As we all regroup from yet another successful PLUS Conference, I wanted to reflect on one of my favorite moments from this year’s event. As you all know, we were fortunate enough to have Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson – the renowned astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science communicator – address our group at our Thursday luncheon. I hope you got to see it. I have been coming to the PLUS Conference for 17 years now, and I thought it was one of the best presentations we’ve ever had – entertaining, engaging, relevant and extremely thought-provoking.
Even better, at the suggestion of PLUS’s newly formed Diversity & Inclusion Committee, we extended an invitation to UNLV’s Multicultural Program for Engineering to send some of their students to the luncheon, which they eagerly accepted. I was fortunate enough to be sitting next to some of the UNLV students during Dr. Tyson’s presentation, and I had as much fun watching the students watch Dr. Tyson as I did watching the presentation itself. They were absolutely hanging on every word, relishing all the little “science-y” inside jokes. To me, this was just another shining example of all the amazing things that PLUS can do, not only within our own industry but for the community at large.
Our D&I Committee continues to look for new ways to bring diversity and inclusion to the forefront of everything PLUS does. If you have thoughts or ideas or would like to get involved, please don’t hesitate to contact me or the PLUS staff.
Leib Dodell is a member of the PLUS Board of Trustees and co-chair of the Diversity & Inclusion Committee.
i go to this blog every weekday. enough with the science-y posts. If i wanted to learn about science-y stuff i would not want to read it on the plus blog nor travel across the country to learn about it at a liability conference!