News2013January

CCT News

7 January 2013
See also previous news and alum news and exchanges. Please use this form for all inquiries, notice of events, contact updates, career updates, web/wiki glitches, suggestions, resources for us to put in news/calendar, request to be emailed when there's a new monthly news compilation, or request to be removed from such mailings.
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Contents: Student matters, CCT community, CCT events, alums, other events, opportunities, resources, food for thought, humor
All students, alums, and others in the CCT community: please use our main contact form for all inquiries, notice of events, contact updates, career updates, web/wiki glitches, suggestions, resources for us to put in news/calendar, etc. Any items of interest to be shared with the wider community will be posted in the upcoming month's CCT Newsletter and Calendar.

Student Matters

Students should register as soon as possible for Spring courses (click for full descriptions). Please contact cct@umb.edu with questions. Current students: register on WISER. Prospective students without a WISER account: you may register through the College of Advancing and Professional Studies web site.

Spring 2013 (classes start the week of January 28th):
Face-to-face and Hybrid courses:

• CRCRTH 601 Critical Thinking; Tuesdays 4:00-6:45pm (note: face-to-face only, no distance option)
• CRCRTH 652 Children and Science, Thursdays 4:00-6:45pm(note: face-to-face only, distance option by instructor permission)
• CRCRTH 653 Epidemiological Thinking and Population Health, Wednesdays 4:00-6:45pm (hybrid)
• CRCRTH 655 Metacognition; Mondays 4:00-6:45pm (hybrid)
• CRCRTH 688 Reflective Practice; first Monday of each month, 6:30-9:00pm (hybrid)
• CRCRTH 692 Processes of Research and Engagement, Tuesdays, 7:00-9:45pm (hybrid)
• CRCRTH 694 Synthesis, Tuesdays, time TBD (hybrid)
• WOST 597 Gender, Race, and the Complexities of Science and Technology (Thursdays at MIT, time TBD, face-to-face only, no distance option)

Online courses (start the week of February 4th):

• CRCRTH 602 Creative Thinking
• CRCRTH 616 Dialogue Processes
• CRCRTH 618 Creative Thinking, Collaboration, and Organizational Change
• CRCRTH 693 Action Research

Please note that the CCT Program Handbook can be found here and on the program web site: http://cdn.umb.edu/images/university_college/handbook.pdf
This handbook describes many details about joining, moving through, and completing the CCT program, including distinctions between the two CCT tracks (the regular Critical and Creative Thinking track, and the Science in a Changing World track).

CCT Community
Note that the CCT program's home college is now called the College of Advancing and Professional Studies (CAPS), formerly University College. The university has renamed this college to reflect a naming that is more consistent with similar colleges at other universities.

Reminder to all that the UMass Boston North parking lot will close permanently on January 28th to make room for construction of a new academic building. The North lot is the one adjacent to the Campus Center after you drive by the student lot next to Wheatley Hall. Drivers are strongly encouraged to find alternate transportation or allow for extra time when commuting to campus, as parking will be redirected to more distant lots. For further information, see http://www.umb.edu/news_events_media/construction/north_lot_closing_for_general_academic_building_no_1_construction/

CCT Events
Jan. 29, 12-1pm at UMass, Peter Taylor "Creative Habits and Refractive Practice"

• This talk draws from Taylor and Szteiter (2012) Taking Yourself Seriously and an ongoing series of workshops on science and social change. I provide an overview of group and personal practices that catalyze, facilitate, and support efforts to take initiative and generate creative, constructive change in and through research and engagement.

Spring 2013 CCT Community Open Houses will be held from 6:45-9:00pm ET on the evenings of February 4, March 4, April 1, and May 6. Please join us (in person, or via Skype from a distance) for a number of activities, discussions, and presentations, to be announced in future newsletters. Free and open to all, including prospective students and guests.

Alum and CCT associates Notes
Ashok Panikkar (CCT '97, and founder of Meta-Culture) is pleased to announce Meta-Culture's new research and advocacy project on the connections between Democracy, Dialogue and Freedom of Expression. The working title is 'The Public Intelligence Project'. This has nothing to do with our much loved and respected friends in Watertown, Massachusetts, The Public Conversations Project. For more information about Meta-Culture's work, please see the web site and blog.

Events
The UMass Boston Film Series continues in the spring, starting with a showing of The World Before Heron February 7th, 7:00pm in the Campus Center ballroom. Films are free and open to the public, and often include follow-up commentary from the filmmakers involved in the films. See http://www.umb.edu/filmseries for the planned spring 2013 schedule.

Mini-conference on Bullying: The Department of Counseling and School Psychology will host a mini-conference titled "Bullying: Counseling and School Solutions" on Friday, January 25, from 9:30 to 3:30 p.m. in the Ryan Lounge, located on the third floor of McCormack Hall. Students, faculty, alumni, supervisors, and guests are welcome.

Opportunities
The Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, NY seeks a part time instructor to help design and teach classes in creative thinking to middle and high school students. This is a new initiative. Launch date is September 2013. Interested candidates should send a letter and resume to Christopher Marblo, President of the Arts Center, at chris@artscenteronline.org.

Call for Proposals: “Consent: Terms of Agreement”
Featuring Keynote Speaker: Lauren Berlant, University of Chicago
*Extended Deadline: January 15*
We are extending the deadline of our call for proposals for scholarly and creative submissions for an International Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference entitled, “Consent: Terms of Agreement,” to be held at Indiana University - Bloomington from March 21-23, 2013. Join us for our 10th annual conference, hosted by the graduate students of the IU Department of English. See below for details:
Consent: We click it any time we download a new software program. We are required to give it for medical procedures. Spoken or implied, it struggles to articulate our desires and will. Without it, numerous laws can be broken and our senses of agency violated.
We cannot disentangle it from larger structures of power, either. Antonio Gramsci defines hegemony, for example, as "characterized by the combination of force and consent, which balance each other reciprocally, without force predominating excessively over consent." The American Declaration of Independence stipulates that consent is required to govern a people; that the freely governed “cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for public uses without their own consent.” As a term, “consent” is something with which scholars and theorists across the disciplines must grapple; a concept that experts, from medical and legal ethics to web and software design, must constantly define and employ in their practices outside of the academy.
This conference explores both the cultural and practiced significance of “consent,” welcoming papers on its diverse meanings and modes of representation: from issues in the consent to be governed to reading a text that resists interpretations; from felicitous utterances gone awry to the struggle for speaking and acknowledging desires between two or more people. Tracing the theoretical, formal, and political implications of this issue requires a variety of methodologies and perspectives, so we particularly encourage interdisciplinary and applied approaches that consider any time period, place, or practice.
We invite proposals for individual papers as well as panels organized by topic. We also welcome the interaction of scholarly and creative work within papers or panels. Please submit (both as an attachment AND in the body of the email) an abstract of no more than 250 words along with a few personal details (name, institutional affiliation, degree level, email, and phone number) by January 15th, 2013, to iugradconference@gmail.com.
Visit our website (http://www.indiana.edu/~engsac/conference/) for the complete CFP and additional information in the coming weeks!

Resources
The UMass Boston Winter/Spring IT workshop offerings have been announced. These on-campus workshops cover several topics related to improving skills with software as well as online resources.
For writers: 250 Ways to Say the Word 'Went'

Food for Thought
10 Things that Science Taught Us About Happiness in 2012
You've never heard of them: 5 Women Who Changed the World in 2012
Article: New college application questions encourage creative thinking
Extraordinary Paper Art
Optogenetics, and how to take over a brain
Are your walls made of biological concrete?
Artists of all abilities welcome: interactive online drawing
Harvard study: We change more than we think we do
A wealth of scientific and other contributions from Muslim civilizations to modern culture: http://www.1001inventions.com/

Humor
Dr. Seuss' life-changing philosophies