Westmont Downtown Schedule: 2023-2024
Spring 2024
Adam Goodworth, a professor in the departments of engineering and kinesiology, and alumnus Maury Hayashida ’95 examine balance and mobility and how they’re affected by aging in a Westmont Downtown Lecture, “Aging and Mobility: Fundamentals and Frontiers.”
“We’ll have a few activities for the audience, plenty of practical tips, key research data, and a discussion about future directions and the latest technology,” Goodworth says.
Hayashida founded Hayashida and Associates Physical Therapy in 2002, an orthopedic and sports rehabilitation center, he also founded Variant Training Lab and its parent company the ArthroKinetic Institute, a state-of-the-art facility designed to identify, prevent, and correct human musculoskeletal system disorders. Variant is a medical training facility emphasizing movement analysis of healthy, high-performing individuals who want to remain that way. “We utilize our Test, Treat, Train philosophy to predict risk and optimize movement,” says Hayashida who has also been the executive director of the Research Institute of Human Movement since 2011.
Goodworth, who earned a doctorate from Oregon Health and Sciences University, is a biomedical engineer who applies technical approaches to human movement science. He has conducted research on prosthetics, including efforts to assist the nonprofit LIMB International on projects in Africa. He was lead author of "Characteristics of inter-subject variability in feedback control of standing balance" published in the Journal of Neurophysiology. He won a grant from the Department of Defense to study how microprocessor knees impact perturbed walking and standing balance, and is also funded by the National Science Foundation to study mechanisms of balance in children with severe cerebral palsy.
The Westmont Foundation sponsors Westmont Downtown: Conversations about Things that Matter as well as the annual Westmont President’s Breakfast.
Wendy Eley Jackson draws on three decades of experience in film and television in her talk, “The Transformative Power of Storytelling” for a Westmont Downtown Lecture on Thursday, Feb. 1, at 5:30 p.m. at the Community Arts Workshop, 631 Garden Street, in downtown Santa Barbara. The event is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are required. Free parking is available on the streets surrounding CAW or in nearby city parking lots. For more information, please call (805) 565-6051.
“My talk will resonate with every demographic as I explore why it’s important to harness the influence of storytelling to make a positive impact in communities,” Jackson says.
She began teaching at Westmont in fall 2020 and founded the Montecito Student Film Festival. Recently she made news for writing the screen play to “Napa Ever After,” an historic Mahogany movie premier on the Hallmark Channel.
A native of Atlanta, Jackson earned a Bachelor of Arts in English literature at the University of California at Berkeley and her M.F.A. in screenwriting from the University of Georgia.
She serves as the CEO of Auburn Avenue Films, a production company specializing in entertainment that brings social awareness and engages audiences to participate in social change. At Westmont, she teaches Documentary Filmmaking, Screenwriting, and Creative Writing for the theater and English departments.
“My hope is to find a happy marriage between the written word, the actors and the production crew that will bring great storytelling to life,” she says. “Story has the ability to build bridges of empathy, understanding and respect, helping to make sense of our lives and the world around us. As a professor, my goal is to help the students develop their stories as expressed through theater and the written word to inspire social impact.”
Her experience in the media industry ranges from working in made-for-television movies for TriStar/Columbia Pictures Television, to advertising and marketing with Turner Entertainment Networks, to developing television pilots for major networks. She won the Producers Guild of America mark for her work on the feature-length documentary “Maynard,” which explores the life and legacy of Atlanta’s first black mayor.
While serving as the executive producer of “Welcome to Pine Lake,” a 2020 documentary about a progressive all-female city council outside of Atlanta, she uncovered a more interesting story about systemic racism in the idyllic town of fewer than 800 residents.
She produced “Facing the Falls,” a documentary about international human-rights advocate Cara Yar Khan, who went on a 12-day Grand Canyon expedition while battling an aggressive, fatal, muscle-wasting disease.
She is also co-writing a feature film, “30 Days A Black Man,” adapted the award-winning novel, “30 Days A Black Man: The Forgotten Story of Jim Crow” by Bill Steigerwald.
Fall 2023:
Katherine Bryant, assistant professor of political science, will speak about "The Changing Geopolitical Landscape and the Role of Foreign Aid" at a Westmont Downtown Lecture on Thursday, Nov. 9, at 5:30 p.m. at the Community Arts Workshop, 631 Garden Street, in downtown Santa Barbara.
The event is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are required. Free parking is available on the streets surrounding CAW or in nearby city parking lots. For more information, please call (805) 565-6051.
Foreign aid is one of the most commonly used tools of foreign policy, but the landscape in which states are operating is rapidly changing. This talk will explore how these major shifts in the geopolitical landscape are impacting foreign aid spending, particularly by the United States.
"Events such as the recent conflict in Israel-Palestine, the rise of China, the ongoing war in Ukraine and the challenges of climate change will likely have lasting impacts on the utility of this tool of statecraft," Bryant says.
Bryant, who's launched a study of the effectiveness of Christian aid organizations, focuses her research focuses on the efficacy of foreign aid programs and how political factors influence the behavior of organizations providing aid, especially multilateral agencies.
Bryant frequently leads Westmont students to the National Model United Nations in New York City, where several students have won awards.
She has a keen interest in improving data literacy among students and has also taught environmental politics. She graduated from USC and earned a doctorate from Texas A&M University.
Jennifer Ito, Westmont assistant professor of physics, explored exciting new developments in astrophysics in a Westmont Downtown Lecture, “Asteroids and Exoplanets: How Scientists Are Exploring Our Universe,” on Oct. 12.
“Scientists are actively studying our own solar system through recent asteroid missions as well as distant planets with data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope,” says Ito, who earned a doctorate from UC San Diego. “Fascinating results from these studies continue to develop our understanding of our complex universe.”
Ito, who joined the Westmont faculty in 2022, helps build millimeter-wavelength telescopes as part of the Simons Array in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Last summer, she took two Westmont students to the 17,000-foot site used for studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Scientists hope this endeavor will discover more about the early history of the universe. Specifically, they hope to determine if an event known as inflation occurred when the universe was fractions of a second old.
She has also been training to use Westmont’s powerful Keck Telescope for research with students and when the observatory opens to the public on the third Friday of every month.
Westmont Downtown: Conversations About Things That Matter is a free lecture series sponsored by the Westmont Foundation, which also sponsors the annual Westmont President’s Breakfast in early March.