Cyndie Schmeiser, who has had an impact on the education of nearly every student in the United States through her work at ACT and the creation of the Common Core State Standards, will speak at UI College of Education’s Distinguished Speaker Series Wednesday, April 23, at 1 p.m. in N140 Lindquist Center.

UI graduate students will lead Iowa Lyceum, a free summer program that introduces area high school students to philosophy, helping them build critical thinking skills and college readiness.

University of Iowa faculty poets Robyn Schiff and Mark Levine will read from their work at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 24, in a free reading at Prairie Lights Books in downtown Iowa City. The reading also will be streamed live on the University of Iowa Writing University website.

Visiting artist Erik Levine, associate professor of art at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, will give a public lecture at 6:30 p.m. Friday, April 18, in Room 116 at Art Building West. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Do you dig the Ice Age? Come learn more as Greg McDonald of the National Park Service discusses recent fossil discoveries in Colorado. McDonald will speak at 7 p.m., Thursday, April 24, at an Explorers Seminar in the Biosphere Discovery Hub in the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History.

The Public Policy Center (PPC) will host a daylong symposium examining the role of women in American politics on Friday, April 18 in the Old Capitol Museum. The keynote speaker will be Amy Klobuchar, a U.S. senator from Minnesota. The symposium is part of the PPC's 25th anniversary celebration.

Inexpensive computers, cell phones, and other devices that substitute flexible plastic for silicon chips may be one step closer to reality, thanks to research published in the journal Nature Communications.

In a paper published in the April 16 print issue of the journal Neuron, UI researchers Bernd Fritzsch and Jeremy Duncan and their colleagues at Harvard Medical School, along with investigator and corresponding author Elizabeth Engle, describe how their studies on mutated mice mimic human mutations responsible for an eye mobility disorder.

A few intrepid stargazers were out on the University of Iowa Pentacrest early Tuesday morning to watch the total lunar eclipse which was visible early Tuesday over Iowa City.

As the Nazis murdered millions of people, they also perpetrated the greatest mass theft in history, says former congressman Jim Leach. He’ll offer his perspective on the topic Tuesday, April 22, at noon in Room 2520D University Capitol Centre.

Come enjoy a free public recital by renowned New York musicians in the Senate Chamber of the University of Iowa Old Capitol Museum at 7 p.m. Monday, April 28. Cellist Nicholas Canellakis, pianist Michael Brown, and guest bassist Mark Bernat will perform.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, a time when many civil rights organizations across the country committed to registering African-Americans to vote in Mississippi. Now, staff in UI Archives and the Historical Iowa Civil Rights Network are looking to capture the stories of the students who contributed to the effort.