Fall 2011 Woods Lecture Series
Schedule
Technology Panel: With James Gee, Craig Watkins and
Craig Anderson
September 29, 2011, 7:30 P.M. Atherton Union, Reilly Room
Join us as we welcome James Gee, Craig Watkins and Craig
Anderson to discuss technology, cognition and youth. The evening
will begin with each guest presenting on a topic of their choice
related to technology and cognition. This will be followed by a
moderated discussion and conclude with questions from the
audience.
James Gee is a member of the National Academy
of Education. His book Sociolinguistics and Literacies
(1990, Third Edition 2007) was one of the founding documents in the
formation of the "New Literacy Studies", an interdisciplinary field
devoted to studying language, learning, and literacy in an
integrated way in the full range of their cognitive, social, and
cultural contexts. His book An Introduction to Discourse
Analysis (1999, Second Edition 2005) brings together his work
on a methodology for studying communication in its cultural
settings, an approach that has been widely influential over the
last two decades.
Professor Gee's most recent books deal with video games,
language, and learning. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About
Learning and Literacy (2003, Second Edition 2007) argues that
good video games are designed to enhance learning through effective
learning principles supported by research in the Learning Sciences.
Situated Language and Learning (2004) places video games
within an overall theory of learning and literacy and shows how
they can help us in thinking about the reform of schools. His most
recent book is Good Video Games and Good Learning: Collected
Essays (2007). Professor Gee has published widely in journals
in linguistics, psychology, the social sciences, and education.
Craig Watkins studies young people's social and
digital media behaviors. He teaches at the University of Texas,
Austin, in the departments of Radio-Television-Film, Sociology, and
the Center for African and African American Studies. Watkins
addresses issues that range from the social impacts of young
people's participation in digital media culture to educational
implications. He has engaged a dynamic mix of communities including
the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of
Drug Addiction, IBM Center for Social Software, SXSW Interactive,
the National School Boards Association, Smart Mixed-Signal
Connectivity, the Austin Forum on Science and Technology for
Society, iCivics, MacArthur Foundation, and the Cooper-Hewitt,
National Design Museum (NYC).
His book, The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to
Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for
Our Future (Beacon 2009), is based on survey research,
in-depth interviews, and fieldwork with teens, young
twenty-somethings, teachers, parents, and technology advocates.
The Young and the Digital explores young people's dynamic
engagement with social media, games, mobile phones, and communities
like Facebook.
Craig Anderson is a Distinguished Professor of
Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Psychology at Iowa
State University. He currently is Director of Iowa State
University's Center for the Study of Violence, and President of the
International Society for Research on Aggression. Anderson's 150+
publications span a wide range of areas, including judgment and
decision making; depression, loneliness, and shyness; personality
theory and measurement; and attribution theory. In recent years,
his work has focused on the development of a General Aggression
Model designed to integrate insights from cognitive, developmental,
personality, and social psychology. His pioneering work on
video-game violence has led to consultations with educators,
government officials, child advocates, and news organizations
worldwide. He is the author of Violent Video Game Effects on
Children and Adolescents, which describes the effects of
playing violent video games, explains how these effects occur, and
explores possible actions that parents, educators, and public
policy creators can take to deal with this important social
issue.
Steven Strogatz: Synchronicity in Nature
October 11, 2011, 7:30 P.M Reilly Room
Steven Strogatz is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied
Mathematics at Cornell University, and is currently Director of the
Center for Applied Mathematics. He holds a joint appointment in the
College of Arts and Sciences (Mathematics) and the College of
Engineering (Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering). In 2009 he was
elected a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied
Mathematics for his "investigations of small-world networks and
coupled oscillators and for outstanding science
communication."
Strogatz has been a frequent guest on National Public Radio's
RadioLab. In the spring of 2010 he wrote a weekly blog about mathematics
for the New York Times; the Harvard Business Review described these
columns as "must reads for entrepreneurs and executives"
and "a model for how mathematics needs to be popularized."
Strogatz has also filmed a series of 24 lectures on Chaos for the Teaching
Company's Great Courses series, available on DVD. He is the author
of Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos (1994) and Sync
(2003). His most recent book, The Calculus of Friendship,
was published in August 2009.
Sue Savage-Rumbaugh: Bonobos, Language and
Culture
November 2, 2011, 7:30 P.M Atherton Union, Reilly Room
Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh is a scientist with special
standing at Great Ape Trust - a world-class research center
dedicated to studying the behavior and intelligence of great apes.
The first and only scientist to conduct language research with
Bonobos, Savage-Rumbaugh joined Great Ape Trust in 2005 following a
30-year association with Georgia State University's Language
Research Center (LRC). Information developed at the LRC regarding
the abilities of non-human primates to acquire symbols, comprehend
spoken words, decode simple syntactical structures, learn concepts
of number and quantity, and perform complex perceptual-motor tasks
has helped change the way humans view other members of the primate
order. Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh's work with Kanzi, the first ape to
learn language in the same manner as children, was detailed in
Language Comprehension in Ape and Child published in Monographs of
the Society for Research in Child Development (1993). It was
selected by the "Millennium Project" as one of the top 100 most
influential works in cognitive science in the 20th century by the
University of Minnesota Center for Cognitive Sciences in 1991.
Bruce Miller: The Mind and
Aging
This is a Spirit and
Place event! The Woods Lecture Series is pleased to partner
with the UI Center for Aging and Community.
November 9, 2011, 7:30 P.M Atherton Union, Reilly Room
The Woods Lecture Series is proud to partner with the University
of Indianapolis Center for Aging & Community as part of the
Spirit and Place festival to present Dr. Bruce Miller. Our bodies
and minds are inextricably linked. The neurological connections in
our bodies interpret our environment, create our experiences and
ultimately define our lives. As we age, these connections may begin
to slow and change, and the definition of our daily lives changes.
Understanding dementia and the physical and chemical changes in our
bodies that cause it is a fascinating component of the human
condition. Dementia can be caused by a number of different
conditions; it is a symptom of neurodegenerative diseases like
Alzheimer's, frontotemporal dementia or corticobasal
degeneration.
Dr. Miller is Professor of Neurology at the University of
California, San Francisco (UCSF) where he holds the A.W. & Mary
Margaret Clausen Distinguished Chair. Dr. Miller is the clinical
director of the Memory and Aging Center (MAC) at UCSF, which is
funded through the State of California, the National Institutes of
Health (NIH), and the Larry L. Hillblom Foundation, amongst others.
Dr. Miller will be speaking about his research and work at the
Memory and Aging Center (MAC) at UC San Francisco. At the MAC, Dr.
Miller links comprehensive patient evaluations to basic research in
neuropsychology, neuropsychiatry, neuroimaging and genetics. At the
conclusion of the lecture, the audience is invited to take part in
a question and answer session with Dr. Miller.
As part of the J. James Woods Lecture Series Butler University
will be welcoming Dr. Bruce Miller, a behavioral neurologist with a
special interest in brain and behavior relationships and has
focused his work in the area of dementia. Dr. Miller's lecture will
focus on the brain and aging, with a specific focus on dementia.
Dementia is the general term for progressive brain disorders that
gradually destroys a person's ability to carry out daily
activities.
Our bodies and minds are inextricably linked. The neurological
connections in our bodies interprets our environment, creates our
experiences and ultimately defines our lives. As we age, these
connections may begin to slow and change, and the definition of our
daily lives changes. Understanding dementia and the physical and
chemical changes in our bodies that cause it is a fascinating
component of the human condition. Dementia can be caused by a
number of different conditions; it is a symptom of
neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, frontotemporal
dementia or corticobasal degeneration.
Dr. Miller will be speaking about his research and work at the
Memory and Aging Center (MAC) at UC San Francisco. At the MAC, Dr.
Miller links comprehensive patient evaluations to basic research in
neuropsychology, neuropsychiatry, neuroimaging and genetics. At the
conclusion of the lecture, the audience is invited to take part in
a question and answer session with Dr. Miller.
Spring 2012 Woods Lecture Series
Schedule
**Please Note: We regret to announce that the April 22
Lecture with Dr. Frances Champagne has been cancelled
**
Dan Ferber:Impacts of Climate Change on Global
Health
January 25, 2012, 7:30 P.M. Atherton Union, Reilly Room
Much of the public debate about "global warming" has focused on
air temperatures, melting glaciers and slowly rising sea levels,
but climate change is already harming the health of people around
the world. Award-winning journalist Dan Ferber specializes in
putting a human face on groundbreaking stories on science,
technology, health and the environment. As a correspondent for
Science and contributor to national magazines such as Reader's
Digest, Popular Science and Audubon, he's covered topics from
malaria to cancer, from dam removal to factory farms, from
high-tech crops to engineered tissues. In Changing Planet,
Changing Health, he worked with Paul Epstein, MD, associate
director of the Center for Health and Global Environment at Harvard
Medical School, to reveal the surprising links between climate
change and cholera, malaria, Lyme disease, asthma, and other public
health concerns. Ferber holds a bachelor's degree in zoology from
Duke, a Ph.D. in biology from Johns Hopkins University and a
masters in journalism from the University of Illinois. For more
information, see http://www.danferber.com/.
Grace Wolf-Chase: Stars, religion and
science
February 22, 2012, 7:30 P.M. Atherton Union, Reilly Room
Grace Wolf-Chase has held a joint position between the Adler
Planetarium and the University of Chicago Department of Astronomy
& Astrophysics since 1998. She holds a Bachelor's degree in
Physics from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the
University of Arizona. Grace was awarded a National Research
Council postdoctoral fellowship to study the early stages of star
formation at NASA/Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA
(1994-1996), and a University of California President's
postdoctoral fellowship to continue these studies at U.C. Riverside
(1996-1998). Her primary research efforts focus on the earliest
stages of star formation, from the formation of low-mass stars
similar to our Sun, to the formation of massive stars in rich
clusters. She has made important contributions to understanding the
scope and effects of outflows generated by forming stars.
Grace is a member of the science team for the "Milky Way
Project", one of a large suite of citizen science initiatives in
the "Zooniverse". She is active in exhibit development, sky show
production, mentoring student and postdoctoral research projects,
and working with diverse audiences to help bring the excitement of
scientific research to public audiences. Grace served on a task
force to develop a Social Statement on Education for the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The statement was adopted
at the Church-wide Assembly in Chicago in August 2007. She and her
spouse, Dennis Chase, live in Naperville with their three teenaged
children.
Wes Jackson: Consulting the Genius of the
Place
March 29, 2012, 7:30 P.M. Atherton Union, Reilly Room
Wes Jackson, President of The Land Institute, was born in 1936
on a farm near Topeka, Kansas. After attending Kansas Wesleyan, he
studied botany (M.A. University of Kansas, 1960) and genetics
(Ph.D. North Carolina State University, 1967). He was a professor
of biology at Kansas Wesleyan and later established the
Environmental Studies department at California State University,
Sacramento, where he became a tenured full professor. He resigned
that position in 1976 and returned to Kansas to found The Land
Institute. Dr. Jackson's writings include both papers and books.
His most recent work, Consulting the Genius of the Place: An
Ecological Approach to a New Agriculture, was published by
Counterpoint Press in 2010. The work of The Land Institute has been
featured extensively in the popular media including The Atlantic
Monthly, Audubon, National Geographic, Time Magazine,The
MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, and National Public Radio's "All Things
Considered." Life magazine named Wes Jackson as one of 18
individuals they predict will be among the 100 "important Americans
of the 20th century." In the November 2005 issue, Smithsonian named
him one of "35 Who Made a Difference" and in March, 2009 Wes was
included in Rolling Stone's"100 Agents of Change. "In addition to
lecturing nationwide and abroad, Dr. Jackson is involved outside
The Land Institute with a variety of projects including being a
Post Carbon Institute Fellow, a Councillor with the World Future
Council and a member of the Green Lands Blue Waters Steering
Committee.