was released, Governor Mitch Daniels spoke, kicking off the 2011-2012 lecture series.
But the question is, do students even care?
The Omnibus Lecture website states that each year the lecturers are chosen with topics ranging from business, media, politics and entertainment in mind. These decisions are made by “campus and community representatives.” In previous years, a student from the honors program was part of the committee, however, due to lack of participation, this year’s committee does not include a university student.
While some well known speakers might be expected to draw larger numbers of students, many lectures seem to have a disproportionately low amount of students in attendance compared to the number of community members in the audience. Whether this is due to lack of lecturer appeal or to lack of student knowledge of the events is unknown.
Some of last years lectures, including “Activism: Then and Now” and “Perspectives on Adventure, Culture, and a Changing World,” had little relevance to students unless they were required to attend for classes, catering instead to older audiences who might have known the names of the lecturers; Tom Rush, Country Joe McDonald and Rick Steves.
Many of the speakers invited to IPFW, such as Daniels or future lecturer Michele Norris, come to lecture as part of their own book tours. For students who do choose to attend the lectures, they end up hearing about a book that they haven’t read and probably aren’t going to.
According to Louise Teague, who is largely in charge of the Omnibus Series, the university wants “student academic experiences to be a priority.”
The Omnibus Lecture Series does have good speakers, but there is a lot of potential for it to benefit students that isn’t taken advantage of. The first step would be to get student input on future lecturers – if we’re involved in the process, we usually develop a vested interest. Finding speakers that appeal to both community members and students will not only bridge the gap between the two, but allow students to converse with the community about topics that are useful.
Once the lectures themselves have more appeal, more time should be spent advertising them, or the extra effort to connect with students will go to waste. While the university puts up posters and gives instructors early access to tickets, there are still a large number of students who don’t know what the series is about. Students won’t attend what they don’t know about, and they won’t know about it unless you wave it under their noses.
