Theme: Precipice

TEDxOhioStateUniversity presents our sixth annual conference: Precipice this year on March 25th. This year's lineup includes 12 incredible speakers, ready to engage you in meaningful discussion and ideas worth spreading.

Tickets for the event are on sale NOW and can be purchased at tedx.osu.edu/precipice. Tickets are $20 for OSU students/ $25 for non-OSU students. The event registration will begin at 9:00am, and the event will last from 10:00am to 2:00pm. The day will be broken into two sessions, with a break for lunch in between. Lunch will be provided to our guests at the Ohio Union.

The list of those speaking at TEDxOhioStateUniversity: Precipice are:

Greg Bixler
Mikayla Bodey
Quinn Capers
Brenda Chaney
Harmony Project
Sara Gombash Lampe
Karen Lewis
Mark Rudoff
Kevin McClatchy
Tanya Menon
Drew Murray
Madison Swart

We look forward to seeing you and sharing in these amazing ideas with you on March 25th. Get your tickets before they sell out!

The Ohio Union
1739 North High Street
Columbus, Ohio, 43210
United States

CELLOHIO

Student ensemble of cellists at The Ohio State University.

Brenda Chaney

Educator

Brenda is a senior lecturer in sociology. She majored in sociology/criminology because she was interested in what we do to people who break the rules. This interest has led to working in, volunteering in, teaching in, and researching about prison with a special interest in the women who are in prison. She started the Inside-Out Prison Exchange program at the Ohio Reformatory for Women several years ago and also participates in a book discussion group with women serving life sentences. When not working, she spends time with her family (she has very cute grandkids), puppies, shy kittens, and friends. She also tries to attract monarch butterflies to her yard and loves to read. Give her a chance, and she will give you a lecture on the evils of plastic or the politics of animal rights.

Drew Murray

Musician

Drew Murray is a magician, artist, and entrepreneur. He currently resides in Columbus, but travels across the country performing hundreds of events each year. He started learning magic at just 10 years old. Since then, Drew’s career has skyrocketed, and his talents have enabled him to acquire an impressive client list including the FBI, Progressive Insurance, Macy’s, Abercrombie & Fitch, and many others. Drew graduated from The Ohio State University in 2014.

Greg Bixler

Global Entrepreneur, Innovator, Educator

Dr. Bixler serves as a senior lecturer in the Department of Engineering Education at The Ohio State University and has 15 years of engineering experience. He has developed curriculum and enjoys teaching first year through graduate students on topics ranging from the fundamentals of engineering to appropriate technology development. Integrated in his courses are personal experiences as a global entrepreneur and innovator developed while working at Battelle Memorial Institute and Design Outreach (DO). At Battelle, he managed interdisciplinary teams of engineers working on a variety of Research and Development programs. Inspired by the Battelle model, Dr. Bixler co-founded DO in 2007, which is a Christian humanitarian engineering nonprofit comprised of 5 staff, 75 volunteers, and 12 partner organizations creating sustainable solutions to problems people in developing countries are facing. His endeavors have lead him to 18 countries around the world – while serving as CEO of DO, resident d

Jeffrey Haase

Jeffrey Haase is an Associate Professor and Coordinator for the Interior Design major in the Department of Design. He is an architect, designer, and artist whose research is broadly defined as innovative place making. Specifically, his work is “process-based making” that explores spatial conditions of scale, representation, emotional content, and material innovation. These research efforts have resulted in local exhibitions, international workshops, and presentations at conferences in United States, Europe, and the Middle East. Prior to teaching, Jeffrey was a principal, lead designer, and project coordinator at Design Collective Inc. He was recognized for his inventive restaurant interior designs, including many Columbus venues such as Martini Ristorante, Columbus Fish Market, Mitchell’s Steakhouse, Cap City Diner, and Figlio’s. Many of his interior designs were honored with awards and featured in professional periodicals and books. Awarded and published projects also included designs in healthcare, hospitality and the corporate market. Jeffrey loves playing ice hockey, squash, and tennis and often volunteers for Project Healing Waters, an organization that introduces fly-fishing and fly tying to American Veterans.

Kevin McClatchy

Educator, Artist

Kevin McClatchy is a faculty member in the Department of Theatre at The Ohio State University and the Director of the OSU Shakespeare and Autism Project. He has also been a professional actor for more than twenty years. Originally from Philadelphia, he attended Washington and Lee University, where he earned a degree in Journalism and English and played basketball. He also has an MFA in Acting from Ohio State. Kevin had never acted or even seen a professional production of a play until he moved to New York just prior to his 24th birthday. From his first real theatre experience — seeing the original cast of Lanford Wilson’s play Burn This — to today, Kevin has felt privileged to be part of acting and teaching communities. Kevin and his wife Lisa have been married for 23 years and they have two children, Eirann and Kavanagh.

Madison Swart

Poet, Bleeding Heart of Activism

Madison is a fourth-year at The Ohio State University in the College of Social Work with a minor in psychology. She is the founder and president of the 501-c3 nonprofit organization, Project HEAL – Ohio State, where she works to raise money to create scholarships that provide eating disorder patients with vital medical care denied to them through their insurers. She is working for Teach For America after graduation, and hopes to get her Masters in Social Work and Public Affairs as well. Madison has dedicated her life to raising awareness of the issues many are unaware of. She enjoys civic engagement and participating in various events around the greater Columbus area that work to give back to the public. Aside from volunteering, Madison finds comfort in local coffee shops, thrift stores, and the knowledge that she is working as hard as she can to help the right people get into power, in hopes they can carry on her vision for change. Madison hopes that whatever she does and wherever

Mark Rudoff

Professor at-large and Cello Yoda

Mark Rudoff is Associate Professor of Cello and Chamber Music in the OSU School of Music. He holds Bachelor and Master of Music Degrees from The Juilliard School, and a Bachelor of Law from University of Saskatchewan. Over the course of what passes for his career, Mark has played in, conducted, and managed orchestras, coached more than 100 string quartets, practiced law as an insurance and insolvency litigator, presented a regular classical music column on CBC radio, and worked in film as a cello stunt double. Closer to the academic mainstream, he has given papers before the College Music Society and American String Teachers Association, and has published an article about music in Alberta Law Review and one that treats legal concepts in American String Teacher. At Ohio State, Mark is a STEP mentor and participates in the STEAM Factory. He has been researching and lecturing on bullshit since 2006.

Mikayla Bodey

Aspiring Farmer and Public Servant

Mikayla Bodey is a fourth-year student in the John Glenn College of Public Affairs. Mikayla grew up on a small family farm in west-central Ohio, and is the first in her family to attend college. Mikayla has dedicated her collegiate career to agriculture and food policy, finding innovative solutions to food insecurity, exciting energy around progressive agriculture, and voicing the needs of America’s rural communities. Mikayla has interned with the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, National 4-H Council, and The Ohio Development Services Agency. Mikayla also assisted in a research project evaluating the social capital of Cooperative Extension educators in underserved communities. On campus, she is involved in Undergraduate Student Government, Sphinx Senior Class Honorary, and the University Panel on Food Sustainability. In her spare time, Mikayla enjoys spending time on her family farm with her Clydesdale horse ‘Sassy’, making homemade applesauce, and sewing.

Quinn Capers IV

Healer, Teacher

Dr. Quinn Capers, IV is an interventional cardiologist, medical educator, and Associate Dean of Admissions in The Ohio State University College of Medicine. He has personally performed over 4,000 coronary stent procedures, many in heart attack patients, and is an expert at performing these procedures through the radial artery in the patient’s wrist. His physician peers have named him one of America’s “Best Doctors” annually from 2009 to 2016, and his patient satisfaction scores placed in the 90th percentile nationally in 2013, 2014, and 2015. An avid student of African American history, he has turned history into action by serving disadvantaged communities, mentoring numerous future physicians from high school through advanced clinical training, and teaching medical students and others on the topic of medical injustices suffered by minority communities. He is a passionate advocate for diversity enhancement in medicine as a strategy to reduce healthcare disparities and was instrumenta

Sara Gombash Lampe

Investigator of all neurons

Sara Gombash Lampe is a postdoctoral researcher at The Ohio State University who has expertise in neurodegenerative, neuromuscular, and neuroimmune diseases. Prior to graduate school, Sara attended Baldwin-Wallace University, where she majored in Neuroscience and Biology. During that time she studied memory conditioning and extinction and neuroplasticity after limb loss. She graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a Ph.D. in neuroscience, where she specialized in aging, Parkinson’s disease, and gene therapy research. She completed her research as a student scholar at Michigan State University and was awarded a pre-doctoral Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award. Her interest in gene therapy carried her into her first postdoctoral fellowship, where she studied nervous system and gastrointestinal tract function in a pediatric neuromuscular disease called Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Further, she used the nervous system in the gut to investigate what could be happening i

Tanya Menon

Researcher, Writer, Teacher

Tanya Menon is an Associate Professor in the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University. Her research explores the schematics people use to organize information about the people, groups, and networks that surround them. These mental models of the social world reveal both how we solve problems at work and how we create them. She has taught award winning courses on Power and Persuasion, Negotiations, and Organizational Behavior to students and managers all over the world. In her spare time, Tanya enjoys hanging out with her husband and daughter, recalling her college days as a competitive tennis player, reading advice columns (and justifying that as psychological research), and hypocritically lecturing others about the importance of reducing clutter and finding calm in their daily lives.