Westmont Downtown
Click here for all 2024-2025 lectures
An Invitation from Westmont President Gayle Beebe
I hope you will join us for some meaningful “Conversations that Matter.” At Westmont, we believe in engaging the great issues of society and the vexing dilemmas of our global community as we prepare our students to take their place in the world.
This discussion series gives the larger Santa Barbara community more opportunities to hear from Westmont faculty. During these sessions, sponsored by the Westmont Foundation Board, professors from a variety of fields will address current issues facing our society from the perspective of their disciplines.
I’m proud to serve an institution with such outstanding faculty, and I hope you will take advantage of the opportunity to hear them speak and engage in conversation with them.
Goals of Westmont Downtown:
- To provide an opportunity for Westmont faculty to speak in their area of expertise.
- To engage the community in meaningful, substantive and lively conversation.
- To demonstrate the value of constructive dialogue with people of differing opinions.
- To demonstrate the commitment of Westmont to the life of the mind and to invite the larger community to join that conversation.
Upcoming Westmont Downtown Lecture:
Fall 2025:
Talk Explores Energy and Climate from the Ground Up
Ben Carlson, assistant professor of physics at Westmont, explores the scientific foundations of today’s most pressing energy and climate issues in a Westmont Downtown Lecture on Thursday, Oct. 9, at 5:30 p.m. at the Community Arts Workshop, 631 Garden St., in downtown Santa Barbara. The talk, “Energy and Climate Through the Lens of Basic Science,” is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations required. Free parking is available on the streets surrounding CAW or in nearby city parking lots. For more information, please call (805) 565-6051.
Carlson, who earned a doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, says the lecture expands on a course, Physics for Future Presidents, that focuses on the impact of basic science on the modern world.
“I’ll highlight how the concept of energy density is a lens through which to examine energy — from batteries, to fossil fuels to nuclear power — and explore the challenges and opportunities of transitioning to sustainable energy systems,” he says.
Earlier this year, Carlson and thousands of researchers worldwide were honored with the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, awarded to the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, a particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, as well as several related experiments.
In 2022, he received a $200,000 National Science Foundation grant to further his search for evidence of the presence of mysterious dark matter.
He joined the Westmont faculty in 2021 after teaching at the University of Pittsburgh as a Samuel Langley postdoctoral fellow.
The Westmont Foundation sponsors Westmont Downtown: Conversations About Things That Matter as well as the annual Westmont President’s Breakfast in late February.
COMING UP...
Save the date Monday, Dec. 8, at 5:30 p.m. for “Tariff Nation: The Rise, Fall, and Return of America’s Most Contentious Tax.”
Alastair Su, Westmont assistant professor of history, offers a 250-year overview of how the United States imposed tariffs, starting with Hamilton’s Reports of Manufactures, got rid of them in WWII before finding support for them again starting with Trump’s first administration.