VCU News Center – VCU E-Festival to Address Energy, Environment and Community Engagement

News releases and media advisories

For immediate release:
9/17/2009

Mike Porter
VCU Communications and Public Relations
(804) 828-7037
mrporter@vcu.edu

VCU E-Festival to Address Energy, Environment and Community Engagement

Virginia Commonwealth University presents a two-day event bringing together a diverse array of scholars -- including scientists, engineers, humanists and artists -- as well as students and community leaders to spark discussion of three intersecting “E” themes: energy, environment and community engagement.

The festival, sponsored by VCU’s Science, Technology and Society (STS) Program, begins Oct. 1 and is being held in conjunction with the kickoff of VCU’s Year of the Environment.

“The E-Festival comes right in the middle of Governor Timothy Kaine’s year-long ‘Renew Virginia’ program to develop renewable energy, create science and technology ‘green jobs’ and preserve the state’s environment,” said Karen Rader, Ph.D., associate professor in the VCU Department of History and STS program director. “Such a conversation could not be more timely or more necessary.”

The E-Festival includes a participatory “paint a recycling dumpster” art project, a special screening of Earthdome Productions’ film “The Next Industrial Revolution” and a daylong symposium on the issues of engagement and sustainability, which concludes with a panel discussion on the challenges for a sustainable energy future.

The VCU E-festival concludes Friday evening, Oct. 2, with a staged reading at the Grace Street Theatre of “Louis Slotin Sonata” produced by the Carpenter Science Theatre. This original work by playwright Paul Mullin, which won a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for a world premiere, delves into the social, moral and personal dimensions of nuclear physics, atomic energy and the limits and responsibilities of science. The reading will be followed by a discussion of the play and the issues it raises.

Visit http://www.has.vcu.edu/sts/ for more information about the E-Festival’s schedule and participants.

About VCU and the VCU Medical Center:

Virginia Commonwealth University is a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research. Located on two downtown campuses in Richmond, VCU enrolls more than 32,000 students in 205 certificate and degree programs in the arts, sciences and humanities. Sixty-five of the programs are unique in Virginia, many of them crossing the disciplines of VCU’s 15 schools and one college. MCV Hospitals and the health sciences schools of Virginia Commonwealth University compose the VCU Medical Center, one of the nation’s leading academic medical centers. For more, see www.vcu.edu.