WikiWatershed is a web toolkit to support citizens, conservation practitioners, municipal decision-makers, researchers, educators, and students to collaboratively advance knowledge and stewardship of fresh water. The WikiWatershed.org web toolkit includes Model My Watershed, a high-performance web app for rapid visualization of watershed data, advance geospatial analysis capabilities, science-based predictions of human impacts on stormwater runoff and water quality. Other tools available include instructions and resources for learning open-source hardware and software solutions for building and deploying water monitoring stations, a mobile app for entering water quality data and learning about water quality measurements, and other portals for water quality monitoring information.

The Penn State Science Policy Society is hosting Doug Dollemore from the American Chemical Society. He is a senior science writer and usually videotapes scientist to help them avoid jargon in their speech and communicate more effectively. He will be having a Science Communication workshop from 5-8 pm. This entails working in small groups and creating an "elevator pitch" for your research topics.

RSVP: http://spsscienceworkshop.rsvpify.com

Sneak peak at "The Turn Out," a film produced by faculty member Pearl Gluck.

On Nov. 16 and 17, Penn State will host editor Ari Fertig from the academic media website The Conversation to speak about why it’s important to bring academics into popular media, what’s in it for you as an academic, pitching your research to media, finding your “news peg,” and more.

The first presentation will be from 2 to 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 16, in Foster Auditorium in Paterno Library at University Park. To ensure space accommodations, faculty who are interested in attending the presentation are asked to RSVP online.

For faculty who cannot attend the University Park presentation, a brown bag webinar will be held from noon to 1:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 17. Faculty from all Penn State campuses are invited to attend an online meeting via Zoom at this link.

The Conversation US is an independent, nonprofit source of news and views written by the academic and research community, delivered directly to the public. Penn State academics who write for The Conversation receive their own faculty biography page on the website, access to a staff of professional editors and access to readership analytics for their articles. Past articles written by Penn State faculty are archived on the University’s Conversation landing page.

Since partnering with The Conversation, Penn State researchers have written more than 225 articles that have garnered 15.8 million readers. The site has a Creative Commons license, so other news organizations often republish the articles. Penn State faculty have had Conversation articles republished on national media websites such as The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Business Insider and Newsweek. The Conversation has international website editions in Africa, Australia, Canada, France, Indonesia and the United Kingdom.

Book reading and discussion of "Among the Woo People: A Survival Guide for Living in a College Town," written by Russell Frank, an associate professor in the Department of Journalism. The session, presented by the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and University Libraries, is free and open to the public.

Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, and activist who has dedicated his life to environmental sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment. He is one of the environmental movement’s leading voices and a pioneering architect of corporate reform with respect to ecological practices. His work includes founding successful, ecologically conscious businesses, writing about the impacts of commerce on living systems, and consulting with heads of state and CEOs on economic development, industrial ecology, and environmental policy. Paul is executive director of Project Drawdown, a non-profit dedicated to researching when and how global warming can be reversed. The organization maps and models the scaling of one hundred substantive technological, social, and ecological solutions to global warming.

The event is free and open to the public. Register on the IEE website.

Professor Emeritus Richard Taylor will share his thoughts and experiences related to the Chinese government’s strategies for influencing the adoption of its preferred policies with respect to the future Internet (“cyberspace”) and the next generation of embedded information technologies, such as the “Internet of Things.” He invites questions and discussion of this important but not well-known topic. The session is free and open to the public, sponsored by the Institute for Information Policy and the Department of Telecommunications.

Free public event sponsored by the Department of African-American Studies and the Department of Journalism.

A free public event, the second as part of Truth Project series, "True Talk, Fake News: The Search for Reality in Public Discourse," is a panel discussion that brings together faculty members in rhetoric and journalism to discuss our thirst for truth in a world of fakery and propaganda. Panelists include: Rosa A. Eberly, associate professor of rhetoric, Department of Communication Arts and Sciences and Department of English; Patrick Plaisance, the Don W. Davis Professor of Ethics, Department of Journalism; Russell Frank, associate professor, Department of Journalism; and Matt Jordan, associate professor, Department of Film-Video and Media Studies.

As part of a year-long focus on studying data analytics in sports, the Center for the Study of Sports in Society presents a free public "conversation" featuring New York Mets general manager Sandy Alderson. A graduate of Dartmouth Colleeg and Harvard Law School, Alderson's career in baseball began with the Oakland A's and includes service as MLB vice president supervising umpries, among other duties. Among the topics he will discuss will be how executives without extensive math/statistics expertise can digest and act upon data from analysts.