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Programs & Activities
The SHS program provides its students with opportunities beyond academics.
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In addition to fostering interdisciplinary, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills in the classroom, an optional clustered housing space is provided
for SHS students. This gives students an opportunity to get to know one another outside of class and bond with others who have interests in both humanities
and sciences. The housing cluster provides students with a wide array of social and academic opportunities since many students have similar interests.
Socially, SHS cluster students take trips to museums, participate in intramural sports, and have floor movie nights. Academically, students are able to
study together since many students take the same classes. In the past, professors have come to the housing cluster to do review sessions before exams.
The SHS cluster is located on the 5th floor of the New House dormitory which was built in 2003. New House is the first dormitory in the country to become
certified under the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. The
rating examines such features as water efficiency, indoor environmental quality and materials. New House provides students with many modern amenities,
such as air conditioning, constant air circulation, a workout facility, and study rooms on each floor.
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The SHS Mentor Program was started in 2004 to enhance the academic and social experience of SHS students. The program pairs up a volunteer upperclassman with
each freshman SHS student. Students are paired by major, social interests, and intended career paths. The purpose of the program is to give freshmen students a
resource who they can talk to about what classes to take, discuss what organizations to get involved with, or simply go get lunch with on the weekend. It also
offers upper class SHS students a way to network with other SHS students and be a leader in the SHS community.
SHS sponsors several events for the Mentor Program, including a Kickoff Pizza Party in September when all the SHS freshmen and mentors come together and meet for
the first time. Throughout the year, several other events are planned to encourage interaction among the mentors and freshmen. These include social gatherings
during course registration time, which gives the students a chance to discuss concerns they have about particular classes and curriculums. The Mentor Program
feeds off the enthusiasm of the students. The mentors and freshmen agree that this program is a valuable part of their experience in the SHS program.
Testimony from mentors:
"We went to eat and talked for about an hour…I think this is an awesome program. It's simple, easy, and rewarding for everyone."
"Meeting my Mentee was great. We clicked immediately on our…enthusiasm for the SHS program. We went out to dinner the next week, and it was as if I were out with
one of my close friends. We discussed our research projects and prospects with our major and career goals, without a gap in maturity or age. It's not a limited
Mentor-Mentee relationship but one in which we can both learn a lot from each other, and help each other along the way."
Testimony from freshmen:
"I've had a great experience with my mentor. She has the exact same career path as me, and has helpful answers for just about every question that I can think of.
The really great thing is that she can answer questions that I could not ask a professor, like which teachers are boring and which classes aren't worth my time.
We've been hanging out together sometimes too, and she's turned me on to [student organizations], which I have since joined."
"The SHS mentor program has helped me tremendously. I had questions about the courses I would take and the opportunities the major and the faculty had to offer,
but I also had a great interest in conducting research within my department. My mentor helped me make connections with the professors who were doing extensive
research in the areas I was interested in, and today I'm a department research assistant conducting my own experiments. My SHS mentor provided the guidance and
connections necessary for me to take advantage of all the opportunities CMU has to offer."
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Students are encouraged to get involved in the Student Advisory Council (SAC) for SHS. The council is a group of students who work with SHS faculty to sponsor and
plan events for the SHS program. The SAC oversees and executes the Mentor Program and the SHS Choice of Majors Fair. They also help choose guest lecturers and
plan social events where SHS students can interact and meet faculty. If you would like to get involved with the SHS SAC, please contact Andy Butler at
abutler@andrew.cmu.edu.
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SHS students are invited to attend a variety of lectures on a broad
range of topics each semester. Students are also invited to
select speakers themselves. This is a great opportunity to meet and talk to
some really interesting and talented people!
Some examples include:
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Jim Daniels
Department of English
Poetry Reading and Film Screening
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Bruce Armitage
Department of Chemistry
Historical and Scientific Tour of the Mellon Institute
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Jay Ball
Department of Drama
Contemporary and Campus Performances of the Oresteia Trilogy
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Scott Sandage
Department of History
Why Einstein and Dylan Never Had Bad Hair Days
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George Loewenstein
Department of Social and Decision Sciences
Functional MRI of the Brain during Economic Decisions
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John Mackey
Department of Mathematics
Arrow's Theorem
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Caroline Acker
Department of History
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Dr. Keith Campbell, Guest Lecturer
The University of Nottingham
Cloning Technology and its Implications
Keith Campbell, along with colleague Ian Wilmut of Roslin Institute,
took biological science to a new level with the 1996 creation of
Dolly the sheep. Dolly was special because she was the
first animal to be cloned from a somatic, or body cell. Since Dolly's arrival,
great interest and debate has emerged
concerning the potential for human cloning. Campbell opposes
pursuit of this application. Instead, he emphasizes the almost
limitless potential for medical advances that cloning and related
technology might bring-new ways to prevent and treat genetic
abnormalities, disease and disability, more knowledge of the
secrets of cell differentiation, and a better understanding of fetal
development.
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Dr. Marlene Behrmann
Professor, Psychology Department
and
Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition
Humans and the Way They See
Despite the fact that visual scenes may contain multiple objects and
people, humans can recognize the objects and individuals with ease and
accuracy. Research in my lab focuses on studying how this is
achieved - what are the necessary psychological processes and
representations that underlie abilities such as object segmentation
and recognition, face recognition, mental imagery, reading and
writing and spatial attention? Although these questions are asked
within the framework of information-processing models used in
cognitive psychology, I am also interested in identifying the neural
mechanisms, which are responsible for these complex abilities.
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Each semester, the SHS program sponsors a student
/faculty dinner. This
is a chance for SHS students to meet with faculty from the
College of Humanities & Social
Sciences and the Mellon College of
Science in an informal setting and discuss their interests. The last
SHS dinner featured a talk by Dr. Richard McCullough, Professor of Chemistry
and Dean of the Mellon College of Science, entitled The Road to Plastic
Lights, Computer Chips, Sensors, and Nanoscale Devices.
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The guest speaker was Dr. Scott Sandage from the
History Department. Dr. Sandage is one of our great instructors and
the title of his talk was be Bad Hair Days as a Way of Life: Albert Einstein
and Bob Dylan.
Dr. Sandage is a cultural historian, specializing in nineteenth-century America. He is the
author of Forgotten Men: Failure in American Culture, to be published next year by Harvard
University Press. Professor Sandage's broadest interests lie in the political undertones of
popular culture, whether in his teaching on the roots of rock & roll or American humor, or
in his earlier research on the protest tactics of the civil rights movement.
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