Smithsonian Screening of Elephant Experts’ Daring Work | Community Spirit

Watch as Georgia College’s scholar-in-residence Dr. Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell captures intimate images of 6-ton giants challenging each other in Smithsonian Channel documentary “Elephant King.”

The campus screening takes place at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 7, in the Arts and Sciences Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

The film follows the world-renowned scientist and author, who observes a herd of elephants at a watering hole in Namibia’s Etosha National Park.  

“So this was a really nice example of how dominance hierarchies play out amongst female elephants and how timing is critical if you want to get access to the head of the trough and the freshest water,” O’Connell-Rodwell explains during the documentary. “You want to make sure you’re here first.”

O’Connell-Rodwell stays right in the middle of unpredictable, dangerous action as families of elephants engage in aggressive shuffling and trumpeting for water.

The elephant expert became Georgia College’s inaugural Martha Daniel Newell Visiting Distinguished Scholar spring semester 2013. The annual Newell scholar-in-residence program provides a rare opportunity for the college community to work alongside an academic researcher.

“Georgia College is really proud to have Dr. O’Connell-Rodwell as our inaugural Newell Distinguished Scholar,” said College of Arts and Sciences Dean Ken Procter. “The timing couldn’t be more perfect. So any components of her career as a public scholar, that is, making her work accessible to the lay audience at both a local and national scale, are coming together while she is in residence at Georgia College. And we are honored to be able to share in that.”

A faculty member of Stanford University’s School of Medicine, O’Connell-Rodwell has dedicated the past 20 years of her research career studying elephant communication and how their societies are constructed and maintained.

She has produced more than 30 peer-reviewed journal articles with work appearing in popular magazines such asSmithsonian Magazine, The Writer and Africa Geographic.

Email science@gcsu.edu for more information about upcoming lectures with O’Connell-Rodwell this semester. Also, visit youtube.com/show/elephantking to watch a snippet from “Elephant King” and http://bit.ly/X25D0p to read more about the documentary.