Global Learning Program takes flight

The Origins of Liberal Education Global Learning Program (GLP) Tutorial, led by Mirzam Pérez (Spanish) and Aysha Pollnitz (History), spent spring break in Europe. The two faculty leaders, one language assistant (Italian), and 15 first-year students examined liberal education and its origins together on campus for the spring semester and then traveled, toured, and studied together in Italy and Spain for the duration of spring break for further investigation of the course theme.

While in Europe as a GLP Tutorial, the group analyzed visual arts, architecture, and public spectacles. Together the group interrogated global development of liberal education and reflected on whether ancient texts offered new perspectives on contemporary debates about the value of the liberal arts and sciences.

For part two of the same group's travels, the group will head to Mexico for nine days at the end of the spring semester where the students will visit: Teotihuacan Pyramids, Chapultepec Castle, Basilica de Guadalupe, and many other tours and excursions. In total, the cohort will travel for just over three weeks to various sites and countries which compliment the theme of the course.

It is the leadership of a talented interdisciplinary pair of faculty and these extensive travel experiences that make the Global Learning Program a rich opportunity for First-Year Grinnellians. The Center for International Studies is pleased to coordinate the GLP. We look forward to the second GLP Tutorial, "Tolerance and Intolerance: What is Enlightenment Today?" travels, which will take place in one stint, between May 22 and June 16.

Wilson Program seeks student committee members

Consider applying 

The Wilson Program inspires and prepares students as innovators and leaders. 

With a recently revised mission statement, the committee is in the process of reviewing and expanding programming. Programming has included events such as:

• TEDxGrinnell and Pioneer Weekend;
• support for courses related to the mission;
• and funding for student internships, externships, and other related travel.  

The Wilson Program Committee is composed of students, staff and faculty.  It assists in envisioning and implementing relevant programming, evaluating funding proposals, providing linkages to academic and co-­‐curricular programs, and generally promoting the program.  Student members will be expected to attend semimonthly meetings and contribute significantly to at least one major event per year. 

The Wilson Program is seeking new student members to serve on this program committee. 

All current 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year students who have an interest in innovation and/or leadership are urged to apply.

To apply, please submit a statement to Robert Ludwig ludwigr@grinnell.edu by 7am on Monday, May 2. This statement should discuss:

• your interest, activities and coursework in innovation and leadership;
• your reflections on Wilson Program courses or activities you have participated in;
• your ideas for Wilson-­‐sponsored programming you would like to see in the future.
• Please, also include your major (if declared) and your class year.

With questions, contact the Wilson Program Director, Monty Roper roperjm@grinnell.edu.

Anthropology of Collective Memory Explores Ireland

Spring Break 2016 group travels to explore course themes

Brigittine French, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, led her Anthropology 395 students, accompanied by Casey Oberlin, Assistant Professor of Sociology to Dublin, Ireland for a week during spring break. Professor French notes:

"The course addresses forms of collective memory from theoretical and ethnographic perspectives. It locates memory in the social world, in the relevance of the past for the present, and in on-going struggles to represent and commemorate meaningful histories. It begins by addressing foundational theories. It builds upon them to consider: the relationship between nationalism and memory, the limits and possibilities of representing violence, the on-going contestation of public memories, and embodied performances of memory."

The travel to Ireland provided students with opportunities to examine the major themes of the course. Upon the completion of the course, students will present scholarly posters or creative visual representations of their research in Ireland for a symposium during the final week of the semester.

Aside from touring around Dublin, there were excursions to:

 Newgrange, Glendalough and Glasnevin Cemetery

2017 German Bundestag Internship Program

Consider applying for the 2017 German Bundestag Internship 

                                     

Program information:

• Dates of program: March 1 -- July 31, 2017
• Application deadline: June 30, 2016
• Who: students who will be recent graduates in 2017
• Objective: promote relations between Germany and participating countries
• Student status: participants enroll as students at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. 
• Where: work in the office of a member of the German Parliament (Deutscher Bundestag) 

For more information see the Deutscher Bundestag program website.

Black Lives Matter: Damon Williams '14 on campus April 28 & 29

4p.m. Thursday, April 28 ARH 302

Environmental Justice from the Lens of a Two-Spirit Ojibwe Woman

Presentation by Sharon Day on Earth Day, 22 April, 2016 in ARH 302, 7:00-8:00 p.m.

In 2003 Sharon Day, Josephine Madamin and other Anishinaabe women began Mother Earth Water Walks to bring awareness about water issues. By walking long distances with water and praying for it with each step, the women raise awareness about how water is connected to our lives. Join us on Earth Day to hear how Indigenous Two-Spirit identities shape activism and responsibility to the environment. 

Speaker bio: Sharon Day, Ojibwe, is executive director of the Indigenous People’s Task Force. Sharon is 2nd degree Midewin and follows the spiritual path of the Anishinaabe people; part of her spiritual practice is to care for water. In 2003 Sharon Day, Josephine Madamin and other Anishinaabe women began Mother EarthWater Walks to bring awareness about water issues. By walking long distances with water and praying for it with each step, the women raise awareness about how water is connected to our lives. In spring 2013 she led a group of Ojibwe women on a two-month walk from the headwaters to the mouth of the Mississippi River to raise awareness about the water’s diminishing quality. She is an artist, musician, and writer and has received numerous awards, including the Resourceful Woman Award, the Gisela Knopka Award, BIHA’s Women of Color Award, The National Native American AIDS Prevention Resource Center’s Red Ribbon Award, and most recently, the Alston Bannerman Sabbatical Award. She is an editor of the anthology Sing! Whisper! Shout! Pray! Feminist Visions for a Just World (Edgework Books, 2000).

3rd Annual Nelson Institute Undergraduate Conference on Global Affairs

Location: Olmsted Center, Drake University

Friday, April 8– Saturday, April 9

The Nelson Institute for Diplomacy and International Affairs is pleased to announce the 3rd Annual Nelson Undergraduate Conference on Global Affairs at Drake University on April 8 and 9. The purpose of the conference is to recognize and share high-quality undergraduate research related to international and global topics.

Activities will include:

• Global Diplomacy group exercise, 
• a dinner social featuring international appetizers, 
• a keynote address by noted scholar Valerie Hudson, University of Texas A&M,
• student panels,
• and a closing luncheon with visiting Global Practitioner Peiqin Zhou, Nanjing University.

The registration deadline is March 28. 

Please register through the Drake University Global Affairs.  

Students who attend the full conference (both days) will receive a certificate of participation.  

Contact Denise Ganpat (denise.ganpat@drake.edu) with questions. 

From the Fields to a Plate

2015 Grinnell-in-Washington Internship Seminar Course Final Project

Final project for the 2015 Grinnell-in-Washington Internship Seminar course.

Alumni in the Classroom brings Chuck Adkins-Blanch

Thanks to a new program at Grinnell College, Alumni in the Classroom, offered to connect students with alumni, David Cook-Martín department of sociology chair and director of the Center for International Studies, brought Chuck Adkins-Blanch '84 to campus for a lunch and lecture with students. 

 

Adkins-Blanch received a degree in history in 1984 and a juris doctorate in 1990 from the National Law Center, George Washington University. Straight away he began his career with the federal government and has spent his career specializing in immigration and nationality law. From 1990 to 1995 he worked for the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) as an attorney advisor, which he entered through the Attorney General's Honors Program. He served in various capacities the Office of the General Council from 1999 to 2004. Then he served as an immigration judge from 2004-2008 at the Headquarters Immigration Court. He served as BIA member from 2008 until 2013, when he was appointed as vice chairman of the Board. 

To augment a course on the sociology of law and migration, Adkins-Blanch was invited to discuss the application of asylum law in the United States as well as his own trajectory into law. Adkins-Blanch shared of his two study abroad experiences, one to Taiwan and the other to Spain, and how his time at Grinnell prepared him for his career. A dozen students came to the lunch prior to class, where students were able to listen, share their career interests and ask questions.  

One student asked, "How, as a judge, do you separate your emotions from a case?" Adkins-Blanch's response was simply, "you don't." He explained that if one doesn't have a heart for humankind then he or she should not be in the field. A second student inquired about how the appeals process takes place, and his lucid response outlined the process which was unfamiliar to most students. 

Adkins-Blanch's expertise and time on campus certainly opened students' eyes and enhanced the curriculum of this course.  

Chuck Adkins-Blanch '84, Board of Immigration Appeals, Vice Chairman will visit Grinnell College today, Feb. 9, 2016. Adkins-Blanch will discuss in a course on the sociology of law and migration, the application of asylum law in the United States as well as his own trajectory into law. 

If you are interested in attending, please contact David Cook-Martin (cookd@grinnell.edu).

For more information on Chuck Adkins-Blanch, go to the Board of Immigration Appeals.

Marianna Goncharova shares her short stories

Working with the students in the Russian Senior Seminar, Marianna Goncharova, Russian Writer-in-Residence, presented several of her Russian short stories to the College in English.

Ms. Goncharova graciously thanked her translators: Jacob Cohn, Charles Eddy, Jordan Matosky, Rachel Morgan, and Luke Panciera and praised the students' work. Both she and the students noted the difficulty with which the stories were translated into English. The students recognized that the idiomatic differences in languages made translating the story, while guarding the voice of the author, quite challenging.

After the reading, the floor was open to questions where one audience member asked the author where she prefers to write or if she finds one specific place that opens her mind to writing more than another. Ms. Goncharova responded that she writes anywhere and all of the time. She writes about people she meets and loves all of her characters. She concluded with how grateful she is to have had the opportunity to work with such passionate and intellectual students as she has met at Grinnell College.

Talk by Dhananjay Singh International Visiting Fellow from JNU, Delhi, India

Dhananjay Singh is and an International Visiting Fellow hosted by the English Department and the Center for International Studies. He is an assistant professor in the Center for English Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, India. He is teaching a three-week short course and will give a talk on Wednesday, October 14, 2015. His talk is titled:

Ancient Indian Theatre Traditions and Their Representation in Contemporary Bollywood

Bollywood is an interesting combination of modernity and tradition in as much as it employs the technique of cinema but enmeshes it with the aesthetics and world view of ancient theatre. The talk is premised upon the idea that the form and philosophy of Indian cinema is derived from the continuous and cumulative theatre traditions of ancient theatre.

The Center for International Studies welcomes your attendance.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015 4:15 p.m. in Bucksbaum 152

Refreshments will be served

Chilean Mathematician, Dr. Anita Rojas, spends Spring 2015 at Grinnell as the International Heath Professor

Dr. Anita Rojas, Chilean Mathematician, hosted by Jennifer Paulhus, Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, came for the spring semester, 2015 as the John R. Heath Professor. Endowed in honor of John Reardon Heath, Grinnell Class of 1919, who was an active member and President of the Grinnell Board of Trustees and gave steadfast support to Grinnell’s long and continuing engagement with the world, the Heath Professorship brings to Grinnell College the most distinguished international figures for a semester-length stay. 

The mathematics and statistics department was thrilled to have the opportunity to host Dr. Rojas from Universidad de Chile for the Spring of 2015. She taught two courses for the department:  MAT-295: "Cryptography/Coding Theory" and  MAT-395: "Representation Theory." Both went well and in the End-of-Course evaluations, students spoke well of each of them. 

The "Representation Theory" course replaced another course normally taught for majors. Students were very happy with the opportunity to learn material not usually present (due to schedule constraints and personnel expertise).  The 200-level course gave both lower level majors, as well some students who enjoy math but do not plan to major in it, an opportunity to take a course with an expert and again learn material the department is unable to teach due to schedule constraints.   

Dr. Rojas gave two talks while here.  The first was a campus presentation entitled “A View of Chile Through a Mathematician’s Eyes” and the second was a talk to the department called “Representation theory and abelian varieties with symmetries".  She also attended one of Eliza Willis' classes to discuss the student protest movements in Chile.  Her husband, Geir da Silva, had the unique opportunity to display his photographs from those student protests at the Grinnell Arts Council.  This was such a special and serendipitous event, not just for them, but for the Grinnell community.

Dr. Rojas came to Grinnell for the semester with her husband and her two daughters, Lia (15) and Tié (4). She and her husband went to Spanish table almost every week and met many students and faculty not affiliated with the math/stats department.  She also had a series of “play dates” with her younger daughter which gave other faculty a chance to meet her and learn more about Chile (and mathematics!). Faculty that she and her family had regular interactions with include:  Michael Gunther, Cynthia Hansen, Heriberto Hernandez, Matt Johnson, Martin Minelli, Cori Ortiz, Elizabeth Prevost, Sara Sanders, and Pablo Silva. 

Her connections with Grinnell students and faulty, as well as her time in the Grinnell community, truly modeled an ideal John R. Heath Professorship. Currently, Dr. Manuel Gadella, Spanish Physicist, hosted by Sujeev Wickramasekara, Associate Professor of Physics, is the 2015-2016 Visiting Heath Professor. He is teaching two courses: 

• PHY 295-01 Special Topic: Mathematical Methods of Physics. An introduction to several mathematical techniques used in physics, including Hilbert spaces, general topological vector spaces, operator algebras, spectral theory and measure theory. Aug-27 to Dec-18.

• PHY 395-01 Special Topic: Theory of Classical Fields. An introduction to the theory of classical fields, including calculus variations and the action principle, the Lagrangian and Halmiltonian descriptions of fields, applications to the electromagnetic fields. Aug-31 to Oct-9. 

 (Post adapted from a write-up from Jennifer  Paulhus detailing Dr. Roja's activities as the Spring '15, Heath Visiting Professor)