News2014August
News from the Graduate Program in Critical & Creative Thinking
University of Massachusetts Boston28 August 2014
Student Matters
Several fall 2014 courses still have space remaining. Current students should register as soon as possible through WISER. Prospective students may register through the web site:
http://caps-courses.umb.edu/courses/fall/cr/gr/crcrth/
Hybrid (note class numbers following each course; distance students should register for those labeled as online)
CRCRTH603L Foundations of Philosophical Thought (Tuesdays 4:00-6:45pm / face-to-face:#14172 / online:#16599)
CRCRTH645L Biology in Society: Critical Thinking (Wednesdays 4:00-6:45pm / face-to-face:#5724 / online:#5723)
CRCRTH655 Metacognition (Tuesdays 7:00-9:45pm / face-to-face:#5726 / online:#5725)
CRCRTH688 Reflective Practice (first Monday of each month 6:30-9:00pm / face-to-face:#5729 / online:#5728)
Online
CRCRTH601 Critical Thinking (#5722)
CRCRTH618 Creative Thinking, Collaboration, and Organizational Change (#12811)
CRCRTH670 Thinking, Learning, and Computers (#5727)
CRCRTH692 Processes of Research and Engagement (#5730)
For those driving campus, please note that the South Lot (the large lot close to Wheatley) is permanently closed after August 29th because of long-term campus reconstruction. Parking will be limited to the remaining small lots close to campus, and finding a space will be very challenging, especially if arriving in the morning or afternoon. It is strongly recommended that drivers go directly to the Bayside Lot on Mt. Vernon Street and take the free shuttle to campus.
Graduate Student Fall Orientation
Events, graduate assistantship training, research and writing workshops, open to all new and returning graduate students.
Welcome reception on September 3rd from 3:00-6:00pm in the Campus Center Ballroom, with additional events in surrounding days.
Full schedule: http://cdn.umb.edu/images/graduate_studies/2014_Fall_Grad_Orientation.pdf
UMB Welcome Weeks in celebration of the start of the fall 2014 semester
Several events, workshops, giveaways, and resources/information for new and returning students will be on campus from September 2-11:
http://www.umb.edu/life_on_campus/student_involvement/activities/saec/welcome_week
Feedback requested from CCT students: please see the item on NewSSC workshop planning below under the CCT Community section.
CCT Community
A new book on Nature-nurture science is now available by CCT Professor Peter Taylor, Nature-Nurture? No: Moving the Sciences of Variation and Heredity Beyond the Gaps. Arlington, MA: The Pumping Station. "To say No to Nature-Nurture is to reject the relative weighting of heredity and environment and to say Yes to interesting scientific and policy questions about heredity and variation." For more details, see http://bit.ly/NNN2014. Congratulations to Professor Taylor on this work!
Our new faculty member, Orin Davis, is keen to connect with alums -- or through alums to the wider world -- around self-actualization and making workplaces great places to work. Here is his brief bio:
Orin C. Davis, Ph.D., is a self-actualization engineer who focuses on enabling people to do and be their best. His consulting work focuses on maximizing human capital and making workplaces great places to work, and his research focuses on self-actualization, flow, creativity, hypnosis, and mentoring. Dr. Davis is the principal investigator of the Quality of Life Laboratory (http://www.qllab.org) and the Chief Science Officer of Self Spark. He earned the first doctorate in Positive Psychology from Claremont Graduate University and did his baccalaureate degree in Neuroscience at Brandeis University. Email davisoc [at] gmail.com
Additionally, Orin reports on his recent projects:
"At the APA Convention in Washington, DC, I gave a talk on my research on the creative personality in which I highlighted some of the difficulties determining what constitutes a creative personality and likewise that the development of creativity may be more directly related to maturity than previously thought. I also gave a talk with Jennifer Katz-Buonincontro about some research we did on using the Experience Sampling Method to assess whether engineering students are able to exhibit creativity in the classroom and how that can inform future pedagogy. In addition, I was invited to Judson College to meet with faculty and staff about how they can create opportunities for critical thinking throughout the college experience."
NewSSC (the New England Workshop on Science and Social Change) is planning its May 2015 workshop in Woods Hole, Mass to draw in prospective, current, and past CCT students. Participants will come together over 5 days to create spaces, interactions, and support in formulating plans to extend our own projects of inquiry and engagement. (These plans/projects do NOT have to focus on science). Activities will, as they have at NewSSC workshops since 2004, employ a range of tools and processes for "connecting, probing, and reflecting" so as to support and learn from each others' inquiries. (More details: http://sicw.wikispaces.com/newssc15cct).
CCT is especially interested to have current and incoming students participate (for which course credit can be earned) so as to establish in the rest of your studies a mindful interplay between two modes -- a "move" mode: making our work and lives in a context in which we increasingly have to be entrepeneurial, taking charge of making and taking opportunities, generating products (including ourselves as employable products) -- and a "slow" mode: pausing to take stock before leaving one phase/project/assignment/course and moving to a new one as well as identifying alternative paths so we are not simply driven by the context in which we live and changes imposed by others. It is also possible that NewSSC will create opportunities for students to stimulate your individual projects over the following two weeks (again, for course credit) through visits in Boston to co-working spaces, non-profits, museum outreach units, innovative educational units, community colleges, alum workplaces, cooperative galleries, and so on. The costs are still being arranged, but the goal is to provide generous travel subsidies for students coming from afar so as to keep overall costs for those seeking graduate credit to be no more than the standard rate for a UMB course.
What would help NewSSC at this point is to hear from prospective CCT participants which five-day periods in the second half of May would work for you. Please email newssc11@gmail.com
CCT Events
Fall 2014 Online CCT Gathering
Monday, September 8, 7:00-8:30pm on Google+ Hangout. All new and returning students, faculty, and others are invited to join us for this online gathering as we welcome back the CCT community for the fall semester, where we will share introductions and get to know each other further as reflective practitioners and explorers of critical and creative thinking. Please RSVP to cct@umb.edu for instructions on connecting with the online session.
Register now for upcoming Collaborative Exploration (CE) for September 2014: Where can Reflective Practice Make a Difference?
Free, online Collaboration Exploration (CE), open to all, in which participants investigate the ways that promoting reflective practice translates into changes in the world and our lives. Includes four 1-hour online meetings tentatively scheduled for September 4, 11, 18, 25 from 4:00-5:00pm EDT, with time in between for independent exploration. For more information and to register, visit http://cct.wikispaces.com/CESep14
CCT Community Open Houses are currently being planned for the evenings of Monday, October 6th and Monday, December 1st. Look for additional details in upcoming newsletters. All prospective students are invited to attend and meet students, alumni, and faculty.
Alum and CCT associates Notes
Congratulations to Elizabeth Naylor ('08) on her new job as Communications Consultant at Lymphoma Research Foundation.
Alums and CCT associates are invited to submit items to be included in our email newsletter. These may be announcements of events, personal news and/or updates on your work and projects, job opportunities and calls for participation, and any other items that you'd like to share with the wider CCT community.
Events
Campus on the Common: UMass Boston Showcase
Tuesday, October 7, 2014 on the Boston Common in Boston, MA
In celebration of UMass Boston's 50th anniversary, join the university community on the Boston Common grounds for guest speakers, interactive exhibits, and other presentations and events. For more details as they become available, please see: http://www.umb.edu/news_events_media/events/campus_on_the_common
Conflict Studies and Global Governance: The New Generation of Ideas
The Tenth Biennial Graduate Student Conference of the department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance at UMass Boston
October 31-November 1, 2014 at UMass Boston, Campus Center
For more information and registration details: http://www.umb.edu/academics/mgs/crhsgg/conferences/conflict_studies_global_governance_conference
CAST Symposium: Seeing / Sounding / Sensing
MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology, Cambridge, MA
September 26-27
Art, science, and technology are ways of knowing and changing the world. These disciplines frequently draw from each other yet their devoted practitioners rarely have the opportunity for high-level intellectual and cultural exchange. Seeing / Sounding / Sensing is an intensive two-day event at MIT that invites creative artists to join with philosophers, cognitive neuroscientists, anthropologists, historians, and scholars from a range of disciplines in an open-ended discussion about knowledge production. The goal is to challenge each domain’s conventional certainty about “what is known,” “how we know it,” or “how we can know more,” and to stimulate new issues for possible cross-disciplinary scholarship in the future. More information: http://arts.mit.edu/cast-symposium/
Opportunities
The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) application period is now open! NSF is soliciting applications for the GRFP until the posted deadlines in late October and early November 2014. Since 1952, GRFP has provided Fellowships to individuals selected early in their graduate careers based on their demonstrated potential for significant achievements in science and engineering. Three years of support is provided by the program for graduate study in science or engineering and leads to a research-based master's or doctoral degree. The NSF expects to award 2,000 Graduate Research Fellowships under this program solicitation pending availability of funds. Additional details may be found at:http://www.nsfgrfp.org/
Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) PROGRAM SOLICITATION (NSF 14-590)
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2014/nsf14590/nsf14590.pdf
GRFP is also soliciting reviewers for the GRFP applications. Disciplinary and interdisciplinary scientists and engineers, and other professionals with science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduate education expertise, are invited to serve as reviewers for the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). This opportunity is described in a Dear Colleague Letter:
Dear Colleague Letter - NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program - Invitation for Reviewers (NSF 14-107)
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2014/nsf14107/nsf14107.pdf
The UMass Boston Office of Global Programs provides funding to faculty, staff, and students to pursue diverse activities related to learning, teaching, and research, as well as community engagements abroad. Applications are accepted twice per year with deadlines on September 15 and January 15. For additional details about the programs, visit http://www.umb.edu/academics/global/funding_programs_for_faculty_students_and_staff
The Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies (GCWS) at MIT is still accepting students for two of our fall courses:
1) Gender, Race, and the Construction of the American West, 1880-1945
http://web.mit.edu/gcws/courses/2014-15womenwest.html
This course explores the historical experiences and cultural productions of women in the North American West during the time it was being explored, settled, and imagined. Challenging the myths of western expansion as an exclusively male endeavor, and the formation of western myth and enterprise as exclusively male domains, the course pays particular attention to the roles of women in promoting, resisting, transforming, and constructing the trans-Mississippi West as reality and imaginary. The course uses primary sources (diaries, letters, novels, photographs) and secondary source readings to examine gender identity and practice across racial-ethnic groups, geographic region, local economies, and class lines. This course welcomes advanced undergraduates in addition to masters and Ph.D. students from our member institutions. The course is team taught by Professors Karen Hansen (Brandeis), Marilyn Johnson (Boston College), and Lois Rudnick (UMass Boston).
2) Workshop for Dissertation Writers in Women's and Gender Studies
http://web.mit.edu/gcws/courses/2014-15dissertationworkshop.html
A writing workshop for graduate students from all disciplines at the dissertation level. Classes will include presentations and discussions of students' work-in-progress. Discussions will move back and forth between theoretical considerations and practical ones as we address three areas central to dissertation writing: archive, methodology, and interpretation. Students will be asked to reflect on the ways that feminism and gender studies have affected their views of what discourses are considered relevant, worthy, and timely. We will also consider issues of scholarly voice, clarity, and vision. The course will consider how dissertation writers speak to various audiences while maintaining a core feminist engagement. Each student will also give an oral presentation that has been consciously adapted for an interdisciplinary audience. This year's Dissertation Workshop is led by Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace, Professor of English at Boston College.
About GCWS (http://web.mit.edu/gcws/): GCWS offers interdisciplinary, team-taught seminars to students at our member institutions. Our faculty explicitly integrate gender analysis with issues of class, race, culture, ethnicity, and sexualities, and consider the practical implications of feminist theory. Courses are designed to open paths to the creation of new knowledge and provide intellectual support for students pursuing feminist work within the framework of traditional disciplines. Our courses provide incredible cross-institutional networking opportunities for students in the greater Boston area. Seminars are open to Masters and Ph.D. students matriculated in graduate programs at our nine member institutions. Current participating institutions are Boston College, Boston University, Brandeis University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University, Simmons College, Tufts University, and UMass Boston. Students must apply online for GCWS courses. Please encourage your students to apply. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling admission basis until the seminar is filled. Those not admitted or put on a waiting list will be contacted by email immediately following the decision. Please direct any questions to our office at gcws@mit.edu or 617) 324-2085.
Resources
The HubEDU - a resource for social, collaborative learning for organizing your academic resources and sharing them with your communities: http://thehubedu.com/
Atomic Learning is an extensive library of video tutorials on many technical, software, and online learning issues of interest to the UMass community. Please access the resource here (and use your umb.edu account to log in): http://www.atomiclearning.com/?cn=umb
Creative Startups: an accelerator focused on the supporting the entrepreneurial development of businesses specifically addressing areas of creativity, arts, and culture:
http://www.creative-startups.org/
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)
To Watch:
Miss Possible: Dolls to Inspire Girls Across Generations
To Read:
7 Science-Backed Methods To Get You Out Of Your Head
New research sheds light on how children’s brains memorize facts
Innovation Overload: Why Saying 'Creativity' Is Not Enough and The Many Definitions of Innovation
Everyday Objects Blended With Drawing
Teaching Critical Thinking in Age of Digital Credulity
Academic Research is a Total Pain in the ... Neck
Scientists unravel mystery of brain cell growth
Do you Doozy?
We Are Even Quicker To Judge Than We Realize, Study Shows
Lego Releases Female Scientists Set, May Appease 7-Year-Old Critic
Five U.S. Innovations that Helped Finland's Schools Improve but that American Reformers Now Ignore
HumorBack to school...