The Graves Lecture Series at Chadron State College resumes tonight with the first of 3 talks in the fall semester. Each will be free and open to the public, beginning at 7:00 on a Tuesday night in the Mari Sandoz Center Chicoine Atrium
Up first tonight is Assistant Professor of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation Dr Brittany Helmbrecht, who will talk about the stress faced by first-generation college students, a group that includes more than half of CSC students.
Helmbrecht did her doctoral dissertation on the issue and will talk about factors that generate stress, how to predict them, and how to manage stress with demonstrations of several stress management techniques.
The second Graves Lecture is Oct 26 and features a commemorative quilt made in 1938 to celebrate Air Mail.
CSC marketing coordinator Tena Cook, whose grandmother designed and made the quilt, will be joined by Family and Consumer Science Professor Dr Kim Madsen, who will talk about hand-crafted textiles, and History Professor Dr David Nesheim, who will talk about Air Mail.
The final Graves Lecture is Nov 9 with Chadron Middle School Social Sciences Teacher Mary Traphagan offering a program on the Holocaust and its on-going impact after 8 decades.
The Graves lectures began in 2006 in honor of the late Dr Dorset Graves, who taught English at Chadron State for 32 years before retiring in 1990.
It was the brainchild of then-King Library Director Milton Wolf, who said Graves likely used the library more than anyone else on campus. He wanted to salute Graves as “an inspiration to scholarship, civility and the ideal of wisdom.”
Wolf, who died in 2012, described the series as a “forum for speakers who represent the renaissance of ideas under the sun, the synthesis of analysis, the quest for the holy grail of understanding.”
Current King Library Outreach Librarian Shawn Hartman coordinates the Graves Lectures and says the series still aims to offer “informal explorations/discussions of ideas/thoughts that have stimulated and intrigued the guest speakers.”