News2008May

=CCT News=

1 May 08
See also previous news, alum news and exchanges, items for the upcoming news, and [|CCT calendar]. Inform cct@umb.edu if you have news OR want to be emailed when there's a new news compilation (no more than once/month) OR want to be removed from such mailings.

Contents: Student matters, CCT community, CCT events, alums, other events, opportunities, resources, food for thought, humor

__**Student Matters**__ Remember to register for fall courses by June 1 to avoid late fees. Also, [|summer courses] are offered, including "Critical Thinking", "Biomedical Ethics", "Creative Thinking, Collaboration, and Organizational Change", and online course "The Creative Flame - Inside the Creative Process: Exploring Blocks and Finding Creative Ground".

__**CCT Community**__ Recently, Curriculum and Instruction Admin. Assistant, Sade Johnson, participated in the university's "Take a Moment of Silent Reflection" in memorial of the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Please see the video of the event [|here]

CCT student Andy Reyes has recently been accepted into the Ed.D. program at UMass-Boston. Congratulations Andy!

April 16's presentation by Harvard Project Zero leading research associate & CCT alum, Dr. Shari Tishman, was a great success. Thanks to all who attended to share in this insightful work in “Artful Thinking: Using the Power of Art to Teach Thinking Across Curriculum”.

__**CCT Events**__ Spring 2008 Synthesis presentations: see http://www.cct.umb.edu/openhouse08.html All are welcome - please join us and support the hard work and achievement of those working toward their synthesis:

Wed. May 7, 7:00pm - 9:30pm, McCormack-2-628C John Quirk, "Meaning Through Metaphor: Visual Dialogue and the Picturing of Abstraction" Nancy Baccari, "A Faculty Learning Community Model for Dental Hygiene Educators"

Wed. May 14, 7:00pm - 9:30pm, McCormack-2-628C Michael Lihon, "Promoting Rapid, Sustainable Change in Business Organizations" Amy McLaughlin-Hatch, "Teaching Critical and Creative Thinking in a U.S. History Curriculum"

__**Alum Notes**__ Bertha Lucia Fries, on her CCT experience: "I have learned during my student process the importance to be alone, without people that constantly congratulate what you do, having the possibility to rethink life, relations, love, and what you have been doing for a living. I felt like the phoenix bird, reviving from the ashes, living in a new environment, creating new friends, without my beloved son, learning a new language, a new culture, studying, researching and trying to create two new products: a concept of the new leader for this time and a portal for the stakeholders, leaders of the time, utilizing the technology to create the conditions for the NCL on mass scale."

Barbara DiTullio and Kathy Leavitt have accepted positions as Nurse Managers at Boston Medical Center. Kathy says, "We are excited to be involved in the growth and development of the perioperative nursing department with the goal of providing exceptional care to the patient population served by BMC. The CCT program has assisted us in transitioning into these roles with the ability to bring new ideas and concepts to further support the nursing staff."

**__Events__** May 1-4, 2008, Newfane, Vt A Weekend Workshop with Rosalind Fritz and Beth Massiano visit http://www.robertfritz.com/ for more information or contact 800-848-9700 or seminars@robertfritz.com
 * Your Life As Art**

Thurs. May 8, 12:00noon - 2:00pm, UMass-Boston Campus Center, 3rd Floor, room 3545. A dialogue sponsored by the Massachusetts Office of Dispute Resolution & Public Collaboration. See discussion guides and http://www.nifi.org/discussion_guides/detail.aspx?catID=14&itemID=5083
 * Democracy's Challenge: Reclaiming the Public's Role**

August 11-15, 2008, Bay Path College, Longmeadow, MA. Film Matters is a one-week hands-on workshop that is an exploration and discovery program for young women ages 13-15 interested in the environment and documentary filmmaking. See http://www.baypath.edu/NewsandEvents/SummerPrograms/FilmMatters.aspx for more information.
 * Film Matters**

Note: some events that are still upcoming may have been posted in the previous month's news

__**Opportunities**__ Call for Proposals: **Conflict Studies: The New Generation of Ideas Graduate Student Conference** to be held Oct. 31 - Nov. 1, 2008. Deadline has been extended to May 19, 2008. see http://www.disres.umb.edu/conference.php for more information.

A number of seminars are being offered by the **Graduate Consortium of Women's Studies** are being offered in the fall 2008 and spring 2009 terms. UMass-Boston graduate students and advanced undergraduate students working in related areas are eligible to apply. The fall 2008 application deadline is August 29, 2008. See http://web.mit.edu/gcws for more information.

May 10, at the Family Institute of Cambridge. This is a highly engaging workshop for mental health professionals working with teens and parents of teens, presented by Debbie Sosin. Call 617-924-2617 for more details or visit [|http://www.familyinstitutecamb.org/.]
 * Our Diaries, Our Selves: Reclaiming and Releasing the Adolescent Within**

**__Resources__** Michael Philips' new book, __The Undercover Philosopher: A Guide to Detecting Shams, Lies and Delusions__, will be published in May. See http://www.oneworld-publications.com/cgi-bin/cart/commerce.cgi?pid=373&log_pid=yes for more details from the publisher.

A new initiative, **Open Media Boston,** is a "progressive news, views and arts web portal", which allows for all interested users to publish your own views and help develop the forum across many kinds of interests. See http://www.openmediaboston.org/ to learn more.

__**Humor**__ If gas prices [|continue to rise...]

__**Food for Thought**__ Michael White, an innovator in the area of narrative therapy, passed away on April 4, 2008. See the recent [|New York Times article]

.A series of images representing statistics related to contemporary American culture, **Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait:** http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=7

//From the April 24th 2008 print edition of **The Economist**:// __Learned flies die young__

YOU do not usually get something for nothing. Now a new study reveals that the evolution of an improved learning ability could come at a particularly high price: an earlier death.

Past experiments have demonstrated that it is relatively easy through selective breeding to make rats, honey bees and-that great favourite of researchers-fruit flies a lot better at learning. Animals that are better learners should be more competitive and thus over time come to dominate a population by natural selection. But improved learning ability does not get selected amongst these animals in the wild. No one really understands why.

Tadeusz Kawecki and his colleagues at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland have measured the effects of improved learning on the lives of fruit flies. The flies were given two different fruits as egg laying sites. One of these was laced with a bitter additive that could be detected only on contact. The flies were then given the same fruit but without an additive. Flies that avoided the fruit which had been bitter were deemed to have learned from their experience. Their offspring were reared and the experiment was run again.

After repeating the experiment for 30 generations, the offspring of the learned flies were compared with normal flies. The researchers report in a forthcoming edition of Evolution that although learning ability could be bred into a population of fruit flies, it shortened their lives by 15%. When the researchers compared their learned flies to colonies selectively bred to live long lives, they found even greater differences. Whereas learned flies had reduced life spans, the long-lived flies learned less well than even average flies.

The authors suggest that evolving an improved learning ability may require a greater investment in the nervous system which diverts resources away from processes that stave off ageing. However, Dr Kawecki thinks the effect could also be a by-product of greater brain activity increasing the production of reactive oxygen particles, which can increase oxidation in the body and damage health.

No one knows whether the phenomenon holds true for other animals. So biologists, at least, still have a lot to learn.