DANBURY, Connecticut — The Kathwari Honors Program at Western Connecticut State University announces the Kathwari Spring Seminar series, with five events that explore Design Thinking and Creative Thinking in February, March and April, 2026. The events will be free and open to the public with the exception of the final session, An Evening with Rhett Miller, on Friday, April 24. Tickets for this event are available at www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-rhett-miller-tickets-1980892179834.
The first three presentations, on Feb. 23, March 2, and March 30, 2026, will be in Room 125 of the Science Building on the university’s Midtown campus, 181 White St. in Danbury. Free parking is available in the White Street Garage. The final two events, on April 8 and 24, 2026, will be in the Visual and Performing Arts Center on the Westside campus, 43 Lake Ave. Extension in Danbury. There is free parking in several surface lots at the Westside campus.
Kathwari Honors Program Director Dr. Brian Clements said, “Thanks to the generosity of the Kathwari Family Foundation, the Kathwari Honors Program is able to host this annual lecture series for the benefit of Honors students, the WCSU community, and the wider Danbury area. This year’s speakers focus on the ways that design thinking and creative thinking are applied in professional contexts, sometimes in ways that we don’t expect. It’s easy to imagine how singer/songwriter Rhett Miller and Wadsworth Atheneum curator Laura Leonard use those kinds of thinking in their lives and work, but perhaps less common to think about it in the context of anthropology, management, or the work of a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian like Dr. Marcia Chatelain. We’d love to have folks from all over the area join us for these events — especially students and teachers from area high schools.”
The series is as follows:
On Monday, Feb. 23, Dr. Pauline Assenza will discuss “How to Avoid Norman Doors: Design Thinking to Solve Everyday Problems.” Assenza leads the Entrepreneurship/ Small Business Management option in the Management major of the Ancell School of Business at Western Connecticut State University. She also is responsible for ERIC@THEGARAGE, an Entrepreneurship, Research, Innovation, and Creativity resource center for students, faculty, staff, and the greater Danbury community. Her talk will be at 2 p.m. in Room 125 of the Science Building on the Midtown campus.
Monday, March 2, will feature Dr. Marcia Chatelain, who will speak about “Crafting the Past: How Historians Creatively, Courageously, and Critically Tell the Truth.” Chatelain is the Penn Presidential Compact Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America,” which examines the intersection of the post-1968 civil rights struggle and the rise of the fast food industry. Her first book was “South Side Girls: Growing up in the Great Migration.” Her talk will be at 2 p.m. in Room 125 of the Science Building on the Midtown campus.
On Monday, March 30, the speaker will be Dr. Christine Hegel-Cantarella on the topic of “Anthropology by Design: Imaginative Practices for Social Analysis.” Hegel-Cantarella is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on legal, economic, and environmental issues. Her current project examines the lives and livelihoods of informal recyclers in New York City in relation to recycling policy. Hegel-Cantarella also holds a B.F.A. in Theatre and over the past 15 years has collaborated with designers and artists on creative projects to make the ethnographic encounter visible and to enliven social analysis through design speculation and materialization. Her talk will be at 2 p.m. in Room 125 of the Science Building on the Midtown campus.
The series shifts to the Westside campus on Wednesday, April 8, with a presentation by Laura Leonard, the Art Bridges Project Coordinator and Curatorial Researcher at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford. Leonard will discuss “Creativity in Curatorial Practice.” At the Wadsworth Atheneum, Leonard oversees a series of American art exhibitions created through a multi-year, multi-institutional partnership led by the Wadsworth as a part of the Art Bridges Cohort Program. Her most recent projects were co-curating “(Un)Settled: The Landscape in American Art” and authoring the accompanying booklet, as well as curating “Peter Waite: Social Memory: Paintings 1987–2025” and co-authoring the exhibition catalogue. There will be a 6 p.m. reception, followed by a 7 p.m. lecture, in the Gallery at the Visual and Performing Arts Center on the Westside campus.
The Seminar Series will conclude on Friday, April 24, with Rhett Miller, an icon of Americana and contemporary songwriting. In addition to 13 albums with Old97s, he has released 10 solo albums — most recently “A lifetime of riding by night,” which he wrote and recorded just before recently undergoing and recovering from vocal cord surgery. Miller is the creator of the Wheels Off podcast, for which he has interviewed many of the greats of contemporary Americana music as well as authors, screenwriters, comedians, designers, and other creatives about “the messy reality of creative life.” In 2025, he received with Old97s the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association. This event will take place at 7 p.m. in the Veronica Hagman Concert Hall in the Visual and Performing Arts Center on the Westside campus. Tickets are required to attend. Get tickets at www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-rhett-miller-tickets-1980892179834.
For more information, contact Communications and Marketing at pr@wcsu.edu.
Western Connecticut State University changes lives by providing all students with a high-quality education that fosters their growth as individuals, scholars, professionals, and leaders in a global society. Our vision: To be widely recognized as a premier public university with outstanding teachers and scholars who prepare students to contribute to the world in a meaningful way.