It might be hard to imagine, but the Dayton area was once submerged under a vast tropical ocean.

University of Dayton junior Lydia Kladitis didn’t expect her screenplay and storyboard project to end with coffee across the table from Hollywood storyboard artist J. Todd Anderson, a Dayton-based artist who has worked on every film by Joel and Ethan Coen since Raising Arizona. His credits also include Men in Black, and he is a two-time Art Directors Guild award nominee for excellence in production design, for The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Hail, Caesar!

University of Dayton environmental geologist Umesh Haritashya is one of 32 international scientists who contributed to research published Dec. 9 in Nature that assessed and ranked the planet’s 78 mountain glacier-based water systems in order of their importance to adjacent lowland communities and vulnerability to future environmental and socioeconomic changes.

Emmy Award-winner Cathy Guisewite, creator of the iconic Cathy comic strip and an essayist, returns to her hometown to open the 2020 Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop, April 2-4, at the University of Dayton as part of its 20th anniversary.