Imagine you’ve devoted years and years, even decades, gathering knowledge and insights in your given fields of study. Now imagine you’re asked to encapsulate some of what you’ve learned — in a single minute.
You might anticipate thoughtful professors — leaders in their field — would hesitate or simply say no to the request. You would be wrong.
“Got a Minute?” is the resulting, just-launched video series produced by ASU Now, a lively and diverse collection of insights from faculty and other university leaders, each delivered in one minute. That’s 60 seconds maximum, produced with the simple notion that everyone — no matter how busy — always has a spare minute.
Shot in a white space with no music or other extraneous distractions, each participant speaks directly to the camera and provides a lens into their world. The first seven topics range from dogs, kindness and creativity, to racism and the internet, to the universe and the sublime.
Psychology professor Clive Wynne, who directs ASU’s Canine Science Collaboratory and explores canine cognition and behavior, was the first faculty member to sign up for the series.
“It was a really stimulating challenge to express the essence of something I feel strongly about in just 60 seconds,” Wynne said, “instead of droning on for hours like I usually do.”
Steven Tepper, dean of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, was also an enthusiastic participant, offering his take on creativity.
“I think we live in a world that requires cutting through the noise and overcoming the attention-scarcity problem we face,” Tepper explained. “How do you create the ‘bait’ to hook people into a larger conversation or exploration? How do you tap into their curiosity? ‘Got a Minute’ was a wonderful challenge. Take a big idea and make it accessible to the world.”
Also included in the initial collection are dance luminary Liz Lerman (kindness), psychology professor Lani Shiota (the sublime), historian Matthew Delmont (racism), cybersecurity expert Jamie Winterton (the internet) and physicist Lawrence Krauss (the universe).
In coming weeks, computer scientist Nadya Bliss will offer her view on geeks, education professor Frank Serafini will take on teaching, and physicist Paul Davies will explore the world of aliens. This is just the beginning of ASU Now’s growing compendium.
You can check out the series — and suggest a topic for a future video — here: https://asunow.asu.edu/got-a-minute
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