News and Events

This unique symposium is a highlight of the College’s award-winning Brain Awareness Week, Monday, October 30 through Friday, November 3.

In its eleventh year, the Glassman Symposium returns with on-campus interdisciplinary faculty and alumni talks. This year’s topics focus on psychosocial stress reactivity, spinal cord injury pain, the dubious science behind shaken baby syndrome, mental health correlates of street harassment, and finding pain relief. The talks will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Tarble Room, Brown Hall on Middle Campus.

The following lectures will be presented:

• “Beyond Cortisol: Moderators of Psychosocial Stress Reactivity”—Nora McLean, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Lake Forest College
• “Predicting Pain After Spinal Cord Injury”—Brittany Avonts ’17, PhD candidate at Rush University
• “The Dubious Science Behind Shaken Baby Syndrome and Its Dangerous Implications in the Courtroom”—Stephanie Caparelli ’04, JD, Chair of Legal Studies, Assistant Professor of Politics, Lake Forest College
• “Beyond Catcalls: Reassessing the Measurement and Mental Health Correlates of Street Harassments”—Kayla Huber '16, PhD candidate, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
• “Finding Pain Relief”—Steve McGaraughty, PhD, Lecturer in Neuroscience, Lake Forest College, and Director, AbbVie labs

The research poster session will be held from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. in Calvin Durand Hall on Friday, November 3. It will feature nearly 50 research posters of original student and faculty research conducted by current students and recent alumni at Lake Forest, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, Johns Hopkins University, Rush University, Chicago Botanic Gardens, Shirley Ryan Ability Labs, University of Minnesota, Loyola University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Auburn University.

This year students from the College’s undergraduate society for neuroscience, Nu Rho Psi, are collaborating with the art department to host a competition for student artwork depicting “Exercise and the Brain,” which is the 2023 national education and outreach theme. A faculty panel will judge the art entries that will be displayed during the Glassman Symposium; the top prize will be awarded during the Glassman student celebration.

“This is the first time we’re ever doing an art competition for the Glassman Symposium,” said Lorena Monroy '24, co-president of Nu Rho Psi. “We’re excited to see what the students will come up with. I’m confident that it’s going to be great.”

The neuroscience and biochemistry and molecular biology double major is looking forward to presenting her RFU research for the second year and is grateful to have the experience helping to organize such an important academic event. 

“Students are very involved and appreciate the opportunity to do research on and off campus and to present that research to the campus community,” she said. “It’s a really fun and very successful event, which we expect to be even better as we have more posters and more people presenting than last year.”

The Brain Awareness Week Faculty/Student Symposium was renamed the Robert B. Glassman Memorial Brain, Mind, and Behavior Symposium in 2013 in honor of the late Professor of Psychology Robert Glassman, who played a leading role in developing Lake Forest’s popular neuroscience major.

The Glassman Symposium and all Brain Awareness Week events are free and open to the public.

Related Links:

• Glassman Brain, Mind, Behavior Symposium
• Brain Awareness Week