Speakers

Chris Albanese

Chris Albanese is an assistant professor of choral conducting at the IU Jacobs School of Music where he conducts the Grammy-nominated IU Singing Hoosiers and teaches courses in choral conducting. Albanese received his bachelor’s in music education and vocal performance from the University of Dayton, a master’s in vocal performance from Northwestern University, and a doctorate in choral conducting from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

As an educator, Albanese served on the choral faculties of Xavier University and Archbishop McNicholas High School in Cincinnati. He has facilitated master classes throughout the United States and Europe, and has presented clinics for the Ohio Music Education Association, Music America, Chanticleer Youth Choral Festival, and the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. 

An active performer, his solo credits include performances with the Dayton Opera, Cincinnati Bach Festival, Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, Ars Musica Chicago, and the Castleton Festival. He is currently authoring a handbook for choral conductors that draws on research in the areas of voice science, pedagogy, and choral acoustics.  

In addition to his experiences in western art music, Albanese has enjoyed fulfilling musical experiences in a variety of genres, including rock, pop, jazz, gospel, hip hop, and Hindustani classical music.

David Anspaugh

Born in Decatur, Ind., David Anspaugh, BS’70, after graduating from IU, attended the graduate program in cinema studies at the University of Southern California.

Anspaugh's professional life as a producer and director for television and film began as a partner with the creative group that brought us Hill Street Blues. He directed episodes of Miami Vice, St. Elsewhere, numerous television Movies of the Week, TV pilots, and many commercials for Chevrolet, Xerox, Kellogg’s, and others. His film directing debut, Hoosiers, earned him an Independent Spirit Nomination for Best First Feature. He also was the director of Rudy and The Game of Their Lives, as well as other movies.

He is working as director on his third play since 2014 for the Bloomington Playwrights Project. In 2015, he taught a class in directing for film and TV at IU.

Anspaugh has been honored with Emmy Awards, Golden Globes, the Peabody Award, the Directors Guild of America Award, and IU's Thomas Hart Benton Mural Medallion. He is recognized as an Indiana Living Legend and was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.

His greatest treasures do not live on a mantel—they are his two beautiful and talented daughters, artists in their own rights, Reilly and Vanessa, and his grandson, Ocean.

Debra Burns

Dr. Debra Burns, a board-certified music therapist, is a professor of music therapy and chair of the Department of Music and Arts Technology in the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI.

Burns holds a PhD in music education and music therapy from the University of Kansas, a master of music in music therapy from Illinois State University, and a bachelor’s in music education from Glenville State College in West Virginia. She specializes in music-based intervention research using mixed methodologies across the cancer treatment continuum from disease-directed treatment, survivorship, and end of life. She is also interested in the integration of music technologies within music therapy pedagogy and clinical practice.

She is a member of the American Music Therapy Association, the Children’s Oncology Group, and the IU Simon Cancer Center/Cancer Control and Population Sciences Program. She has served on various department councils and committees, and past recognition has included the Trustees Teaching Award from IU, the Abraham M. Max Distinguished Professor Award, the National Research/Publications Award, the Innovative Research Award, and the Scholarly Activity Award.

Mark Deal

Mark Deal, BS’79, MS’86, is the assistant athletic director for alumni relations at IU and immediate past president of the I Association. He played football for the Hoosiers as a center from 1975–78 and was an assistant coach for IU in 1979 and from 1996–99. His father, Russell “Mutt” Deal, BS’47, MS’52, was captain of the Hoosiers 1945 undefeated Big Ten championship team and is a member of the IU Athletics Hall of Fame. His brother, Mike Deal, BS’70, MS’71, played defensive back on the 1967 Big Ten championship and 1968 Rose Bowl teams.

Mark Deal is also an adjunct professor in the IU School of Public Health and teaches a class on the history of football.

Deal and his wife, Patricia, BSN’80, have one daughter, Carrie, BS’09, who played volleyball at IU, and one son, Casey, BS’13, MBA’18. The Deals have four grandchildren.

When Mike Deal’s granddaughter, Riley Hecklinski, lettered in Hoosier softball in 2018, the Deal family became the first in IU Athletics history to have four generations of letter winners.

Brittany Friesner

Brittany Friesner, BA’98, MA’11, associate director of the IU Cinema, researches and develops film programming and manages the Cinema’s marketing and engagement efforts, including donor cultivation and stewardship initiatives.

Friesner also supervises the assistant director of events, facilities, and guest services; supervises the design and marketing manager; and manages all aspects of the Cinema’s Program Advisory Board. Prior to working at the IU Cinema, she was assistant director of development at the IU Jacobs School of Music.

She has worked in programming, marketing, and theater operations for the Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, CMJ Music Marathon and Film Festival, Bloomington PRIDE Film Festival, and Seattle and Indianapolis international film festivals. She has served on the Heartland International Film Festival’s Narrative Short Film and Documentary Features juries and on the Grand Jury for the Indy Film Fest.

Friesner also leads the IU Cinema’s Creative Collaborations program, which reaches out to potential film programming partners. The Cinema joined Local First Bloomington and is working through some ideas for community screenings. Friesner said, “It’s very important to us that Bloomington knows that although we have IU in our name, we are a resource for everyone in the community.”

Mikaela Gilbert

Mikaela Gilbert is from Noblesville, Ind. She initially planned on a career in pharmacy, but a strong interest in business led her to the IU Kelley School of Business where she is a senior in entrepreneurship and corporate innovation and marketing. She is also working on a minor in informatics at the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering.

She’s involved in Alpha Kappa Psi, a professional business fraternity, and is the lead intern of a new student alliance team for the Center of Excellence for Women in Technology called Entrepreneurs and Tech. She is a member Kelley’s Civic Leadership Development and IU’s Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization, is an ambassador and a marketing director for the Kelley Living Learning Center, and serves as a Social Impact 360 mentor.

Gilbert also started a business centered on a children's toy she developed in high school, called Chatter Eggs. The toy is meant to expose children up to the age of five to foreign languages during an ideal time of development in their lives.

David Hardy

Dr. Richard Hardy is a professor of biology and the director of the Human Biology Program in the Department of Biology at the IU College of Arts and Sciences.

Hardy is a native of the United Kingdom and received his bachelor’s degree in genetics from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He moved to the United States in 1991 to pursue a PhD in microbiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis, he joined the faculty of IU in 2002.

Hardy’s research focuses on the replication and transmission of mosquito-borne viruses with particular emphasis on the infection of the mosquito vector. His research programs have been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation for the past 16 years. He also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Virology and on the organizing committee for the annual meeting of the American Society for Virology. He has served as the associate chair for teaching and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Biology.

During his time at IU, Hardy has taught a number of different undergraduate classes related to viruses and infectious disease, and he has received the IU Trustees Teaching Award four times.

Martha Hoover

As a former attorney in the Marion County (Ind.) prosecutor’s sex crimes division, Patachou Inc. owner Martha Sanders Hoover, BA’77, JD’80, had excellent, if unorthodox, training for the restaurant business. Without even one day spent working in the industry, she created a successful collection of establishments—Cafés Patachou, Petite Chou Bistro, Napolese Pizzeria, Public Greens, Bar One Fourteen, and Crispy Bird. In 1989, Hoover used premium ingredients prepared from scratch, and partnered with local vendors and farmers. Today, Patachou Inc. supports more Indiana family farms than all the other restaurants in Indianapolis combined. 

In 2013, Hoover created the Patachou Foundation to serve healthy meals to food-insecure children in Indianapolis. The foundation started small, adhered to smart growth strategies, and made an immediate impact. To date, over 80,000 healthy, nutritious meals have been served to children in our community.

Hoover and her restaurants have won many awards, including Food and Wine recognizing her as one of the “Most Innovative Women in Food and Drink” and Eater naming her “Empire Builder of the Year” in 2018.

Yuan Lin

Yuan Lin, MD, PhD, is a visiting assistant professor of epidemiology at the IU Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI. Her areas of research are genetic epidemiology, cancer epidemiology, and perinatal epidemiology.

Lin is interested in understanding how genetics, the environment, and lifestyle factors influence the susceptibility and etiology of nonmelanoma skin cancers. In the past, she has led genetic research on nonmelanoma skin cancer and successfully identified multiple susceptibility loci. Currently, she is leading an international skin cancer consortium to conduct the largest genome-wide association (GWAS) meta-analysis and post-GWAS analyses on nonmelanoma skin cancer to date. She is also applying new approaches that integrate GWAS data with genome-wide gene expression data and metabolite concentration data to investigate functionally relevant genes and metabolites.

Laurie Burns McRobbie

As IU’s 18th first lady, Laurie Burns McRobbie, MA’16, is an active ambassador for IU and its extensive alumni community. She is a founder of Women’s Philanthropy at IU and serves as co-chair of the Women’s Philanthropy Leadership Council.

A technologist in higher education for more than 25 years, McRobbie served in numerous management and executive positions at the University of Michigan and as an executive director with Internet2. In 2014, she was given the Leading Light Outstanding Leadership Award by the Indianapolis-based organization Women & Hi Tech.

McRobbie holds an adjunct faculty position in the IU School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, where she helped found the ServeIT service-learning clinic. She helped establish the IU Center of Excellence for Women in Technology, which seeks to create, foster, and improve academic and professional opportunities for women students, faculty, and staff working in or with technology.

In 2012, she was named Woman of the Year by the city of Bloomington’s Commission on the Status of Women, and in 2018 she was given the Women Excel Bloomington Award. She serves on numerous boards, including the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County, the Riley Children’s Hospital Endowment, and the Indiana Conference for Women.

Angelo Pizzo

Angelo Pizzo, BA’71, is the award-winning screenwriter and producer of the beloved inspirational sports dramas Hoosiers, Rudy, and The Game of Their Lives. All three films were directed by Pizzo’s IU classmate, David Anspaugh, with whom he shared Heartland Film Festival honors for Hoosiers and Rudy. In 2015, Pizzo made his debut as a director on My All-American.

After graduation from IU, Pizzo moved to the West Coast to attend film school at the University of Southern California, then began his career as a writer and producer at Warner Brothers Television. He then worked for Time-Life Films before striking out as an independent writer and producer. In addition to his feature film work, Pizzo served as associate producer on several television movies.

In addition to his film honors, Pizzo has received numerous awards that include an honorary doctorate from Franklin College, the IU Thomas Hart Benton Mural Medallion, the Governor’s Arts Award, the Indiana Living Legends Award, and he was named a Sagamore of the Wabash, the highest civilian honor given to a resident of Indiana. Pizzo, an avid supporter of IU basketball, is also an inductee of the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame and the Monroe County (Ind.) Sports Hall of Fame.

Larry Singell

Larry D. Singell was named executive dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University in 2011. As executive dean of the College, Singell administers one of the largest comprehensive liberal-arts colleges in the country, including more than 70 degree-granting departments and programs that span the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. The College is the oldest and largest division of IU, with more than 900 faculty and 12,000 graduate and undergraduate students.

Under his leadership, the College recently became the administrative home of three new IU schools: the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, The Media School, and the School of Art, Architecture, and Design.

Prior to his arrival at IU, Singell was a 23-year member of the faculty of the University of Oregon. He served as associate dean in the UO College of Arts and Sciences from 2008 to 2011, and as head of the Department of Economics from 2006 to 2008.

Singell serves on the editorial board and is a former editor of the Economics of Education Review, the leading journal in the economics of education. He is also a professor of economics at the College.

Sage Steele

Sage Steele, BS’95, one of ESPN’s most popular and respected commentators, joined the sports channel in 2007, and currently serves as co-anchor for the 6 p.m. ET SportsCenter. As lead host for SportsCenter on the Road, she provides coverage for the biggest sports events of the year, including the NBA Finals, Super Bowl, and World Series.

Steele began her television career at WSBT-TV in South Bend, Ind., then moved to WISH-TV in Indianapolis, where she became the beat reporter for the Indianapolis Colts and covered the 1997 NCAA Men’s Final Four, NASCAR, and the IndyCar Series.

In 1998, she moved to Tampa, Fla., to be the beat reporter for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and subsequently covered the 1999 NCAA Men’s Final Four. In 2000, she joined Fox Sports Net and covered Super Bowl XXXV. In 2001, she anchored the debut of Comcast SportsNet, serving the Washington D.C./Baltimore region. She went on to anchor SportsNite for six years and was a beat reporter and host of a magazine show for the Baltimore Ravens from 2001–05.

Steele is a board member of the Pat Tillman Foundation and is passionate about working alongside military veterans.

Susan Walsh

Dr. Susan Walsh is an assistant professor in the Department of Biology and graduate coordinator of the Forensic and Investigative Sciences Program at IUPUI. Walsh earned her PhD in forensic genetics at Erasmus University in the Netherlands. She completed postdoctoral work at Yale University before joining IUPUI in 2014.

Most of her research is focused on understanding the genetics of human physical appearance and developing prediction systems for forensic and anthropological use. She has helped develop (with collaborators in the Netherlands) prediction systems for pigmentation (eye, hair, and skin color) and hair structure from DNA. She is currently working on understanding the genetics behind craniofacial variation with collaborators in the United States and Belgium to enable biometric comparisons using projections solely obtained from DNA.

Jakobi Williams

For the IU College of Arts and Sciences, Jakobi Williams is Ruth N. Halls Professor; director of graduate studies and associate professor, African American and African Diaspora Studies; and associate professor, History. Prior to joining the faculty at IU, he served as an associate professor of history at the University of Kentucky and an adjunct professor at UCLA, and he was a chancellor postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for one year.

Williams’s research centers on questions of resistance and the social justice revolutions found within the historic African American community. In his most recent book, From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago, Williams demonstrates that the city’s Black Power movement was a response to and an extension of the city’s civil rights movement.

He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, a National Humanities Center fellowship, and a Big Ten Academic Alliance-Academic Leadership Program award. He is writing two books, Neighborhoods First and Global Call of Power to the People, which examine the impact of the Black Panther Party on non-African American groups domestically and abroad as a model for grassroots community organizing to address disparities and disadvantages.

IU Singing Hoosiers

The Grammy-nominated IU Singing Hoosiers have a long and storied tradition of excellence in the vocal arts, performing popular contemporary vocal music ranging from The Great American Songbook, jazz, and Broadway to modern choral repertoire and the hits of today. Their performances include dazzling choreography and fun, energetic, entertaining programs that appeal to all audiences and all ages. The current ensemble, under the direction of Chris Albanese, is comprised of more than 80 student singers and instrumentalists from the IU Jacobs School of Music as well as students from various majors across IU.

As IU’s ambassadors of song, the Singing Hoosiers have entertained millions in 18 states and more than 26 continents, countries, and regions, including Europe, Australia, Asia, and the Caribbean, and have collaborated with notable guests, including Sylvia McNair, MM’83, DM Hon’98; Tim Noble, MM’89; the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra; and the Cincinnati Pops under the direction of Erich Kunzel.

The Singing Hoosiers perform several concerts on the road and at home on the campus of IU Bloomington. They also frequently sing at Big Ten athletic events.