Olivia Hanna
The Florida Leadership Center is bringing back the UF Veritas Forum with special guest Dr. James Tour from Rice University.
The free event takes place at 7 p.m. on Thursday in the Rion Ballroom of the UF Reitz Union building.
“Our goal is to develop and deploy a generation of leaders to change the world for the glory of God,” said Rev. Robert Shettler, Director of the Florida Leadership Center, in his interview on The Shepherd radio in Gainesville.
The Florida Leadership Center is partnering with the Veritas Forum to deliver this message. The Veritas Forum returns to UF for the first time since 2017.
Tour’s talk will be on, “The Small and The Great: A Nanotechnologist Reflects on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
“Dr. Tour’s program will begin with a presentation about science and origins, then move into a presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” Shettler said. “Then, there will be a time where students have a chance to express the questions they have and for Dr. Tour to respond to them.”
In 2021, Dr. Tour won the Oesper Award from the American Chemical Society which is awarded to “outstanding chemists for lifetime significant accomplishments in the field of chemistry with long-lasting impact on the chemical sciences,” according to Rice University.
“He’s written over 700 published papers, he has 10 startup corporations and 120 patents,” Shettler said.
Shettler encourages anyone to attend Tour’s presentation.
“We have room for 500 people, and we would love to see this thing packed out,” he said.