‘Break through the noise’

University faculty to participate in TedxEvansville

Saturday, two members of university faculty will take the stage at the Evansville Museum as part of TEDxEvansville.

Instructor of journalism Erin Gibson and Edith Hardcastle an associate professor of biology, will both give talks at the TEDx event that fall within their academic interests.

TED, a nonprofit organzation which began in 1984  aims t spread ideas thorugh short and focused talks.

In local communities TEDx events are organized. This portion of TED launched in 2009 and since then close to 50,000 talks have been given according to the TEDxEvansville website.

Gibson will present her talk entitled “Whoa! Wait. What?” at 1 p.m. which will focus on helping individuals decipher the news being presented them on a daily basis.

“It is a method of evaluating information to help people to become a more discerning news consumer and a better informed person,” Gibson said. “I hope that my talk can maybe break through the noise a little bit and influence people to just think…just take that hesitance…that just one little moment to think before they hit ‘share’ on anything they encounter.”

Gibson said she looks forward to having the chance to share her ideas with a larger audience.

Hardcastle will follow Gibson at 3 p.m. to give her talk “Envisioning the Home Landscape.”

I’m going to be discussing envisioning the home landscape as a non-toxic place, with native plants instead of just getting rid of all the natives like we just sort of automatically do,” she said.

She said her talk will encourage people to reestablish some of the more native plants and stop using as many poisons as are used now.

Hardcastle said she has enjoyed working with the organizers for this event.

“They’ve been great to work with, they’ve been full of energy and sort of excitement about the process,” she said. “They’ve been very, very helpful.”