Picture your typical TED speaker, perhaps a dust of gray hair, business casual attire, and a confident demeanor. Now a new TEDx event is bringing younger voices into the mix.
In May, Kalamazoo College students, faculty, and staff took part in the first TEDxKalamazooCollege. The event was created and organized entirely by students. Along with current faculty and alumni speakers, the campus nominated two students to showcase their ideas.
“When I finished and walked off stage my whole body was like shaking I had shivers for a really long time, because that’s not usually a space that I occupy; being on stage and in front of a hundred plus people," says Shannon Haupt, one of the two student speakers.
Haupt’s talk focused on the power of community politics through the lens of her organization, The Kalamazoo College Climate Action Network. The network creates a platform for the Kalamazoo community to support and inform locals about climate issues.
“It was totally new, totally challenging and it really pushed my boundaries, my comfort zone in a way that I think needed to happen for my own personal growth and the advancement of our organization,” says Haupt.
Fellow student speaker, Tibin John agreed that the event caused him to reanalyze his research on brain disorders and Alzheimer’s disease in a new way. John’s research focuses on the use of computational models to diagnose and treat Alzheimer’s disease.
“I’ve done a lot of conferences things but I was talking to people who knew the significance and had their own ideas of the scientific significance of what I was talking about, what they were talking about. But in this case, it was a good opportunity to make it so it was meaningful to a general audience and to think about it in ways that make sense to people so that it’s significant in almost any sense.”
TEDxKalamazooCollege Co-Organizer Olivia Gaines said that the event was a chance for students to contribute their work and ideas to the world outside of Kalamazoo College's campus.
“It was a call to action to see what students could do. Given the opportunity, look what students can do and it was a way for us to challenge an institution where we could add something, add a process add a design. It was more based on look what we can do if you give us the opportunity to,” says Gaines.
Fellow Co-Organizer TanushJagdish from Bangalore, India said he felt it was important to host Tedx at Kalamazoo College.
“I felt that I was in a place where if I wanted to do something, there was no hindrance what-so-ever. Because many a times, you are in countries or situations where you want to go out and get something not only will there be the impediments of the task itself, which was here in this case. But, there’ll also be the impediments of malice and of so many things that shouldn’t be in the picture. Of how people who don’t want you to go out and get it, of the lack of opportunities itself.”
Jagdish says this event not only gave voice to students’ ideas, but it allowed the students an opportunity to practice self-led learning.
“In order to make successful adults and successful professionals - which a college has to do - the one thing I feel adults or professionals need to be okay with is failing," he says.
"If you’re not okay with failing, you’re not going to do great things. And the college is instilling that value in us I feel. They are, by example, they are showing us it’s okay if you fail but we hope you do a great job, and they’re giving us that responsibility to go ahead.”
The group plans to host TEDxKalamazooCollege bi-annually. The talks from this year’s event have been published online. Pre-registration for the 2017 event has already begun.
