UConn 360: The UConn Podcast

This week, we sit down with UConn sports expert Mike Enright to go over some of the most memorable moments in Husky history, and we learn that the prehistory of Downtown Storrs is longer than we originally guessed. 

This week, Professor Rachael Gabriel, director of the Neag School of Education's Reading and Language Arts Center, talks about what she's done to help students, parents, and teachers stay on top of reading education during the pandemic, and we learn about the fatal flaw in a plan to illegally change the grades of students. 

This week we sit down with alumna Lara Herscovitch '95 about balancing a career in social work with a career in writing and performing music; and we travel to storied Fort Trumbull to learn how UConn students there got the news out in the 1940s. 

This week, we hear from Coach Geno Auriemma; we meet Louis Goffinet '17, who launched a local charitable project in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; and we don mismatched Colonial uniforms to march alongside the mysterious UConn 49ers. 

This week, UConn Humanities Institute Fellow Siavash Samei '19 PhD tells us about his work on archaeological digs in what used to be Mesopotamia, we learn about a class so good students deliberately flunked so they could take it again, and we almost forget to brag about an award. 

With marches and protests in small towns and big cities across the country in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, a black man, by Minneapolis police officers, we convened a panel of UConn faculty members affiliated with the Africana Studies Institute to help us understand the events unfolding across the nation and the world. Joining us are Melina Pappademos, associate professor of history and Africana Studies and director of the institute; Sean Salvant, associate professor of English and Africana Studies; Bede Agocha, assistant professor in residence of psychological sciences and Africana Studies; and David Embrick, associate professor of sociology and Africana Studies. 

This week, Professor Jeffrey Ogbar talks about the art and lasting influence of Little Richard, and we journey back to the 1940s, when a professor was on trial for suspected anti-American sympathies.

This week we bid a bittersweet farewell to Maxine Philavong, who graduated from UConn on May 9. We also talk with Prof. Nu-Ahn Tran about her work in archives that shed new light on the origins of the Vietnam War, and learn about a week that convulsed the university in 1970.

This week, we check in with students who are building a Minecraft graduation for UConn seniors and we learn about life on campus in 1905 from the perspective of an original member of the women's basketball team. 

There's still a lockdown, we're still recording from four socially distant locations, and we're still bringing the high heat: this week, Prof. Sarah McAnulty talks to us about adorable squids and the genesis of the Skype-a-Scientist initiative, and we visit Maxine's History Corner to learn what UConn students were forbidden to do during the 1918-1920 flu pandemic (hint: pouches were involved).