OFFICE OF THE PROVOST AND
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS
TO: University Senate
FROM: W. Brent Lindquist, Deputy Provost
DATE: October 4, 2010
REPORT TO THE UNIVERSITY SENATE
OCTOBER 2010 PROVOST’S LECTURE SERIES
On October 6, 2010, we will be hosting a “Stony Brook General Education: 50 Forward” panel discussion about the future of general education in the United States and at Stony Brook University. We are honored to welcome three notable higher education leaders to Stony Brook to serve as members of our general education panel. Dr. Ralph Kuncl is Provost and Executive Vice President at the University of Rochester, as well as an international figure in the neurosciences. Dr. Graham Spanier has served as the sixteenth President of Penn State since 1995. Sue Faerman is Vice Provost for undergraduate education at the State University of New York at Albany and Distinguished Teaching Professor of public administration and policy at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy.
On October 21, 2010, we are honored to have third-generation Kenyan paleoanthropologist, Dr. Louise Leakey, speaking on “A Search for Human Origins at Lake Turkana in Northern Kenya.” Louise Leakey represents the future of the Leakey family’s legacy in the field of human origins research through her work in the Turkana Basin region. Like her parents, Richard and Meave Leakey, and her grandparents, the pre-eminent Louis and Mary Leakey, Louise focuses her study on the evolution of early human ancestors. She is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stony Brook, Director of Public Education and Outreach at the Turkana Basin Institute, and a National Geographic Society Explorer in Residence. For the past 45 years, the Leakey family has worked to uncover the origins of humankind at Lake Turkana. Louise will describe the history of the exploration and the extraordinary fossil evidence that has been uncovered.
On October 28, 2010, Dr. Bernard Waldenfels will give a talk entitled "Response and Confidence: Some Aspects of Responsive Ethics." Waldenfels, who is presently Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Ruhr Universität, Bochum, has made a name for himself in his own research and publications on the nexus surrounding the other as non-phenomenon, language as response, and the fissures of corporeality.
UNDERGRADUATE COMMONS DAY
On Wednesday, October 20, 2010 we will celebrate Undergraduate College Commons Day
at
Stony Brook. This is an annual occasion on which we invite the author of the first-year
reading to spend the day on campus with our first-year students. This year's text,
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the 2007 novel by author Junot Díaz, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, along with
multiple other awards. According to the New York Times, “It is Mr. Díaz’s achievement in this galvanic novel that he’s fashioned both a
big picture window that opens out on the sorrows of Dominican history, and a small,
intimate window that reveals one family’s life and loves. In doing so, he’s written
a book that decisively establishes him as one of contemporary fiction’s most distinctive
and irresistible new voices.”
ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT BANQUET
On Friday, October, 22, 2010, we will host an Academic Achievement Banquet to honor students who have demonstrated extraordinary competence, and have excelled in their academic and extracurricular pursuits here at Stony Brook; students who achieved a 4.0 GPA in the Spring 2009 semester and who hold at least a 3.85 cumulative GPA. Many of the students who were recognized at this event, in addition to academic demands, have jobs or familial responsibilities, and are involved in innovative research, creative activities and service.
VETERANS DAY CEREMONY AT STONY BROOK
This year, the Veterans Day Ceremony at Stony Brook University, on Wednesday, November 10, 2010, is dedicated to the students, alumni, faculty, staff and families who served or are currently serving in the United States Armed Forces, especially those students who have postponed their education to serve in moments of need.
UNIVERSITY AWARDS DINNER
On October 15, 2010, we will be hosting a University Awards Dinner to recognize members of our Stony Brook community who are this year’s recipients of the President's/Chancellor's Excellence Awards, and the President's Awards and Mini-Grant Programs.
FACULTY ACHIEVEMENT DINNER
On November 3, 2010, we are hosting a Faculty Achievement Dinner at the Watermill Inn. This event, established in 1992, recognizes faculty who received prestigious national and international fellowships, honors and awards during the period from July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010.