Guidelines for Provost Lectures »

MOOCs: Been There, Done That, Want It Different
Eric Rabkin is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of English Language and Literature and of Art and Design at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. His current research interests include fantasy and science fiction, graphic narrative, the quantitative study of culture, traditional literary criticism and theory, and academic computing. Rabkin is especially known for his large, popular lecture courses on science fiction and fantasy, and for his many teaching innovations, including the development of the highly successful Practical English writing program for those who will use writing in their work lives, and for his work at all levels, including faculty training, in research and communication applications of computer technologies. He offered the world's first writing-intensive MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) through the University of Michigan and Coursera (2012). He received the University Teaching Award (1990), the LS&A Excellence in Education Award (2000), and the Golden Apple Award (2006) given annually by the students for the outstanding teacher at the University of Michigan.

Abstract: Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offer irresistible economies for both consumers and producers, but in what ways are these people students and teachers? What are the relations between educating and credentialing? How can we educate masses without replying to individuals? Having this year designed and offered the world’s first writing-intensive MOOC (Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World), I have had the exhilarating opportunity and inevitable necessity of confronting a range of expectations, desires, and fears from 40,000 “students,” numerous colleagues in several institutions, and the public.  Massive online education is coming. How does it feel so far? What can we do better? What should we do differently?  What may and should the future of education hold? In this presentation, I aim to share my experiences and explore issues from pedagogy to plagiarism to evolving technology with the help of all concerned.

Monday, April 22, 4:00 pm,  Wang Center Theater

The Black Body and the Lens
Deborah Willis, PhD, is the Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She was a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow and Fletcher Fellow, and a 2000 MacArthur Fellow. Exhibitions of her work include: A Sense of Place, Frick, University of Pittsburgh, 2005; Regarding Beauty, University of Wisconsin, 2003; Embracing Eatonville, Light Works, Syracuse, NY, 2003-4; Hair Stories, Scottsdale Contemporary Art Museum, Scottsdale, AZ 2003-4; The Comforts of Home, Hand Workshop Art Center, Richmond, VA, 1999; Re/Righting History: Counter narratives by Contemporary African-American Artists, Katonah Museum of Art, 1999. Her curated Exhibitions include: Posing Beauty which opened at Tisch in fall of 2009, 1968: Then and Now at Tisch and at the Nathan Cummings Foundation in fall 2008, Engulfed by Katrina: Photographs before and After the Storm, Nathan Cummings Foundation. Her more recent publications include Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present (WW Norton, 2009), Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs (WW Norton, 2009), and Black Venus 2010: They Called Her "Hottentot" (Temple University Press, 2010). Co-Sponsors: Africana Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, Humanities Institute, European Languages, Cultural Analysis and Theory, Art Department. (Photo Credit: Jennifer Pritheeva Samuel)

Abstract: Dr. Willis’ talk will address the black body in photography, print, video, and presented in exhibition spaces. Central to her discussion will be a focus on how the display of the black body affects how we see and interpret the world. Using a selection of photographs by Hank Willis Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems, Bruce Davidson, Gordon Parks, Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas, among others, she will consider the construction of beauty and style, gendered images, race in pop culture. In doing so she hopes to engage in a discussion with the student body about ways in which our contemporary understanding of art, history, and culture is constructed and informed by public display in museums, text, and the global landscape.

Thursday, February 21, 4:00 pm, Wang Center Theater

Situating Moral Justification: Rethinking the Mission of Moral Epistemology
Alison Jaggar is College Professor of Distinction in Philosophy and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Jaggar works in the areas of contemporary social, moral and political philosophy, often from a feminist perspective. In the past decade, her work has introduced gender as a category of analysis into the philosophical debate on global justice. Currently, Jaggar is a member of a Fempov, a multidisciplinary and international research team whose aim is to produce a new poverty standard or metric capable of revealing the gendered dimensions of global poverty. In addition, Jaggar is exploring the potential of a naturalized approach to moral epistemology for addressing moral disputes in contexts of inequality and cultural difference. Co-sponsors: Department of Philosophy, the Journal Metaphilosophy, and the Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory.

Abstract: This lecture draws from a larger project, co-authored with Theresa Tobin of Marquette University. Tobin’s and my overall goal is to understand how moral claims may be rationally justified in a world characterized by cultural diversity and social inequality. Our larger work proposes a distinctive way of naturalizing moral epistemology. To show why an alternative approach is needed, we argue that the currently most influential philosophical accounts of moral justification all lend themselves to rationalizing the moral claims of those with more social power. The present lecture explains how the specific account given by discourse ethics is flawed just in this way. I begin by identifying several conditions of adequacy for assessing reasoning practices designed to achieve moral justification and use these conditions to evaluate the practice of reasoning recommended by discourse ethics. I argue that discourse ethics fails the conditions of adequacy and that, in contexts of cultural diversity and social inequality, it lends itself to rationalizing the moral claims of those with more social power. I then argue that the failure of discourse ethics is rooted in its reliance on a broader conception of moral epistemology that is invidiously idealized.  The lecture concludes by pointing to the need to rethink both the mission and method of moral epistemology.

Thursday, March 14, 5:30 pm, Harriman Hall, Room 214

Patients' Rights and the Governance of the Health Sector: Two Stories To Inform Policy Daniel Fox is President Emeritus of the Milbank Memorial Fund, after serving as President from 1990 to 2007. Before joining the Fund he served in state government (Massachusetts and New York), as an advisor to and staff member of three federal agencies and as a faculty member and administrator at Harvard University and then at the Health Sciences Center of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the Council on Foreign Relations. In addition to articles in journals of health services and policy, social science, law and history, Fox is the author of The Convergence of Science and Governance: Research, Health Policy and American States (2010), Power and Illness: The Failure and Future of American Health Policy (1993 and 1995); Engines of Culture (1963 and 1994); The Discovery of Abundance (1967 and 2002); Economists and Health Care (1979); Health Politics, Health Policies: The Experience of Britain and America 1911-1965 (1986); and Photographing Medicine: Images and Power in Britain and America since 1840 (1988).  He co edited AIDS: The Burdens of History (1988); AIDS: The Making of a Chronic Disease (1992);  Five States That Could Not Wait: Lessons for Health Reform from Florida, Hawaii, Minnesota, Oregon and Vermont (1994); Home-Based Care for a New Century (1996); and Treating Drug Abusers Effectively (1996). Co-sponsors: Stony Brook University Medical Center, Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care & Bioethics, Graduate Program in Public Health.

Abstract: Dr. Fox will examine his recent experience as an inpatient and outpatient at an academic medical center in the context of his many years as a participant in the governance of the health sector; as a policymaker, policy adviser, manager, researcher and author. He will argue that adequate protection of patients’ human rights will require external regulation to reinforce self-regulation.

Monday, March 25, 4:00 pm, Wang Center Theater

Allosteric Gating of Voltage and Calcium Activated Potassium Channels
Richard Aldrich is Professor and Chair of the Section of Neurobiology in the School of Biological Sciences and the Karl Folkers Chair II in Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research at the University of Texas at Austin. He has served on the council and as president of the Society of General Physiologists, and is a Fellow and president (2011-2012) of the Biophysical Society. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Co-sponsored by the Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology.

Abstract: Allosteric regulation and cooperativity are essential molecular features of cellular
signaling and regulation, allowing for nonlinear behavior and plasticity of signaling and
metabolic pathways and for interactions between them. Ion channels are a powerful
system for exploring the molecular mechanisms of allosteric regulation, largely due to the power of electrophysiological methods to study protein function. Results from two types of calcium activated potassium channels will be discussed. These channels are involved in a wide variety of physiological functions, including regulation of blood pressure, neuronal plasticity and hearing. BK channels are activated by both calcium binding to cytoplasmic sites and by changes in the membrane voltage. SK channels have no voltage dependence and are activated solely by calcium binding. SK channels sense calcium by way of tightly bound calmodulin molecules that transduce calcium binding into conformational changes in the channel protein. Calmodulin is a ubiquitous calcium sensor for a very wide range of calcium signaling pathways. It exhibits strong
interactions among its calcium binding sites and is therefore also an important and valuable system for understanding allosteric mechanisms. New spectroscopic methods have been developed to better understand the relationships among the calcium binding sites.

Tuesday, March 26, 4:00 pm, Simons Center, Lecture Hall 103

Thriving: A New Vision for Student Success
Laurie A. Schreiner is Chair and Professor in the Department of Doctoral Higher Education at Azusa Pacific University. She was project director on two federal grants from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) through the US Department of Education; the first focused on successful programming for first-year college students and the second grant focused on the development of a campus-wide four-year strengths education program to increase student retention and success. She has been a senior research associate for the Gallup Organization and has completed the national validity study of StrengthsFinder with college students, along with the second edition of the book StrengthsQuest: Discover and Develop Your Strengths in Academics, Career, and Beyond. Dr. Schreiner’s primary interests include student success and thriving in college, student satisfaction and retention, strengths-based advising and educational practices, Christian higher education, campus climate and sense of community, and the programming needs of first-year students and sophomores. Co-sponsors: The Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs and the School of Social Welfare. This year's symposium is part of the OVPSA Professional Development Series. For more information and to register for the 18th Annual Leadership Symposium »

Abstract: A focus on thriving in college has the potential to change the way we view student success and to shape the strategies we use to assist students. It shifts our attention from failure prevention to success promotion. As co-author of the Student Satisfaction Inventory, a nationally normed instrument used on more than 1,600 college and university campuses across the United States and Canada, Dr. Schreiner’s report on these national findings provides guidelines for faculty, and academic and student affairs professionals on emerging practices and interventions.The Symposium examines the construct of thriving as a measure used to understand student success over and above the traditional consideration of gender, ethnicity, generation status, high school grades and admission test scores. Stony Brook University respondents’ will provide their perspectives on SBU’s efforts in implementing these promising practices.

Friday, April 5, 9:00 am, Student Activities Center, Ballroom B