On April 1, Linh Phung, Director of the English Language Program and Pittsburgh Pathways at Chatham University, and a group of international students and language instructors attended the TEDxCMU 2017 Conference at Carnegie Mellon University. The event was entirely organized by CMU students and featured inspiring talks about artificial intelligence, data science, photography, design, and even water bottle flipping. The audience also enjoyed music and dance performances.

The students and faculty from Chatham walked away from the conference with broad smiles, new ideas, and inspiration. Abdullah Almalki, ELP Student, said, “I’m so inspired by them as the speeches opened many ideas and stimulated my thinking.” Abdullah was fascinated by the liveliness of the talks and found them similar to the recorded TED talks he studied in the High Intermediate Listening/Speaking class in the English Language Program.

Marina Razgarina, ELP Lecturer, especially enjoyed talks where people spoke about their personal experiences and emotions. She thought these talks, when used in the classroom, were “more likely to “grab” students’ attention” and increase their engagement in classroom activities.

Oksana Moroz, ELP Lecturer, enjoyed the humor in many of the talks. She also thought about how to use technologies purposefully to maintain happiness amidst myriad distractions in this digital era and how to embrace both arts and sciences in her daily life. With positive experiences, everyone said they would like to go to more TED events in the future.