Federal Emergency Management Agency

A "Climate Smart Farming" exhibit, opening May 5 at Mann Library, shows how farmers, with help from Cornell, are adapting to climate change and extreme weather impacts on agriculture.

Share your Glitch

The second annual creative exposition on campus, Raw Expo II: “Glitch,” will be held Friday, April 29, from 5 to 7 p.m. in Milstein Dome, on the first floor of Milstein Hall.

Free and open to the public, the expo explores creative processes and collaborations across campus and in the Ithaca community. The event, featuring 50 project teams from all seven undergraduate colleges at Cornell, aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue for future collaborations.

Medium Design Collective, Cornell’s interdisciplinary design community and the event’s host, invites expo participants and all others to share their creative projects on social media with the hashtag #RAWEXPOGLITCH, for a chance to be featured on the Raw Expo event site and Facebook page. 

Tying the room together

A screening of Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1998 comedy cult classic “The Big Lebowski” inspires a Cornell Cinema party Friday, April 29, in the Willard Straight Hall Memorial Room.

Celebrating all things Lebowski – bathrobes, nihilists, White Russians, giant bowling pins as décor – the party starts at 7:30 p.m. and the film plays at 8:30. Admission is $8 and includes munchies (pizza and brownies) and a mocktail version of The Dude’s aforementioned beverage of choice – or “drink,” if you’re into the whole brevity thing. Tickets are limited to 150, at CornellCinemaTickets.com and (if available) at the door.

Cornell Cinema’s May schedule begins Wednesday, May 4, with “Art House” and a sneak preview of “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.” The Coens’ Hollywood satire “Hail, Caesar!” opens May 11.

General geekiness

Pop culture, media and comics converge at CornellCon, presented by Community Center Programs Sunday, May 1, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Robert Purcell Community Center.

Free and open to the public, the celebration unites the fans of different movies, books, comics, and television shows and related “general geekiness.” Costumes are encouraged. Activities include a Medieval Marketplace, cosplay, specialized trivia and art contests; video games, performances, comics, prizes, food, arts and crafts and “more cool stuff.”

Politics and public opinion

Political scientist Arthur “Skip” Lupia, principal investigator of the American National Election Studies, is the inaugural speaker in the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA) - Roper Center Public Opinion Speaker Series, May 2 at noon in 655 Rhodes Hall. Lunch will be provided. Email ksb5@cornell.edu for information.

Lupia’s lecture is titled “Uninformed: Why People Know So Little About Politics and What We Can Do About It.” The Hal R. Varian Collegiate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, he is the founder of TESS (Time-Sharing Experiments in the Social Sciences). His honors include the National Academy of Sciences’ Initiatives in Research Award and the American Association for Public Opinion Research’s Innovator’s Award, and he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The speaker series is co-sponsored by The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell, one of the world’s largest public opinion data archives; and CIPA, which trains future leaders in the global public, private and nonprofit sectors through a two-year Master of Public Administration (MPA) program.

Refugees in Germany

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies’ Foreign Policy Distinguished Speaker Series presents a lecture by Andreas Wüst, “The Refugee Crisis and Beyond: Challenges to Germany’s Immigration and Integration Policies,” May 2 at 5 p.m. in Lewis Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.

Wüst has managed the challenges of admitting refugees to Germany since 2014. He heads the Initial Reception of Refugees Unit for Germany’s Ministry for Integration in Baden-Württemberg, which he joined in 2011. In addition to several published articles, he is co-editor of “The Political Representation of Immigrants and Minorities: Voters, Parties and Parliaments in Liberal Democracies” (2011). He also was a fellow at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research.

His talk is co-sponsored by the Migration Initiative of the Cornell Institute for European Studies.

‘Climate Smart Farming’ display

In a warming world, the farmers growing our food are beginning to see change. “Climate Smart Farming: New York State Farmers in Their Own Words,” a new multimedia exhibition in Mann Library’s second-floor Mann Gallery, opens with a reception Thursday, May 5, from 4 to 5:30 p.m.

The exhibition was developed in cooperation with Mann Library by the Cornell Institute for Climate Change and Agriculture, which works with Cornell researchers, extension specialists and farmers statewide to bolster resilience, reduce risk and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. The display explains farmers’ experiences with extreme weather, and adaptations to climate change – through new crops, improved water and waste management, and the installation of sustainable energy systems.

The exhibit is free and open to the public and runs through August.

Paris in the spring

University Organist Annette Richards presents “Paris in the 1690s and 1930s,” a program of organ music by French composers, Friday, May 6, at 8 p.m. in Sage Chapel. Presented by the Department of Music, the performance is free and open to the public.

The recital includes Nicolas de Grigny’s 17th-century “Mass,” followed by 20th-century works by Olivier Messiaen, Jehan Alain and Maurice Durufle, performed on the mighty Aeolian-Skinner organ located in the chapel’s choir loft. A complete restoration of the organ’s wind system was completed in the summer of 2015, supported by a grant from the Abraham J. and Phyllis Katz Foundation.