2008 Seminar Series
Honors Seminar 1
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Dr. Richard Heinzl
Lessons from Abroad: Opportunities in a Borderless World
Dr. Richard Heinzl is the founder of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières Canada (MSF), the Nobel Prize-wining humanitarian medical relief organization. His travels and work have taken him to over 75 countries including Cambodia, Iraq and Mozambique where he was an MSF volunteer. Heinzl studied medicine at McMaster University Medical School in Hamilton, Canada, a program renowned for its innovative approach to medical education. He later completed a Master of Public Health degree at Harvard and a Master of Science at Oxford. Based in Oakville, Ontario, Heinzl’s current focus is eHealth. He was recently CEO of CardioView Inc., a technology company that utilizes the Internet to advance research and image communication in the field of cardiology and formally, he was the founder and CEO of MediSpecialist.com, a web-based medical consultation service. He is the holder of numerous awards and honors including the Top 40 Under 40 Award and an Honorary Doctorate from his Alma Mater, McMaster. He is a frequent speaker at national and international events and, earlier this year, published his memoir Cambodia Calling: A Memoir from the Frontlines of Humanitarian Aid, a coming of age story about his early travels in Africa and Asia. Click here to order a copy of Dr. Heinzl’s memoir, Cambodia Calling.
Presentation Preview
Heinzl’s travels have taken him to more than 75 countries including Iraq, Mozambique and Cambodia where he worked with Doctors Without Borders. Using anecdotes, perspectives and lessons from his work abroad he explores the paradox of affluence and makes the point that travel should be part of everyone’s education. In his presentation, Heinzl will detail the remarkable stories of people caught up in war and poverty and argue that we are sleepwalking through a catastrophe and that students from all disciplines have a role to play. He will also reveal how borderless the world truly is and show how this has brought about unprecedented change that demands innovation and creative thinking from students. In concluding, he will recount events and lessons from his own education, explore materialism and ask the question “Who is truly rich or poor?”
Honors Seminar 2
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Dr. Raquel Pinderhughes
Pathways out of Poverty through Green Collar Jobs: The Role of Scholarship in Improving Quality of Life for Urban Residents
Dr. Raquel Pinderhughes is Professor of Urban Studies at San Francisco State University. Her teaching, research and community activism focus on improving quality of life for people living and working in cities. Her landmark study, Green Collar Jobs: An Analysis of the Capacity of Green Business to Provide High Quality Jobs for Men and Women with Barriers to Employment, is considered the definitive work on the subject, and has been used as a model for various programs. In addition to her work in the United States, she has conducted research and guest lectured in Havana, Cuba, Curitiba, Brazil, and Rajasthan, India. Pinderhughes is president of the Board of Directors of the Ecology Center, which runs the city of Berkeley’s recycling and farmers market programs, and Rising Sun Energy Services, operators of programs to reduce residential energy and water consumption in the Bay Area. She serves on the Board of Directors of Clean City, a non-profit organization focused on cleaning, greening and beautifying the city of San Francisco while providing job training and placement services for people with barriers to employment.
Presentation Preview
Poverty and unemployment are significant problems in the United States and there is an urgent need for stable living wage jobs for low income adults, particularly those with barriers to employment such as not having a high school or GED degree, limited labor market skills, being incarcerated, and/or being out of the labor market for a long period of time. Pinderhughes’ work on green collar jobs, which she defines as “manual labor jobs in firms or other enterprises whose products and services directly improve environmental quality,” has shown that green collar jobs represent an important category of work force opportunities for adults with barriers to employment because they are high quality jobs with low barriers to entry, in sectors poised for dramatic growth. Pinderhughes’ presentation will focus on two aspects of this work: 1) pathways out of poverty through green collar jobs, 2) how scholars can be involved in social change and directly contribute to improving quality of life for urban residents.
Honors Seminar 3
Mon, Jul 14, 2008
Presenter
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Eric Weiner
The Geography of Bliss
Eric Weiner is a veteran foreign correspondent who has worked on several award-winning teams for National Public Radio and been a business reporter for The New York Times. He has been posted to New Delhi, Jerusalem and Tokyo and, more recently, was a correspondent for NPR’s mid-day magazine show, Day to Day. He currently writes content for NPR’s web site. Weiner is the author of The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World, a memoir of his travels to countries that are known for their happy people. Weiner is the winner of the Angel Award, a co-recipient of an Oversees Press Club special citation, and a co-recipient of the Peabody award. His commentaries have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Slate and The New Republic.
Presentation Preview
Weiner has traveled to the places that surveys show are the happiest on earth to see what makes these people happy. His book, The Geography of Bliss, is the memoir of those travels and it describes an extraordinary take on happiness and the cultural factors that nurture happiness. His presentation will journey from America to Iceland to India, asking why Asheville, North Carolina is so happy? Are people in Switzerland happier because it is the most democratic country in the world? Does Bhutan’s official tracking of it’s Gross National Happiness help to make them happier? His answers are drawn from his own personal discoveries about himself, the insights of classical thinkers on happiness, and analysis of the world’s most contented cultures. He provides surprising insights into why and how place matters in our search for happiness.
Honors Seminar 4
Thu, Jul 24, 2008
Presenter
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Dr. Michael Galaty
Archaeological Evidence for the Origins of Affluence
Dr. Michael GalatyDr. Michael Galaty received a B.A. with honors in Anthropology from Grinnell College and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology-Anthropology and has been at Millsaps College since 1999. His areas of interest include the archaeology of complex societies and state formation, as well as the analytical analysis of ceramics. He has conducted archaeological research in Mississippi and Virginia, as well as in the European nations of Greece, Hungary, and Albania. Since 2004, he has directed the Shala Valley Project, which studies the archaeology and history of the territory of the Shala tribe in the northern Albanian high mountains, including their practices of warfare and feud. The Shala Valley Project is supported by major grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Galaty has published several books, on Mycenaean pottery, Mycenaean palaces, and the practice of archaeology under dictatorship. He was the 2003 winner of the Millsaps College Outstanding Young Faculty Award.
Presentation Preview
The archaeological origins of affluence can be traced to the Neolithic (“New Stone”) Age, the period (beginning circa 6000 BC) during which human beings the world over domesticated plants and animals. The transition to agriculture and settled village life may have been adaptations to changes in the environment, but changes in prehistoric social life may be implicated as well. It was also during the Neolithic that our ancestors first created systems of social stratification. These new social hierarchies depended on differential control of surplus goods, land, specialized economies, and trade. If today affluence seems paradoxical, the original paradox is that humans gave up hunting and gathering at all. Settled farmers worked harder and were less healthy than their hunter-gatherer forebears and neighbors. In this seminar, we will investigate and discuss the first paradox of affluence: why did humans leave millions of years of egalitarian social relations behind?
