The annual spring PLATO Lecture Series, which highlights innovation in computing and technology, owes its origin to the work of John Aikin and Evergreen Students in the early 1980s. One of those students, Greg Starling ’78, went on to form Starling Consulting Inc., a technology consulting firm in Olympia. Aikin endowed royalties from the computer aided instruction (CAI) courses developed by himself and his students around 1985 to fund the PLATO Lecture Series and PLATO Technology Grants in perpetuity.

Disney Pixar Monsters University

Also called the Cutting Edge Symposium, the lecture series is coordinated by different faculty members every year. This year’s theme is “Greeners on the Cutting Edge,” featuring an extraordinary cast of Evergreen alumni involved with interesting and innovative technology research and development. Organized by faculty members Judy Cushing, Richard Weiss, Paul Pham, Rik Smoody, Sheryl Shulman, and Neal Nelson, the planning for this spring’s lecture series started over a year ago. Judy Cushing, currently offering “Student Originated Software” and “Undergraduate Research in Scientific Inquiry”, remarked that “people don’t think of Evergreen as a hot spot for technological innovation,” and that with this year’s alumni panel “we are hoping to change that perception”.

With a small annual budget to work with, panelists traditionally don’t receive an honorarium and often the speakers or their companies pay for travel. In addition, this year’s speakers aren’t coming to Evergreen’s Olympia campus simply to give a lecture; they provide reading for students in partnering academic programs and visiting their classrooms to participate in seminar or give a talk. After their lectures, many of this year’s speakers will stay on campus to work with students. Dylan Sisson ’94 from Pixar worked with students in the CCAM (Center for Creative and Applied Media) after his lecture on April 14. Select students have also had the opportunity to join the speakers and organizing faculty members for dinner after each lecture.

Notable speakers for the rest of the 2014 lecture series include Moishe Lettvin ‘03, an engineering manager at Etsy, and Lynda Weinman ‘76, Co-Founder and Executive Chair of lynda.com.

More information on the lecture series, speakers, and abstract materials can be found on Evergreen Lecture’s Blog.