TEDxLakeland will take place at the Bradley Theatre on Thursday, Feb.13, 2020 at 7:00 p.m.  

This event is independently produced from TED talks and the second time to be held at Lakeland. 

TEDxLakeland was started to give students opportunities to have their own platform to demonstrate their messages all over the world. According to Charlie Krebs, a coordinator of TEDxLakeland, “Part of the idea is to give students opportunities to have an international platform. We have a link where people can livestream our event…Somebody could go to this link, click on the link, and they could watch the TEDx talks from wherever they want. So, anybody that wants to watch it, especially alumni that used to go to school here, they can watch it from wherever they live.” 

Nine speakers will present their thoughts about the theme “Five Years from Now” and three of them are Lakeland students.  

Maia Reed, a senior student at Lakeland, is going to give a speech about her pledge to be a “Lifelong Learner.” She explained her motivation to be a speaker. “It’s a little frightening like I’m used to being behind the stage and running things, so doing something like this definitely scares me. I’ve listened to a lot of TED talks and TEDx speakers so I was like ‘Oh, I can actually be one of them.’” 

For the student who is going to watch, “Just be open minded…Maybe you’d like to be up there next time and I’d love to see more students do it. We have a lot of knowledge to share, even though we’re not even graduated yet,” Reed stated.   

Randall Moyer, a junior, will present on “Positive Mindset and Overcoming Adversity,” which comes from his experiences. He describes his speech as being on “positive psychology and the destructive power of negative thoughts.” He elaborated his reason for giving this speech. “The main reason I’m doing this speech is to put into practice what I’ve learned from the past year. This is the challenge, or the change, I needed to get to a place where I needed to be. I needed to challenge myself in order to pull myself out of the dark place I was in.” 

Emily Sonntag, a senior, is giving a speech about her idea of “Evolving Schools, Evolving Educators” in the educational field. “I’ve been working with elementary school age kids for forever. I worked at a summer camp for four years, I was in a first grade classroom in high school helping out, and I teach swim lessons. I’ve always kind of been around kids. When it came to choosing a topic to talk about, it was kind of a no-brainer,” Sonntag stated.  

She also mentioned “I think all of the topics being talked about are super important and really informative. I think it’s really beneficial for people to go and hear.” 

Others who will also speak at the TEDxLakeland 2020 are: Yaron Zoller (LU business faculty) “Inclusion, not just Diversity,” Mary Dantzler (LU adjunct faculty) “Changing our Communication with the Dying,” Lisa Koenecke (LU adjunct faculty) “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: Lessons from a Cornfield to the Future OR Bystander to Ally: A Voyage to 2025,” Marilyn Bugenhagen “What Thresholds Might You Pass Through and How We Can Help Each Other Through Them,” Marissa Jablonski “Plastics and Rethinking our use of Them,” and Toni Marinucci “Diets Aren’t the Answer. Trust Me, I’m a Dietitian.”