Professor Paul Bingham is the founding faculty director of the College of Human Development, and the undergraduate college grew from his collaborative research with Instructor Joanne Souza in human evolutionary biology. They have taught 1-2 sections of HDV 102 every year since the spring of 2005 since the Undergraduate College was developed. In addition to his research on human evolution, Bingham has patented a cancer treatment aimed at targeting cancer cells so that healthy cells remain intact during chemotherapy. The technology is currently being developed for clinical trials. Souza is a former AT&T executive who is turning her interest in human communication into a PhD in Psychology. She has published on educational technology, human biology, and depression. The culmination of their joint research is a forthcoming book entitled Death from a Distance and the Birth of a Humane Universe that explores human evolution as the result of social and behavioral changes.
Bingham and Souza’s 102 seminar, “What it Means to be Human,” was designed as a template 102 seminar for the HDV college and has been taught by many different faculty members over the years. The course is especially designed to transform high school students, used to passive learning styles, into proactive and engaged college students. They saw a need for students to learn presentation and professional research skills and designed a course to nurture these skills and foster a positive academic environment. The course is structured to make sure that the instructor is at no point an authority figure; instead, students are encouraged learn to question presented knowledge as colleagues. As Paul Bingham expressed it, “The most important tool in learning is doubt. Only when students have questioned the material, can they make it their own.” The approach also stresses group work so that students can feel comfortable and learn the collaboration skills so important to scientific research.
Using Souza’s expertise in communications and technology, their joint teaching experience, and knowledge of human psychology, they created a seminar structure of 3 separate modules, each consisting of provocative content, student response, and student presentations, so that students can gradually develop necessary critical inquiry, research, and presentation skills throughout the semester. The semester ends with a seven-minute final presentation on a topic of the students’ choice. The two scientists developed a series of brief professional videos in collaboration with the university TV studios and professors across campus to serve as “provocative content” for the course. Topics range from intelligent design, to political advertising, and growing up as an academic in a working-class neighborhood. While they produced the videos specifically to aid instructors in creating material that students will react to, they stress that any content that the instructor is passionate about and that students will relate to can easily be substituted.
The two researchers used both their 102 seminars and their larger lecture course, BIO 358 “Biology and Human Social and Sexual Behavior,” in part as a testing ground for their scientific theories. “Some of the questions you get are the general ones that you anticipate, but sometimes students will ask a really difficult questions that challenge your assumptions.” The course also helped them communicate their ideas to a broader audience and see what resonates with them, which aided them in writing their book Death from a Distance and the Birth of a Humane Universe. The book will be published through Amazon this fall.
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