“It's a knowledge feast, so be ready to have your curiosity fed.”

With these words, co-organizers English professor Elizabeth Outka and French and Italian studies professor Lidia Radi launched the second annual Faculty & Staff Research Symposium.

About 200 faculty and staff from across campus presented at 38 sessions for the daylong event in late September that took place in Boatwright Memorial Library. Colleagues spoke about their books, research, and interests at roundtables, panels, poster exhibits, and Let’s Talk About forums. This year’s addition of the forums allowed for informal discussions between facilitators and the audience around topics across various disciplines, from effective teaching to ChatGPT. Lively conversations stirred in Q&A sessions often lingered in the hallways, where presenters could get feedback for their works-in-progress.

Outka and Radi hoped for just that environment when they conceived the event. “We envisioned it as a way for us all to build intellectual community, make connections with people and ideas, and learn about the amazing work being done across campus,” said Outka, Tucker-Boatwright Professor of Humanities.

“The sessions were all designed to showcase this extraordinary work that you do and the opportunities that we create when we come together as a community and talk,” Radi said.

But it wasn’t all talk. Attendees at “Pathways to Wellness” practiced Qigong breathing and stretching exercises with music professor Jennifer Cable, who uses the centuries-old Chinese well-being practice in her vocal classes to help students relax and extend their notes.

At the same session, biology professor Laura Runyen-Janecky handed out samples of Camembert cheese as she talked about their healthy microbes, which is a research topic for one of her lab groups.

“I loved it,” said senior Emma Kane, a student in Cable’s vocal class and Runyen-Jenecky’s lab. “I thought it was really interesting to see professors outside of what we consider their natural habitat. Usually, in class, it’s students who are presenting.”

Throughout the day, attendees could sit in on conversations with as many as eight faculty and staff presenters at a time, including the panel discussion where Jepson professor Kristin Bezio discussed how characters such as Richard III and Falstaff could be used in modern-day discussions about body inclusivity and accessibility in her “Not Shaped for Sportive Tricks: Disability and Fatness in Shakespeare” presentation. In another session, chemistry professor Michael Norris covered “Making New Drugs for Cancer Treatment” in a roundtable about optimizing the drug development and deployment life cycle.

In a session on mentoring undergraduates in research, physics professor Ted Bunn shared how he and his students perform simulations and analyze observations to compare them with cosmological theories, entitled “Testing Theories of the Expanding Universe.” In the “Building Bridges” session, Somiah Lattimore and Andrew Ilnicki, from the Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship initiative, delved into the work of the Richmond Innovation Fellows program.

Other presentations reflected on collaborative endeavors, such as the upcoming anthology, AntiBlackness and the Stories of Authentic Allies, and the research on a missing biographical piece in the life of the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith that brought together an economist, specialist in 18th-century French literature, musicologist, and Geographic Information System specialist.

“I thought the symposium was a great way to connect people across campus who may have similar passion and curiosity on subjects but may not know each other,” Larry Richmond Jr. of Facilities said. He attended biology professor Carrie Wu’s presentation on invasive wavyleaf basketgrass.

“I'm a gardener on campus, passionate about the environment, and enjoy learning about new things. I'm always on the lookout for new invasive species, and this talk educated me on that subject,” Richmond said.

Provost Joan Saab, who chaired the “Blending Realities: Mapping Place, Music, and Art” session, was also a symposium sponsor. “This is exactly the type of event that the University should be doing all the time,” she said in her opening remarks to the group gathered in the Faculty Hub. “Well, not all the time because that would be exhausting,” she added to laughs.