New Interdisciplinary STS Graduate Certificate Offers Tech Students a Cultural Perspective on Science

A newly approved certificate study program in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts offers Georgia Tech graduate students a broader perspective on science and technology.

The Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Graduate Certificate is designed to enable graduate students from any college in the University to better understand the dynamic relationship between science and culture. Recipients of the certificate will be able to demonstrate a special competence in applying a holistic, cultural research lens to their home discipline research.

“Today, whether working as a project leader in industry or as a researcher in academia, the ability to communicate the social value of research is more important than ever,” said Anne Pollock, assistant professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, and the certificate’s main coordinator. “The courses in the certificate are an excellent opportunity to hone critical thinking and written and oral communication, and to demonstrate that competence to future employers.”

The certificate was an idea formulated in faculty brainstorming sessions organized by Dean Jacqueline Royster in 2010, at the start of her tenure as dean. John Krige, professor in the School of History, Technology, and Society, convened an STS Graduate Seminar in the Fall of 2011 as a first step toward an official certificate.

“Science and engineering students who wish to be leaders in their careers simply cannot function successfully unless they are aware of the historical, sociological, economical, international, and political implications of what they do,” said Krige. “Wherever they lever their training they will be embedded in a social world.”

Nearly one dozen faculty members signed up to teach a session, a true reflection of the diversity and richness of both STS studies and IAC research.

Robert Rosenberger, assistant professor in the School of Public Policy, was a guest lecturer in the seminar and appreciated working with students from other disciplines.

"Now I'm on the dissertation committee of a student I met during that session," he said. "The different disciplinary backgrounds of the students–and me too, I'm a philosopher–lead to consistently strong discussions."

In the fall of 2012, the certificate received sponsorship of IAC schools. It was approved by the Institute’s Graduate Curriculum Committee in January, by the Academic Senate in February, and the University System of Georgia in March. While the certificate’s required courses have been taught over the past year as a trial run, the Registrar notified the Board of Regents in March that classes will be offered in Fall 2013, making the certificate official.

Carol Colatrella, associate dean of graduate studies in the Ivan Allen College, emphasized the necessity of students from any area of study to consider the “human dimensions” of the science, technology, engineering, and math research offered by the certificate.

“It is not enough to invent or to improve technologies and technical processes. One should recognize the interests that motivate designers and consumers,” she said.

For IAC, the social complexities posed by these interests are challenges the college is ready to prepare its students to tackle.

Related Links:

• STS Graduate Certificate

Founder’s Day Panels Highlight the Risks and Lessons of Moving "From Witness to Action"

The faculty panel at Founder’s Day gathered in front of the bright lights of C-SPAN cameras. They represented various schools across Ivan Allen College, whose research and life experiences revolved around issues of social justice. They all work with real people and real lives. Moderator Jennifer Clark, associate professor in the School of Public Policy, challenged faculty panelists with a pointed questions: “What do you do when you’re wrong?” Here is what they said.

Danny Boston, professor in the School of Economics

“There are two kinds of people who never do anything wrong. One is a dictator, the other never does anything at all.” 

Boston noted that, “There are degrees of being wrong." He recalled an incident when his first book was published and he proudly showed it to his mother, who promptly took it into her bedroom to read. When she came out a few hours later, Boston asked her what she thought about the book which had a dedication to her on its front piece.

“Well, son,” she said, “About the only thing I understood was the first page.”

Boston related that, in that moment, he realized the importance of making his work approachable.

Christopher Le Dantec, assistant professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication

“Being wrong is a tool,” said Le Dantec. “It requires skill to understand that I, as an expert, would be wrong,” especially when working with communities outside academia. Le Dantec has conducted research with homeless shelters, and said “There is no better expert in homelessness than a homeless person.”

Le Dantec said integration of technology into disenfranchised communities means not coming in with solutions, but understanding and addressing problems the community perceives as relevant.

Helena Mitchell, executive director of the Center for Advanced Communications Policy

“Fear can be paralyzing, and once you give into that fear you’re not going to get anywhere,” said Mitchell. She said you can’t let yourself be paralyzed. “You must take an active part in what you see going on around you if you want to impact change.”

Mitchell discussed her efforts as a young protester in the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam War era. “Change far outpaces how things are done in academia,” she said. She advocated an increased focus on junior faculty and students for cultivation of ideas and innovation in the face of change.

Willie Pearson, professor in the School of History, Technology, and Society

“In the real world, when you’re dealing with people being injured and getting killed, you don’t have time for longitudinal studies,” said Pearson. “Arrogance can take you down.”

Pearson spent time in North Carolina, researching the rise of gangs. He had to confront biases in mental evaluations where underprivileged youth were more likely to have diagnoses of "extreme violent tendencies," in contrast to the more generic diagnosis of "behavior problems" assigned to teens from higher-income families.

“I never had the perspective of blindly accepting methods. I knew if you had the tools, you could question them,” said Pearson.

Student Panel

A student panel preceding the faculty panel addressed efforts by students to integrate their learning with real-world applications. The panel was moderated bySheri Davis-Faulkner, community liaison for the Westside Communities Alliance, and included:

• Nettrice Gaskins, Digital Media doctoral candidate
• Susan Ingber, Public Policy masters candidate
• Rebecca Rolfe, Digital Media masters candidate
• Danielle Sharpe, History, Technology and Society major
• Steven Waugh, International Affairs major

Jacqueline Royster, dean of the Ivan Allen College, noted that both the faculty and student panels emphasized that “research and action are not mutually exclusive.”

“The reality of Ivan Allen College is that we are deliberately bringing research and action together, just as we’re bringing arts and sciences together,” Royster said.

This year’s theme, “From Witness to Action,” commemorated the 50th anniversary of Mayor Ivan Allen Jr.’s Congressional testimony in support of what would become the Civil Rights Act fo 1964. His testimony resulted in he and his family requiring police protection for a year due to threats against their lives for their support of civil rights for black Americans.

2013 Ivan Allen Jr. Legacy Awards Presented

Alumnus Travis Horsley, faculty member Dr. Lisa Yaszek,and students Angeli Patel and Andrew Quitmeyer were presented Ivan Allen Jr. Legacy Awards during the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Founder's Day celebratation on March 13.

The awards honor faculty, students, and alumni as innovators who are shattering traditional boundaries to create solutions that are deliberately interdisciplinary, socially responsible, and ethically conscious, and who are courageously advancing the cause of social justice.  Their character and work embody the values and principlesof the college's founding namesake, former Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr.

Lisa Yaszek, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, was recognized for extraordinary work in science fiction's sociological applications and for her dedication as a teacher.

Travis Horsley, MSc in Public Policy (2012) and BS in International Affairs and Modern Languages (2010), was recognized for co-founding Tubing Operations for Humanitarian Logistics (TOHL), an enterprise that uses plastic tubing dropped by a helicopter to revolutionize the way isolated communities receive water and the way water is delivered in emergency situations.

Andrew Quitmeyer, PhD candidate in Digital Media in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, was recognized for his research connecting the quantitative realms of computer science and biology with the creative area of digital performance in projects that have taken him around the world. 

Angeli Patel, International Affairs major, was recognized for her foundation and leadership of ReThink, focusing on disabilities education, and her active participation in campus activities.

The Ivan Allen Jr. Legacy Awards are made possible through the generosity of Colonel Stephen C. Hall and Mrs. Pamela Hall.

IAC Faculty Receive Teaching Awards

A number of IAC faculty are 2013 recipients of teaching awards offered through the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning. They will receive their awards at a luncheon for faculty and staff honorees in April.

Dhongde and Head Receive Junior Faculty Awards

Shatakshee Dhongde (top right), assistant professor in the School of Economics, and Karen Head, assistant professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, have been named 2013 CETL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award recipients.

"When I am in a classroom, I do not stand in front of the students to teach them—perhaps I am too young, too inexperienced and too unorthodox to do that—I strongly believe that I am in the classroom to facilitate learning among students," Dhongde wrote in her reflective statement. "Every semester, we embark on this journey together—we learn the material together. The students learn it for the first time, I learn it the second, the third, the nth time…but the joy of discovery never fades."

The award is co-sponsored by the Georgia Tech Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) and BP America. Annually up to six $3,000 awards are given in recognition of teaching excellence and educational innovation on the part of Junior Faculty.

Raczynski Receives Outstanding Advisor Award

Katie Raczynski has received the Georgia Tech Outstanding Undergraduate Academic Advisor Award.

Raczynksi served for three years as an academic advisor to students in the Computational Media program, a collaborative effort by the IAC School of Literature, Media, and Communication and the College of Computing, before becoming director of Undergraduate Advising for Computing in February.

The award is sponsored by the Undergraduate Studies Office and recognizes faculty or staff whose primary role is advising and who render outstanding performance in undergraduate academic advising. Recipients receive a $2,000 award at the annual faculty/staff awards luncheon in April.

Faculty on the Media Circuit

IAC faculty were invited guests to a number of news shows in recent weeks. Here's what they had to say.

Pollock on Melissa Harris-Perry Show

"Early on, heart disease researchers were really focused on elite white men, on the stressful lives that they were living, and that were sedentary. Obviously that was not all Americans in the 1920s and 30s. There were a lot of people who were left out of that story," said Anne Pollock, assistant professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication. "With the progress and democracy that has happened through social justice movements, those notions about heart disease risk have also expanded."

Watch the interview.

Utz on the Entrepreneurial Spirit of English Professors

Richard Utz, chair of the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, wrote a guest column for Inside Higher Education on March 4, 2013. This is an excerpt from the piece, printed in full here.

In 1892, the president of Leland Stanford University, David Starr Jordan, managed to convince Ewald Flügel, a scholar at the University of Leipzig, to join the young institution’s rudimentary English department. Flügel had received his doctoral degree in 1885 with a study of Thomas Carlyle under the aegis of Richard Wülcker, one of the founders of English studies in Europe. Three years later, he finished his postdoctoral degree, with a study on Sir Philip Sydney, and was appointed to the position of a Privatdozent at Leipzig.

The position of the Privatdozent is one of the most fascinating features at the modern German universities in the late 19th century. Although endowed with the right to direct dissertations and teach graduate seminars, the position most often offered only the smallest of base salaries, leaving the scholar to earn the rest of his keep by students who paid him directly for enrolling in his seminars and lectures. In a 1903 Stanford commencement speech Flügel warmly recommended that his new colleagues in American higher education embrace the Privatdozent concept:

"What would the faculty of Stanford University say to a young scholar of decided ability, who, one or two years after his doctorate (taken with distinction), having given proof of high scholarly work and spirit, should ask the privilege of using a certain lecture room at a certain hour for a certain course of lectures? What would Stanford University say, if – after another year or two this young man, unprotected but regarded with a certain degree of kindly benevolence […], this lecturer should attract more and more students (not credit hunters), if he should become an influence at the university? What if the university should become in the course of years a perfect hive of such bees? […] It would modify our departmental boss-system, our worship of "credits," and other traits of the secondary schools; it would stimulate scholarly life at the university; it would foster a healthy competition in scholarly work, promote survival of the fittest, and keep older men from rusting."

Read the full piece here.

Wittes on the Future of US Involvement in the Middle East

Tamara Wittes, Director of the Brookings Institution`s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, gave a campus talk on February 28, 2013. The event was organized by The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs’ Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy (CISTP) and the General Ray Davis Memorial Fund.

Wittes was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (2009-2012) and Deputy Special Coordinator for Middle East Transitions (2009-2012) during the Arab Spring. For years, the U.S. has had a Middle East strategy based on ensuring the flow of oil and preventing war between Arab countries and Israel. Wittes proposed moving beyond this old strategy and creating a coalition of cooperative ties to support the transition to democracy in the Middle East. Although there is  considerable pressure for the U.S. and  President Obama to close the door on the Middle East, she said there are many reasons to keep the door open.

Wittes discussed the reality that one-third of Egyptians are under thirty and many of them are  unemployed. If they are unemployed, they are unable to move out of their parent`s house, they are unable to get married, they  cannot even date, and are at great risk for drug addiction. At the same time, Egyptians are exposed to new media, including social media like Facebook and satellite TV. New ideas are coming into the region.

After her talk, Wittes met with students considering careers at the Department of State.

Related Links

• Wittes House Committee Testimony

IAC Previews City Wide Events for Africa Atlanta 2014 on April 2

All are invited to attend the preview of a new city wide year-long celebration, Africa Atlanta 2014, during events at 7:00pm April 2 at the Academy of Medicine.

Dean Jacqueline Jones Royster will introduce the context and concepts of Africa Atlanta 2014 with co-organizers, the Consul General of Belgium in Atlanta, and Africa Atlanta Partners from across the city. The preview program will take place during opening night of the African Film Series.  

Modeled on the highly successful France-Atlanta, Africa Atlanta 2014 will reinvent the cultural and economic bonds between Africa, European, and American cultures in Atlanta through an extraordinary array of art exhibitions, performances, cinema, symposia, conferences, and workshops. An Africa Atlanta website will launch April 3.  Contact deshawn.jenkins@iac.gatech.edu for more information.

John Lewis to Give Social Courage Prize Address

All are welcome to attend events honoring Congressman John Lewis, an icon of American civil rights and this year's recipient of the Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage, to be held April 4 at The Biltmore.

“John Lewis put his life on the line for many years during the 1960s to bring about equality under the law for all Americans. His unflinching civil rights leadership and ongoing advocacy for social change throughout his career have elevated the causes of human rights around the world,” said Georgia Institute of Technology President G.P. “Bud” Peterson. “It is our privilege to honor the life and work of Congressman Lewis through the Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage.”

Students, faculty, staff, alumni, and guests are encouraged to attend the follow events open to the public:

Allen Prize Symposium, 9am - Noon
"Building Communities of Trust:" Recognizing the Life and Works of the Honorable John Lewis

Award Ceremony, 1:15pm - 2pm
Presentation of the Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage and Recipient Address

Click here to RSVP.

Related Links

• Event Program
• Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage

Upcoming Shadow Day Will Prospective Students Will Get an Inside Look at Life in IAC

Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Shadow Day is April 4.  The event was created by the college's Student Advisory Board as a way of helping students test their fit as a liberal arts student at Georgia Tech. 

While there are other visitation programs offered at Georgia Tech, the Shadow Day event is unique. Throughout the day, prospective students will be guided by Ivan Allen College students so that they can experience life as a Georgia Tech liberal arts major.  The goal is to assist students make their decision on where to go to college. The entire day, students are surrounded by Liberal Arts students, faculty, and staff who answer questions and make visits productive and worthwhile. This event has been such a success that the college has made Shadow Day an annual event. Space is still available so visit Shadow Day to register.

Son of Spymaster William Colby to Visit for Film Screening of “The Man Nobody Knew”

Filmmaker Carl Colby will be present to introduce his film, "The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father CIA Spymaster William Colby," in a screening sponsored by the School of History, Technology and Society, the Honors Program, and the Center for Teaching and Learning.

The documentary is a son's riveting look at a father whose life seemed straight out of a spy thriller. The story is at once a probing history of the CIA, a personal memoir of a family living in clandestine shadows, and an inquiry into the hard costs of a nation's most cloaked actions.

The event, to be held April 2 in LeCraw Auditorium of the Ernest Scheller Jr. College of Business, is free and open to the public; reservations are not required.

For more event information, click here.

Soccer in Brazil More Than a Game, Atlantans Learn

Global Atlanta teamed up with The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs to host two sessions titled: “Understanding the World Through Soccer.” Here's an excerpt from the news story published on March 20.

In 1994, when Brazil won its fourth World Cup during a tournament held in the United States, the Atlanta Brazilian community came together - faces painted and flags waiving - for an impromptu parade down Peachtree Street.

The Atlanta police didn't know how to respond, said Lucia Jennings, a pillar in the local Brazilian community who helped found the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce here.

"Next thing I know I have 20 police cars stopping, I had about five guys arrested," she told the audience. "I had to go and speak to the TV that evening, and the next day I had to go to the police station and tell the judge that we were not rioting."

The fanaticism illustrates how identity in Brazil and across Latin America is tied to soccer, said Kirk Bowman, an associate professor of international affairs at Georgia Tech who teaches a popular course on soccer and global politics.

"Becoming a citizen of that team is so important that there are all sorts of stories of families that when a child is born, the first thing you do is get their membership club card; the second thing you do is have their baptism," Dr. Bowman said in his presentation.

Read the full story.