Jose Antonio Vargas, a noted journalist and activist whose story about his own status as an undocumented immigrant ranks among the most compelling that he has covered, will present Carleton College’s weekly convocation on Friday, Oct. 5. Convocation is held from 10:50-11:50 a.m. in the Skinner Memorial Chapel, and it is free and open to the public. Convocations are also streamed live and can be viewed online at http://apps.carleton.edu/events/convocations/.

Carleton is pleased to present author and historian Derek Hoff ’94 on Thursday, Oct. 4 at 5 p.m. in Leighton Hall Room 304. Titled “The Re-Birth of the Right: The Decline of Malthusianism and the Conservative Ascendancy in Contemporary America,” Hoff’s presentation is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will also be served.

Fred Guterl, an award-winning journalist who is the executive editor of Scientific American magazine, will appear in the Carleton College Gould Library Athenaeum on Friday, Oct. 5 at 4:30 p.m. in support of his latest book, “The Fate of the Species: Why the Human Race May Cause Its Own Extinction and How We Can Stop It” (Bloomsbury USA, 2012). The book, which will be available for purchase at the event, describes the current environmental catastrophe caused by human inventions and future threats to our civilization. The event is free and open to the public.

Thanks to a generous gift of $1.5 million from Herb ’73 and Barbara Fritch, Carleton has announced the formation of the Fritch Endowed Scholars Program, aimed at middle class students from rural and non-metro areas of the country. Herb Fritch, president and founder of HealthSpring, which was purchased by Cigna earlier this year, is a part-owner of the NHL’s Nashville Predators. He was born and raised in Duluth, Minn. Barbara Fritch, a native of Yorkshire, England, is a retired financial planner. Married for 11 years, the establishment of the Fritch Scholars program at Carleton affirms the couple’s deep appreciation for the role education plays in individual lives.

“Visual Learning: Transforming the Liberal Arts,” concludes with a vibrant multimedia performance on Sunday, Sept. 30 at 2 p.m. in the Weitz Center for Creativity Theater. “Sound and Vision” is curated by Nikki Melville, Carleton associate professor of music (and acclaimed composer and pianist), and features a diverse group of student artists using dance, film, computer graphics, and studio art to reinterpret and broaden the sensory experience. This performance is free and open to the public.

As part of Carleton College’s innovative conference “Visual Learning: Transforming the Liberal Arts,” the public is invited to attend a performance of “Play in Progress: The Making of ‘Split Seconds,’” a commissioned play by Michael Elyanow. On Saturday, Sept. 29 at 8 p.m. in Carleton’s Weitz Center for Creativity Theater, join director Ruth Weiner, playwright Michael Elyanow, and members of the cast for a discussion of the play they are creating together this fall at Carleton, entitled “Split Seconds.” This event is free and open to the public.

American comics artist and theorist Scott McCloud will kick-off Carleton College’s innovative visuality conference, “Visual Learning: Transforming the Liberal Arts,” with a special keynote address on Friday, Sept. 28 at 7:30 p.m. in the Skinner Memorial Chapel.  McCloud is considered to be an “evangelist for comics as a valid literary form (more than pulp and kids’ stuff)” and his admiring fans include many of today’s superstar cartoonists. McCloud’s presentation, which is free and open to the public, is a must for anyone who reads, writes, teaches or draws comics.

Violinist and former Carleton College faculty member Brenda Brenner will return to campus Saturday, Sept. 29 for a special performance at 8 p.m. in the College’s Concert Hall. Joining Brenner will be Carleton pianist and long-time collaborator Ken Huber for a program of music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Igor Stravinsky and César Franck. This event is free and open to the public.

Michael Duffy, a veteran journalist who is the executive editor and Washington bureau chief for TIME Magazine, will present Carleton College’s weekly convocation on Friday, Sept. 28 at 10:50 a.m. in the Skinner Memorial Chapel. Duffy  will speak about his decades of experience covering national politics and his current position overseeing TIME’s coverage of national affairs. Convocation is free and open to the public; the addresses are also streamed live online and available for on-demand viewing after the event.

Julie Neiworth, Carleton College professor of psychology and director of neuroscience, has been awarded an Academic Research Enhancement Award (AREA) grant of $344,204 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for her research “Revisiting Challenged Findings to Determine Social and Cognitive Abilities in Tamarins.” Neiworth will test tamarins, a new world monkey species, on several aspects of cognition contested in psychology due to the retraction or correction of work from former Harvard psychologist Marc Hauser. The topics include recognition of human speech, theory of mind, and social learning.

Shawn Otto, an acclaimed author, filmmaker and noted science advocate, whose book “Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America” (Rodale Books, 2011) is the winner of the 2012 Minnesota Book Award for general nonfiction, will appear at the Carleton College Weitz Center for Creativity Cinema on Thursday, Sept. 27 at 7 p.m. The event is part of a state-wide tour featuring Minnesota Book Award winners and is co-sponsored by Carleton’s Gould Library, St. Olaf College’s Rolvaag Library, and the Northfield Public Library. Otto will presentation will discuss his award-winning book, which argues that American society is rejecting science at the very time we most need it. Copies of “Fool Me Twice” will be available for purchase at the event. Otto’s presentation is free and open to the public.

Over the course of two days at the end of September, Carleton College will host an innovative conference entitled “Visual Learning: Transforming the Liberal Arts.” The event brings together leaders from 42 esteemed institutions around the nation—academics representing a variety of disciplines, as well as graduate students, museum curators, photographers, photojournalists, graphic artists, film-makers, technologists, and musicians. What this diverse group of people has in common is the ever-growing realization of the significance of visual learning in the liberal arts.