Faculty & Staff Research Mini-Symposia

The Mini-Symposia Series is a new extension of the Faculty and Staff Research Symposium. Spread across the academic year, it features four half-day events—two in the fall and two in the spring—designed to highlight and revisit presentations from the previous full symposium. The goal is to offer more opportunities to engage with colleagues’ work in a more focused and accessible format.

Four half-day symposia will take place throughout the academic year—two in the fall and two in the spring. These mini-symposia serve as curated showcases of talks and reimagined sessions from the previous year’s full-day symposium, giving attendees a chance to engage with presentations they may have missed.

Each symposium will feature interdisciplinary panels, roundtables, forums, and poster presentations. Participants might discuss elements of a current book project or an article; a program, initiative or partnership; an artwork or performance (with clips and examples); a current line of research experiments; an archive or digital project; a musical composition or a piece of creative writing; an experience in leadership or strategy — or any work in which they are engaged.

The 2025-2026 academic year will feature the Mini-Symposia on the following dates: Friday, September 26, 2025; Friday, November 7, 2025; Friday, January 30, 2026; and Friday, February 20, 2026.

The schedule for Friday, September 26, 2025, is as follows:

Morning Session: 10:30–11:45 a.m.

Panel 1: From Classroom to Career: Connecting Liberal Arts Learning with Professional Futures

Chair: Olivier Delers, Arts & Sciences, Languages, Literatures, & Cultures

• Elizabeth Soady, Career Services
• Brandy Ewell, Career Services
• Michael Marsh-Soloway, Arts & Sciences, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures/Global Studio
• Karina Vázquez, Arts & Sciences; Languages, Literatures, and Cultures/Global Studio

Panel 2: The Ethics of Exchange: Money, Power, and Public Life

Chair: Sandra Peart, Jepson School of Leadership Studies, Ethics and Economics

• Jeffrey Hass, Arts & Sciences, Sociology & Anthropology - Violent Capital: Violence, War, and Hierarchy
• Shakun Mago, Robins School of Business, Economics - Political Identity, Income Inequality, and Joy of Destruction: An Experiment with Democrats and Republicans
• Derek Miller, Bonner Center for Civic Engagement - Civic Learning and Action Goals

Lunch: 11:45 a.m.–12:45 p.m.

Afternoon Session: 1:30–2:45 p.m.

Panel 1: The Moral Economies of Modern Life: Money, Power, and Responsibility

Chair: David Hale, Business Affairs

• Carol Summers, Arts & Sciences - History Fighting with Money: Patriotic Thrift and Accountable Citizenship in the British World, 1939-45
• Monika Kukar-Kinney, Robins School of Business, Marketing - The Effect of Financial Literacy and Use of Different Payment Methods on Compulsive Buying among Young Adults
• Bob Spires, School of Professional & Continuing Studies, Graduate Education - Neoliberalism Won't Go Away in Nonprofits
• Rick Mayes, Arts & Sciences, Health Studies - Medicare Advantage and the Corporatization of U.S. Health Care: “It’s Not Personal, It’s Strictly Business”

Panel 2: Learning, Living, Acting: The Work of Community Change

Chair: Thad Williamson, Jepson School of Leadership Studies, PPEL

• Tom Shields, School of Professional & Continuing Studies, Education
• Kyle Redican, Arts & Sciences, Geography, Environment, & Sustainability - Learn and Live Together: Building a User Experience to Explore Housing and Education Segregation in the Richmond Metropolitan Area
• Sylvia Gale, Bonner Center for Civic Engagement - Provoking Civic Action: Lessons from Professional Power Shifters