BCTalks Hosts Inaugural Series in Robsham

The academic passions of students came alive in Robsham this past Sunday and Monday as the inaugural BCTalks launched.

The lecture series provided a forum for students who had performed original research to share it with the greater BC community, outside the confines of classrooms and laboratories.

The 14 presentations spanning two evenings varied greatly in subject matter, from "What happened to Musical Theatre?" to "History of Computation." The student speakers were also available for questions during intermission and after the show.

Following with the goals of Education for Students by Students (ESS), sponsor of the event in collaboration with UGBC, BCTalks is designed to allow students to learn from their peers and share their interests with a wide audience. The intent is to foster conversation about students' academic interests in a social setting.

"We find a dichotomy on campus between people's social lives and academic lives. We want to try to correct that," said Lisa Piccirillo, A&S '13, who founded BCTalks with fellow junior Conor Sullivan, LSOE '13. "We have all these undergraduates doing incredible research. We want to provide a platform for these students to share their knowledge of these topics."

Along with a team, Piccirillo and Sullivan selected applicants to the series along with consultation from faculty, with knowledge in the subject areas before being sent to ESS for the final decision.

"They have all demonstrated extensive research in areas of interest to them, and either completed undergraduate research projects or thesis papers," Picarillo said.

Similar to the online lecture series TED Talks, all the BCTalks lectures will be published online on the first day of the spring semester at bctalks.org to be available to students to view and use as a database to draw inspiration for areas of further research. Boston College Television filmed the 14 lectures.

"What we'd really like to do is take the lectures like TED does and make a group database for BC students," Piccirillo said.

With this year's BC Talks behind them, organizers are looking forward to turning the lectures into a semester offering.

"We were very pleased overall," said Sullivan. "All of the talks were impressive and we want to do it again to continuously show all that BC students have to offer."