CCT News

13 April 2009

See also previous news, alum news and exchanges, items for the upcoming news, and CCT calendar.
Inform cct@umb.edu if you have news OR want to be emailed when there's a new news compilation (no more than once/month) OR want to be removed from such mailings.

Contents: Student matters, CCT community, CCT events, alums, other events, opportunities, resources, food for thought, humor

Student Matters

Monday, April 13 at 12:00noon DEADLINE: The CCT Program has been notified of an endowment fund concerning graduate programs in the GCE. This fund was created to provide support for "outstanding students" from Master's programs including CCT. This fund will continue to make awards in the future. Each program can only nominate one person. The CCT faculty members do not really like to single out students, apply the usual standards of "merit," or to generate competition-our interest is in helping each student develop as much they can personally, intellectually, and professionally. But we also recognize that tuition and fees are significant these days, so we are not going to decline to nominate someone! The criteria we will apply are GPA in CCT of 3.8 or above; 5 or more courses completed; no incompletes. To choose among equally merit-worthy students, we will give preference to someone paying their own tuition & fees. Let us know ASAP if you think you meet the three criteria and tell us what your tuition/fees bill was for academic year 08-09 and the fraction you have had to pay, after any assistantships/tuition waivers.

Registration for the fall 2009 has begun.


Saturday May 16th: CCT Marathon Day
10:00am-5:00pm, in McC2-628C (room subject to confirmation).
This is a day for students to get faculty and peer input and support to finish their syntheses and incompletes.
It is also a day for you to initiate or advance your Reflective Practice /Metacognitive Portfolio; see http://cctrpp.wikispaces.com. We are asking every new student to develop a Portfolio through their program of studies and we encourage other students to do it in preparation for their synthesis semester.

Graduate Convocation (where book prizes are awarded) is Thursday May 28. Commencement is Friday, May 29. U.S. Senator John Kerry will deliver the principal address, and honorary degrees will be presented to Joseph Kennedy, Sister Margaret Leonard, and Edwin Moses.

CCT Community

Wednesday, April 15, 2009: Deadline to apply for the Delores Gallo fund
The Delores Gallo fund (established on the occasion of her retirement) invites proposals for funding small projects of CCT students and alums, e.g., to bring in guests to your classes, initiate a new creative project, prepare your writing/photography/etc. for publication, buy materials for your classroom...
More info at: http://www.cct.umb.edu/gallofund.html

Peter Taylor, wearing his other hat as Director of Science, Tech. & Values (or one face of his CCT hat), has organized a semester-long series of talks highlighting the wide range of work going on at UMB in the Science and Society area. See http://www.stv.umb.edu/ISHS09.html for schedule. Open to the public. (Next talks: April 22, "Dying of Sadness: Hospitalism and Mexican Social Reform" and May 5, "Mars as Cultural Mirror: Science, Imagination, and Society") Supporting material and podcasts are available through http://www.stv.umb.edu/ISHS09.html

Poem, Remembering Janet , from Memorial service for Philosophy and CCT professor, Janet Farrell Smith, March 28th

CCT Events

Monday, April 27th and
Monday, May 4th
4:30-8:30pm each day, fourth floor in the Science building, room 4-064
Spring Synthesis presentations by graduating students. Open to the public.
Please come support the students as they present their Synthesis projects and prepare for graduation.
Schedule of presentations

May 6 & 13 7-9:30: Wheatley Hall, 1st floor, room 50
Problem-based Learning Presentations
Messy Problem: May 6: public health matter of obesity; Access to higher education for disadvantaged families; May 13: public safety matter of food contamination

Alum and CCT associates Notes
Ben Schwendener (pn) and Uwe Steinmetz (sx), Apfelschaun II, played at the
Taylor House, Jamaica Plain on April 3.

Events

Wednesday, April 22, UMB, Campus Center: 12:00 – 5:00 p.m
Hidden Treasure: Celebrating the Achievements of Non-Tenure Track Faculty

April 27-May 1, 2009: Graduate Student Appreciation Week
The Graduate Student Assembly is sponsoring the first GSAW, a week-long series of workshops, events, and activities to make time for us to recognize the many achievements of graduate students as members of the UMB community. Through these events, there will be time to socialize with each other graduate students and learn about projects across all areas of study. Visit http://www.gsa.umb.edu/ for time and location and to RSVP, as space may be limited for the events. Highlights include:


Saturday, May 2, 2009: Celebration of the Urban Scholars Program's 25th Anniversary and Motley Scholarship Program honoring Charles Desmond, chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education who will receive the Chancellor’s Medal.

June 21-24: The Creative Problem Solving Institute is the oldest and longest running conference dedicated to the teaching and practice of creativity and innovation. CPSI brings together the powerful voices of international leaders, trainers, authors, academics, corporate executives and entrepreneurs in a highly interactive and intimate setting. The program includes keynote presentations that inspire the mind to workshops, processes and events that reinforce the notion that solutions can be found in a more innovative, engaging and inspired way.
The 2009 conference will be held in Boston, MA and includes Dean Kamen – Segway Inventor and founder of the FIRST Robotics Competition, Sarah Miller Caldicott – great grandniece of Thomas Edison and author of Innovate Like Edison, and Keith Sawyer, author of Group Genius.
For more information on speakers--which include Nina Greenwald--program descriptions, and the registration process, you can visit http://www.cpsiconference.com/ or call 508-960-0000.

The Believing Game as a Model for Thinking, conference of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning, Estes Park, Colorado
July 30--August 1, 2009, https://www.sworps.utk.edu/aepl/html/2009conference/2009_conference.htm
Scholarships available to assist attendance.

Opportunities

The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at UMass Boston is looking for graduate students to be instructors for the fall of 2009 to teach non-credit courses for 5 to 6 weeks. OLLI is a Lifelong Learning Program for people 50 and older. The topics of interest include literature, foreign languages, digital photography, Basic computers, history, potitics, science, and many more. We will provide a $300 stipend per course. To learn more about the program, please visit our website at www.OLLI.umb.edu. For more information on teaching a course and a course proposal email Mary.McCarthy@umb.edu or call 617-287-7312.

To improve the quality of instruction in the Boston public schools, the Boston Plan for Excellence, a private non-profit organization, is seeking to hire two experienced facilitators to work with principals and school-based teams of practitioners to implement the work of Accelerating Improvement through Inquiry. Deadline: May 25, 2009. http://www.bpe.org/about/jobs_internships

The Graduate School of Social Sciences based at the University of Amsterdam offers many Master’s programs in English, including summer programs. It offers you the chance to develop yourself in an international academic environment. You will encounter professors and students from all over the world, which stimulates intercultural exchange on an academic level. http://www.graduateschoolofsocialsciences.nl

Resources

The most current UMass-Boston Community Front Page.

WUMB’s popular Internet auction is back. It will run for the next few months, with about 15 new items being added every Wednesday. Many unique items and services including artist's signed CD's, posters and concert tickets. http://www2.www.umb.edu/wumb/auction/show_all_products.php

If you enjoy philosophy (and who doesn't in CCT?), check out Philosophy Bites, a web site dedicated to short audio recordings of interviews with "top philosophers" covering all kinds of philosophical issues. Explore views on ethics, friendship, virtue, social issues, and much, much, more.

Food for Thought

Robot Scientist?
Researchers at Aberystwyth University in Wales claim to have developed the first robot that can hypothesize, test, and make discoveries on its own...

Children's dictionary dumps "nature" words: To make way for modern tech terms such as BlackBerry, blog, voicemail and broadband, the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary has opted to drop terms pertaining to old nature. No longer can a child check this dictionary and learn more about the blackberry, dandelion, acorn, heron, otter, magpie, sycamore, or willow. Source: http://www.nextnature.net/?p=3110

A visual introduction into Next Nature: http://www.nextnature.net/?page_id=3112

Humor

Stress
I am not sure exactly how it works, but this is amazingly accurate.
Read the full description before looking at the picture.
picture