Environmental science professor reminisces on his 2022 TEDxDePaulUniversity experience

​

This article is part of an interview series with the 2022 TEDxDePaulUniversity speakers. 

For the past six years, TEDxDePaulUniversity has united the university community for idea-driven programming, and promoted the university's outstanding faculty, staff, students and alumni through the world-famous TEDx platform.

On May 4, 2022, five DePaul speakers delivered Talks at the Holtschneider Performance Center on the iconic circular red carpet around the theme “Metamorphosis." The Talks sought to inspire audiences to reflect on the process of transformation from one actuality to another.

In this Q&A, Liam Heneghan, a professor of environmental science studies, shares his thoughts on presenting his Talk, “Loving and mourning in the kingdom of decay."

What inspired you to apply to be a TEDx speaker?

I watched, with tremendous pleasure, several of the previous TEDxDePaulUniversity events and recognized it as an excellent opportunity to distill a compelling idea into a pithy talk.

What surprised you about the experience?

I have been teaching at DePaul for almost 25 years and teaching in some capacity or another since I was a teen. Initially, I assumed preparing for TEDxDePaulUniversity would be akin to preparing for any other talk. Not so. I was initially perplexed, then invested and, eventually, extremely grateful for the rigorous training I received.

Excellent feedback ensured the talk was accessible to a range of audiences. The performance coaching helped me find the right tone, which was important since the material I discussed was personal and a little sad. I didn't blubber on stage – a win for all of us!

Were there any career or professional benefits to giving your Talk?

The Talk is on a topic that has been important to me in recent years – the idea of decline, decay and decomposition. The host of all those dour “d" words. I've been intellectually interested in the absence of a unified account, across the academic disciplines, of how things fall apart.

After teaching a seminar on decay for a couple of years, I recognized a TEDxDePaulUniversity Talk was a way of imagining the contours of a book project on the topic. So, hopefully, this will be a book in a couple of years.

How did the experience affect you personally?

When I was planning the Talk, I had my father and mother in mind. At the time I applied, my father had been debilitated, to some extent, by vascular dementia. He and I had always been very close and I wanted to reflect – with his permission –​ on his decline.

During the process of writing the Talk, he passed away at the age of 95. As a consequence, the Talk became a form of public eulogy for that great man. He was a very positive fellow – a curious naturalist – so despite how gloomy my topic may sound, the Talk bears the mark of his endless appetite for knowledge. My mother, thankfully, remains well and the Talk celebrates their love story, one that spanned more than six decades.  

How did you feel walking on stage and sharing your message with the community?

I kind of loved it. I always do my best thinking with an audience. Though the talk was rehearsed, which was very unusual for me, I drew an enormous amount of energy from the lovely and appreciative audience.

What advice do you have for faculty members considering applying for 2023?

Why not do it? It's not often you'll get an opportunity to sharpen that one big idea that's been floating around the margins of your mind into a brief, punchy bit of text and then perform it.

Another compelling reason is I suspect you no longer believe yourself capable of memorizing a 15-minute performance. You'll feel like a kid delivering your party piece at your grandparent's holiday party!

Visit the TEDxDePaulUniversity website to learn more about the annual event. Keep an eye out for information on the 2023 event, including a link to the 2023 speaker application, later this year in Newsline and on the website.

Michelle Patrick is the manager of strategic communicatio​ns initiatives for University Marketing and Communications.