Blake Moskal and Laura Tonner were both named as two of Butler’s 2015-2016 Top 100 Most Outstanding Students. Take a moment to congratulate them when you have the chance!
Category: News
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Congratulations to Bryant, Margaret, and Blake!
Bryant Dawson was named as one of Butler’s 2015 Top 10 Men, and both Margaret Griffiths and Blake Moskal were named as two of Butler’s Top 100 Outstanding Students this year. Take a moment to congratulate them if you have the chance!
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Congratulations to Katelyn Breden! – Winner of the Kristi Schultz Broughton Liberal Arts Essay Contest
The Kristi Schultz Broughton Liberal Arts Essay Contest is an annual competition which encourages Butler undergraduates from all colleges to write a short essay in response to a prompt about the value of the liberal arts education they are experiencing at Butler. The author of the winning essay receives a $1,000 prize. The committee, comprised of LAS faculty and BOV members, selected Katelyn Breden as this year’s winner. You can follow the link below to read her essay.
2015 topic – Vision for the Future
In describing Butler 2020 (http://www.butler.edu/butler-2020/) the university makes use of six different verbs to articulate the university’s vision for its future, a vision deeply informed by and invested in the liberal arts. Select one of the verbs that are part of the vision for Butler 2020 and write an essay describing how your liberal arts education has made that verb part of your own vision for the future. In other words, think about and illustrate how you will be better able to enact that verb as a result of your liberal arts education.
Winning essay, “Butler 2020:Integrate.Exemplify excellence in the liberal arts, professional education, and their effective integration,” by Katelyn Breden.
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Fair Trade Speaker ~ Cocurricular Event, April 10th, 6:00
This Thursday, April 10th, Butler will be celebrating Fair Trade Day as part of Butler’s annual Peace Week celebration. As part of Fair Trade Day, we will be inviting Anne and Kelly Campbell from the Village Experience Fair Trade store and the Village Cooperative non-profit (http://www.experiencethevillage.com/) to speak about the role of Fair Trade in creating sustainable systems of economic-development and trade in the Global South from 6-7:30pm GH105.
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Congratulations to Bryant Dawson, 2014 Liberal Arts Essay Contest Winner
The Kristi Schultz Broughton Liberal Arts Essay Contest, open to all Butler undergraduates, invites essays on a topic related to liberal education. This award recognizes the student whose essay was judged most outstanding by a committee composed of members of the faculty and of the College’s Board of Visitors.
Bryant Dawson presented his essay, “The Moral Code of Liberal Arts,” to the students and guests at the LAS Awards Day, April 5th.
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MSc programmes in Science & Technology Studies at the University of Edinburgh.
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Funding is available for international students looking to pursue MSc programmes in Science & Technology Studies at the University of Edinburgh.
We are delighted to announce five scholarships to fund students wanting to pursue a taught MSc in Science and Technology in Society, or the MSc by Research in Science & Technology Studies at the University of Edinburgh. These scholarships will cover tuition fees for students who have been accepted onto one of the above MSc programmes for full-time or part-time study. Most EU nationals are eligible to apply. The application deadline is 1 May 2014. Further details are available at:
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/student-funding/postgraduate/uk-eu/university-scholarships/sfc-hsw.The University of Edinburgh also offers a number of scholarships for students from around the world wishing to pursue MSc programmes; details of scholarships and deadlines are available at:
http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2014/scholarships-100314.Please visit our website for details of MSc programmes we offer (www.stis.ed.ac.uk). For questions or advice about these scholarships or the possibility of joining us for your MSc studies do contact:
Emma Frow, emma.frow@ed.ac.uk (MSc Science and Technology in Society), or Jane Calvert, jane.calvert@ed.ac.uk (MSc by Research in Science & Technology Studies)
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The Solar Car Challenge – Woods Lecture TONIGHT – Cocurricular Opportunity
Joe Ritter and John Broere
The Solar Car Challenge: Designing for the Future (The Secrets of the Prinicipia Solar Car Project)
TONIGHT – Wednesday, Feb. 26th, 7:30 p.m., Reilly Room
The Principia Solar Car Project began in 1991 with a handful of highly motivated liberal arts students. For the past 12 years, the project has consistently met its goals through active learning and application of engineering principles. The team has consistently placed in the top seven in the numerous cross-country races, a record particularly remarkable given that Principia College is a small liberal arts school in Elsah, Ill., competing against top engineering universities, multinational corporations, and engineering firms.
Joe Ritter joined the faculty in 1995 as an assistant professor of chemistry, attaining the rank of professor a decade later. He has served as chair of the Chemistry Department, director of the Engineering Science Program, and faculty advisor to the Principia College Solar Car Project. A longtime faculty mentor with invaluable experience and irrepressible enthusiasm for project-based learning, he assumed the post of assistant dean of academics in 2008.
John Broere is an instructor of computer science at Principia. He has been a faculty adviser to the Principea Solar Car Team since 2007, and was a member of the team as an undergraduate student from 1998-2002. During his time with the team, he has had the opportunity to participate in numerous major races and events both nationally and internationally. He also was instrumental in erecting a wind test tower on Principia’s campus to investigate the viability of using wind power to supplement the College’s energy supply.
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Faculty Candidate Presentation #2 – Jessica Koski
STS Majors and minors, please note that the candidate presentations CAN serve as cocurricular events – All presentations will end at 12:55 with a Q&A to follow. Students and faculty with 1:00 classes can leave when necessary.
Jessica Koski, Ph.D Candidate in Sociology, Northwestern University, degree expected June 2014
Tuesday, February 11th, 12:15-1:15, PB205
Presentation title: “Social Constructionism and Global Warming: Friends or Foes?”
Summary: Science and technology studies (STS) scholars have devoted significant attention to how climate change is “constructed” as a scientific and political problem. But such work is not without controversy. Many researchers charge that social constructionist accounts of global warming fuel climate skepticism and, as a result, impede policymaking. Are constructionist analyses worth the risk? Drawing on research on the mutual production of climate science and climate politics, this talk discusses the promises and perils of social constructionist investigations of environmental concerns. Classic constructionist accounts underscore how powerful actors distort science to serve particular ends. Such interest-based accounts deliver a powerful blow to science’s public credibility for many view “good” science as that which is untouched by politics. At the same time, the lens of social construction also brings to light the ways in which social variables shape scientific practice itself. Better understanding the co-production of political and scientific agendas, as well as how politics is built into scholars’ research design, may spur more nuanced and reflexive debate. It also has the potential to unveil sources of political gridlock. However, it too requires acknowledging science’s inherent social component. This review encourages a reevaluation of how we differentiate between “good” and “bad” science and further pushes us to consider more explicitly the role of STS scholarship (and scholars) in policy debates.
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Faculty Candidate Presentation #1 Jesse Van Gerven
STS Majors and minors, please note that the candidate presentations CAN serve as cocurricular events – All presentations will end at 12:55 with a Q&A to follow. Students and faculty with 1:00 classes can leave when necessary.
Jesse Van Gerven, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology, University of Missouri, degree expected May 2014
Graduate Instructor, University of Missouri
Tuesday, Feb. 4th, 12:15-1:15 in PB205
Presentation Title: “The Social Dimensions of Energy Systems in Contemporary Societies”
Summary:
We will be discussing the ways energy systems (electricity) take on important social, cultural, political, and economic meanings as these systems are developed, implemented, contested and negotiated. We will focus on how the negative costs of energy systems, manifested primarily through environmental pollution and ecological destruction, disproportionately impact poor and minority communities. More specifically, we will examine the production of nuclear power and the associated nuclear-fuel-chain as a means of demonstrating the social dimensions of energy systems; again focusing on how the associated environmental and human-health burdens become concentrated in low-income communities and communities of color.
