Shortly after Dean Sternberg arrived at Tufts, he announced the concept for the Dean's Faculty Forum in September 2005 because he was extremely impressed with the research and scholarship activities of the faculty in the School of Arts and Sciences. He envisioned this Forum as an opportunity for faculty, staff, and students to learn more about the different types of research our faculty are engaged in throughout the School.
Often, we learn through departmental talks and other events more about the research going on in other institutions than we learn about the research in our own. Tufts has various programs for learning about our own internal research, and Dean Sternberg felt this event would highlight the excellence in research not only among the Tufts community, but the local academic community as well.
Every semester, Dean Sternberg sponsors a Dean's Faculty Forum that features the research and scholarship of faculty members from Arts and Sciences. The Forum is structured with a lecture by one faculty member on a particular topic followed by commentary from a faculty discussant. The most important aspects of the Dean's Faculty Forum are that it appeals to a broad audience and gets people excited about the scholarship being done at Tufts. All of our previous events have certainly achieved this, and we are excited to continue this program.
Previous events include:
Title: "Soft robots: a new way to think about hardware"
Speaker: Barry Trimmer, Henry Bromfield Pearson Professor of Natural Science, Department of Biology
Date: Monday, March 31, 2008
Time and Location: 6:00 PM, Coolidge Room, 2nd Floor Ballou Hall, Medford Campus
Discussant: Richard Wlezien, Professor and Chair, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Video:
View the video of this event.
Title: "Many Worlds in One"
Speaker: Alexander Vilenkin, Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy
Date: Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Time and Location: 6:00 PM, Coolidge Room, 2nd Floor Ballou Hall, Medford Campus
Discussant: Lawrence Ford, Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy
To view any portion of this event, please visit one of the following Real Media video links:
- Introduction by Dean Robert Sternberg
- Talk by Alexander Vilenkin
- Discussant Lawrence Ford
- Q&A session
Title: "When the Brain Reads---'Endless thoughts most wonderful'"
Speaker: Maryanne Wolf, John DiBiaggio Professor in Citizenship and Public Service, Professor of Child Development, and Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research
Date: Monday, April 30, 2007
Time and Location: 5:00 PM, Coolidge Room, 2nd Floor Ballou Hall, Medford Campus
Discussant: Calvin Gidney III, Associate Professor, Department of Child Development
Video: View the video of this event.
Title: "100 Years of Excavations at the Giza Pyramids: Old Digs, New Technologies"
Speaker: Peter Der Manuelian, Lecturer in Egyptology, Department of Classics and Giza Archives Project Director at the MFA
Discussant: Bruce Hitchner, Chair, Department of Classics
Date: Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Title: "Religion as a Natural Phenomenon"
Speaker: Daniel Dennett, University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies
Discussant: Father David O'Leary, University Chaplain
Date: Monday, April 10, 2006
Note: You will need RealPlayer to watch the videos. Download the basic version free of charge.
For further information, please send an email to deansfacultyforum@tufts.edu.
