News from the Graduate Program in Critical & Creative Thinking
University of Massachusetts Boston10 January 2019
Student Matters
Some space remains in the following spring 2019 CCT courses for non-degree registration:
CRCRTH 615 Holistic and Transformative Teaching (hybrid, Thursdays at 4:00)
CRCRTH 645 (BIO 545) Biology in Society: Critical Thinking (hybrid, Wednesdays at 4:00)
CRCRTH 653 (PPOL 753) Epidemiological Thinking and Population Health (hybrid, Tuesdays at 4:00)
Please note that all CCT wikispaces web sites will become inaccessible starting at the end of January (when the Wikispaces service shuts down). Links and materials available on these sites will be moved to a new web location on the CCT main web site: http://www.cct.umb.edu/
CCT Community
This upcoming spring marks the 40th anniversary of the CCT Program and
will be celebrated by a one-day conference. See below under Events.
CCT Events
Sunday, May 5, 2019, 8:45am-5:15pm in Arlington, MA, with evening reception/dinner to follow for local participants who can join.
Journeys: Changing Our Schools, Workplaces, and Lives
A conference-workshop to mark 40 years of the Graduate Program in Critical & Creative Thinking
Participate in person or online. Open to all.
During this one-day conference-workshop, we will create spaces,
interactions, and support that help us recognize and extend the changes
that we—students, alums, faculty, and associates from CCT's 40
years—have made in our schools, workplaces, and lives.
Preparing for and participating in this conference-workshop will provide
an opportunity to reflect on ways that developing as a critical,
creative and reflective practitioner is like a journey into unfamiliar
areas—journeying involves risk, opens up questions, creates more
experiences than can be integrated at first, requires support, and
yields personal and professional change. See the web site for more details and as new information is added.
Alum Talks: Deep Dive Creative Discussions with Nina Greenwald
Alums of the Critical and Creative Thinking program (UMass Boston) are invited to join the next round of this free online discussion series with former CCT faculty Nina Greenwald. All past MA or Certificate graduates are welcome to participate. Please RSVP to cct@umb.edu.
Wednesdays, January 16, 23, 30 and February 6, 2019, 7:15-8:15 PM Eastern Time
Please join this series of free, online targeted talks deriving from this question: What current issue and /or future concern are you facing in your work that you would you like to examine more closely through a critical and creative thinking lens?
The series will involve 4 one-hour online meetings (using Zoom web conferencing) and facilitated discussion among participants to help us discover together how critical and creative thinking can inform our individual directions. Each meeting is expected to build upon the previous ones as we share diverse ideas and learn from each other, but you are encouraged to attend as many of the 4 meetings as possible even if you have to miss some.
Alum and CCT associates Notes
Crystal King (CCT alum, '04) is releasing her new book, The Chef's Secret on February 12, 2019 and is hosting a book launch on February 13th. For more information about Crystal's work, see her web site.
CCT alums and associates are encouraged to send items of interest to
the Critical and Creative Thinking community to be included in future
newsletters. Please submit events, announcements, and opportunities
through this form: http://bit.ly/CCTSICWi
EventsOne-day Workshop: Introduction to Dialogue Across Differences
Wednesday, January 23, 2019, at Essential Partners HQ, 186 Alewife Brook Pkwy, Cambridge, MA 02138
Register here
This one-day workshop uses real-world case studies to introduce participants to the theory and practice of EP’s Reflective Structured Dialogue framework. For three decades, our unique approach has transformed conflicts across the country and the world—but the basic principles of EP’s framework are applicable to local community issues, organizational development, and everyday conversations. Our differences can make us stronger—but only if we learn how to talk about them. Intentional communication helps individuals, organizations, and communities build trust, enhance resilience, and engage in constructive conversations. With the skills learned in our workshop, you can begin to build trust, enhance democratic resilience, and foster connections despite deeply-held differences of value, belief, opinion, or identity.This one-day training is perfect for: Civic leaders and advocates; Educators and administrators; Corporate and nonprofit managers; Human resources and organizational development professionals; Clergy and lay religious leaders; Therapists or social workers; Alternative dispute resolution professionals.
Training: Transnational Solidarity in Practice: Centering Black Indigenous Trans Queer Hood Femmes
Provided by Resistance Education
11:00am-5:00pm, January 12, 2019, Cambridge, MA
Anyone is welcomed: geared toward organizers, educators, community members.
In this hands-on intensive training participants will seek to unpack what it means to be in solidarity with communities of color within and beyond their local and global communities. By reimagining your community or workplace, participants would have confronted and provided solutions to the tensions in solidarity-organizing work, specifically by centering women/femmes/genderfluid people of color feminist theories, voices, and experiences. By centering spatial justice methodologies, transnationalism, spiritual activism, and alternative education and resource models, participants will be able to build and share what they have learned with their own local communities.
For more details and to register, please RSVP here.
and to learn more about our work, visit our web site.
The Graduate Consortium of Women's Studies (MIT) announces spring 2019 courses:
Gender and Food: WGS.700 Spring 2019 at MIT campus, Tuesdays 4 - 7pm, January 29, 2019 - May 10, 2019
Gendering U.S. Immigration Policy: Sociopolitical, Theological, and
Feminist Perspectives: WGS.645 Spring 2019 at MIT campus, Thursdays 9am -
12pm, January 31, 2019 - May 12, 2019
For more information on courses and registration, see the web site.
UMass Boston's MASSPIRG is a statewide, student-directed, non-partisan, & non-profit organization. For over 45 years, students on college campuses across Massachusetts have worked alongside professional organizers and advocates to create a more meaningful future.offers internships for students so they can apply what they’re learning in the classroom to real world experiences. If there are classes you’re teaching next spring with service-learning opportunities or practicums that need a placement site we’d be happy to partner with you. Any student can do an internship with us to gain practical skills while working on an issue they care about. Interested students can fill out the MASSPIRG Internship Application here.
For more information about our organization, see our web site.
Prescription for Justice TV's latest episode is released: Episode 15: Doctors Gone Bad: Physicians, Dictatorships, and Warrior Cultures
(relevance to public health and social justice – covers cooptation of physicians and public health systems by dictators, demagogues, and unethical (and worse) researchers and physicians; human rights abuses; lots of other reasons)
This episode reviews the history of unethical human subject experimentation from World War II to the present, focusing on physicians who compromised their professional ethics and facilitated the rise of demagogues and the perpetuation of militarism. I discuss how the cooptation of an influential professional class by dictators and elected (but corrupt and secretive) rulers is necessary for such rulers to maintain and extend their authority, wage war, and carry out ruthless crimes against humanity. I review the development of standards of ethical human subject experimentation, describe ongoing abuses, and warn of history repeating itself under President Trump and other right-wing demagogues currently holding power.
See more episodes from Prescription for Justice Television and our web site.
The National Education Association offers a school Opportunity Checklist to help schools think about broad areas for improvement. See the checklist here.
Food for Thought
(additional web links and posts can also be found on CCT's Diigo pages. General critical and creative thinking focus: https://groups.diigo.com/group/ccreflect; Science in a Changing World focus: https://groups.diigo.com/group/sicwumb)
Video:
Ursula Le Guin acceptance speech for the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, 2014 (YouTube)
Articles:
Podcast: You 2.0: Rebel With a Cause. Francesca Gino studies rebels — people who practice "positive deviance" and achieve incredible feats of imagination (Spotify)
Lists of best 2018 news stories/articles identified by various media sources: Greater Good Magazine | Yes! Magazine | BrainPickings | The Atlantic - Podcasts | Pacific Standard Overall, Education, Environment | The 74 Million (education) | Education Next
Systems Thinking, Critical Thinking, and Personal Resilience (Post Carbon Institute)
News Feed Fatigue: It's Getting Harder To Think (In These Times)
Tragedy revisited (Science Magazine)
Regulators must become as creative as innovators (The Hill)
Straight Talk: Visualizing Polution with Leni Dothan (SciArt Magazine)
How One University Uses 'Sneaky Learning' to Help Students Develop Good Study Habits (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
These Kids Are Learning How to Have Bipartisan... (Greater Good Science Center)
Why You Should Search For Prior Art Yourself (Forbes)
24 Cognitive Biases that block Critical Thinking (Vizworld Infographic)
Your kids believe in Santa? A scientist says to tell them to stop it (The Washington Post)
Alpha Brain Waves May Suppress Obvious Ideas to Foster Creativity (PsychCentral)
Troubling Questions About the Effect of Technology Devices on American Children (City Journal)
You 2.0 Podcast: Rebel With A Cause (Spotify)
Why the Climate Change Message Isn't Working (YES! Magazine)
Arizona lawmaker would fire teachers who discuss politics, 'controversial issues' in class (tucson.com)
The Neuroscience of Creativity: A Q & A with Anna Abraham (Scientific American Blog Network)
Why People Refuse to Evacuate (Medium)
Teaching the Students We Have, Not the Students We Wish We Had (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
What Does Copyright Protect? Your photos of Elvis sightings are covered, but not stars named after you... (U.S. Copyright Office FAQ)