Programs & Activities

The SHS program provides its students with opportunities beyond academics.

Quick Links to:

• Special SHS Housing Options
• Victor M. Bearg SHS Speaker Series
• SHS Student Advisory Council (SAC)
• SHS Student/Faculty Dinner Series

SHS Housing

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Victor M. Bearg Science and Humanities Scholars Speaker Series

Victor M. Bearg, 1964 MCS graduate in Physics, has generously endowed a speaker series to bring dynamic lecturers to campus.

Dean Keith Simonton, co-sponsored with the University Lecture Series, delivered a talk "Creativity in the Arts and Sciences: Contrasts in Disposition, Development, and Achievement" on April 1, 2010.

Psychologists have often thought of creativity as if it’s a single entity. Some people are creative, others not. Some people have jobs that require creativity, while others work in jobs where they are not required to be “creative.” But does this one-size- fits-all creativity really exist? This question is first examined by looking at the characteristics of major domains of creativity in the arts and the sciences. It then becomes clear that the creativity of a scientist differs from that of an artist. Further distinctions can be made among various scientific disciplines or artistic genre as well. For example, the creativity of a scientific revolutionary differs from that of a practitioner of normal science. Moreover, the creators in these diverse domains vary systematically in their dispositional traits (e.g., psychopathology) and developmental experiences (e.g., birth order). These differences then suggest what is required to display exceptional creative achievement in one’s chosen field. The answer is surprising.

Dean Keith Simonton, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of 396 publications, including eleven books, and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology, the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, the Western Psychological Association, and the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics.

Rebecca Skloot, co-sponsored with the Department of English, read from her New York Times-bestseller The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks on February 26, 2010.

Skloot’s work tells the story of Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman whose cells – taken without her permission in the 1950’s at Johns Hopkins – have become a central tool of biomedical research. These “HeLa” cells, the first “immortal” human cells to be predictably cultured and reproduced in the lab, were central to the development of the polio vaccine in the 1950’s. HeLa clones – trillions by some counts – continue to be made, bought, and sold, and to fuel research around the world, including recent advances in radiation therapy, in vitro fertilization, and gene mapping. But Skloot’s work goes beyond the HeLa story. It’s also the story of the Lacks family and deeply connected to the history of African Americans in the US and current debates on informed consent, donor protocols, and the “business” of medicine.

Rebecca Skloot is an Assistant Professor at University of Memphis and an award-winning writer. She’s a contributing editor at Popular Science and has been a correspondent for NPR’s RadioLab and PBS’s Nova Science NOW. Her work appears in The New York Times, O, Discover, Columbia Journalism Review, and Prevention. Skloot has degrees in biological sciences and nonfiction writing and has taught at Memphis, the University of Pittsburgh, and NYU’s graduate program of Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting.

SHS Student Advisory Council (SAC)

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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Speaker Series

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, the Mellon College of Science, and from across the university an informal setting and discuss their interests. SHS students invite many of these speakers themselves. This is a great opportunity to meet and talk to some interesting and talented people!

Some examples include:

	Indira Nair Vice Provost of Education and Professor of Engineering and Public Policy
	Gregg Franklin Department of Physics What is Interdisciplinarity?
	Jim Daniels Department of English Poetry Reading and Film Screening
	Bruce Armitage Department of Chemistry Historical and Scientific Tour of the Mellon Institute
	Jay Ball Department of Drama Contemporary and Campus Performances of the Oresteia Trilogy
	Scott Sandage Department of History Why Einstein and Dylan Never Had Bad Hair Days
	George Loewenstein Department of Social and Decision Sciences Functional MRI of the Brain during Economic Decisions
	John Mackey Department of Mathematics Arrow's Theorem
	Caroline Acker Department of History
	Rick McCullough Dean of the Mellon College of Science and Professor of Chemistry The Road to Plastic Lights, Computer Chips, Sensors, and Nanoscale Devices
	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.
	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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