When One Size No Longer Fits All: Genomics & Precision Healthcare

with USC Dean Emeritus Hal Slavkin & Pablo Bringas

Beginning Wednesday January 4, 12:00 – 1:30pm

As we peek into the future, personalized health care is on the horizon and is being called “precision healthcare” by some.  Hal Slavkin, Professor and Dean Emeritus from USC returns to Crowell Library, offering a class about the recent advances in health care based new understanding of the human genome.  In six sessions, participants will explore evolution, healthcare and biotechnology, with a focus on the new personalized healthcare options.   Advances in human, animal, plant and microbial genomics is rapidly enhancing the understanding of genes, allowing innovations in designing new organisms for specific approaches to diagnosis and drug treatments. The mantra “faster, cheaper and better” is rapidly advancing genomics, especially with drug designs for specific individualized cancers.

It was not that long ago when physicians, dentists, pharmacists, nurses and other health care professionals had only a few treatment options for patients with seemingly similar diagnosis for illnesses or disorders. The result was that some patients responded well to treatment while others did not.  The different outcomes were due to the patients’ different physiologies and immune systems, complications with other biological and external factors and even misdiagnoses. 

In addition to lectures and discussion, this course will feature a few hands-on experiences to demonstrate how phenotype connects with genotype; the principles underlying the development and evolutionary process of how an organism grows, and how novel and innovative gene editing techniques can address major human diseases and disorders such as malaria, birth defects, and cancers. The key goal of this course is to enable the curious non-scientist or healthcare professional to appreciate and understand regularities and irregularities in patterns of inheritance and diseases in all living organisms.  No reservations are required for these classes.

Professor Hal Slavkin, Dean Emeritus, University of Southern California School of Dentistry retired in June 2014 after 46 years on the full-time faculty. During his academic career he served as Chair of Biochemistry, Dean of the School of Dentistry, and served as the Director for the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. Professor Slavkin lives in Marina Del Rey.

Sing Your Own Song: An Opera Love Story

Thursday, November 17 - 7:00 pm

The documentary Sing Your Own Song: an Opera Love Story, shows how a multi-generational group of Southern California opera singers – some of whom have performed together every Sunday night for fifty years – must find a way to keep their tradition alive when their performance venue is forced to close.  Audience members as well as performers relate how they first came to appreciate opera and how this group of strangers, people from all walks of life and of different generations, became a second family bonded together by their love of opera.

The film demonstrates how a passion for music can enrich our lives. One doesn’t need to be an opera lover to be swept away by this passion and the commitment these singers bring to their art.  Anyone who has followed a dream and worked hard to make it come true will recognize a part of themselves in this story. 

Producer/Director Anne Davis O’Neal is an award-winning theatre director.  Sing Your Own Song: an Opera Love Story is her first documentary and she was virtually a "one person band," not only producing and directing, but also shooting and editing the movie.  Anne gained her technical background working in television production at Disney.  She has created promotional videos for nonprofit arts organizations, educational programs and live theatrical productions.   She has also filmed and edited short videos for fundraising campaigns on various crowdfunding platforms.

This very special evening will include the producer/director and some of the singers from the film to talk about the film and answer questions.  Join us Thursday, November 17 at 7:00 p.m. in the Library’s Barth Community Room.  Light refreshments will be served.

More Jazz & More Swing!

Jazz & Swing from A to Z: The Story of America's Music

Six Tuesdays, 12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. beginning October 18

The wildly popular Dr. Thom Mason, USC Professor Emeritus of Jazz Studies at the Thornton School of Music, returns to Crowell Public Library with a new six-session course sponsored by the Friends of the Library.  Mason riffs off the popular classes that he taught over the last two years, savoring the stories of Louis Armstrong and the New Orleans sound with its African roots, Big Band stars Charlie Barnet and Les Brown, up to Tony Bennett and the jazz stars of today.

The series schedule this year will be:

October 18:                       New Orleans & Louis Armstrong

October 25:                       African Roots

November 1:                     Charlie Barnet & Les Brown

November 8.                     1950s & 1960s

November 15:                   Tony Bennett

November 22:                   Jazz & Swing Today

Thom Mason was chairman of the department of jazz studies at the USC Thornton School of Music from 1983 to 1996. During that period he created the bachelor of music, masters of music and doctor of musical arts programs in jazz studies. He is a saxophone, clarinet and flute specialist and has played with such notable artists as Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Jack Sheldon, Louis Bellson, and Ernie Watts.  His multimedia presentations are filled with music excerpts, rare photos, film clips, humorous stories and live demonstrations that stimulate, educate and entertain.  They are not to be missed! No reservations are required.