In Fall 2022, five Honors College faculty fellows presented lectures that gave Honors students and the community a sample of what their innovative, interdisciplinary courses in 2022-2023 year were all about.
The 2022-2023 Honors College Faculty Fellows taught courses that covered topics such as ethical dilemmas in transplant surgery, understanding the metaverse, justice in law and literature, science’s societal limitations and promises and information literacy through film. The Honors College Faculty Fellows program gives faculty the opportunity to design new Honors College courses that also allow students to fulfill General Education Foundations course requirements.
The descriptions of faculty lectures were sourced from a MountaineerEnews article that can be read here.
For more information, contact Honors@mail.wvu.edu or Damien Clement, associate dean of the WVU Honors College, at 304-293-2100.
Extending Reality
David Smith, Reed College of Media
“Extending Reality” will present students with a guided media and discussion-based tour of XR technology (virtual, augmented and mixed reality), learning about its origins, current applications and future growth potential. With the increasing merging of the digital and physical worlds, we are presented with new opportunities for interactivity and communication as well as new problems of privacy and digital identity in the metaverse. Students will learn about these concepts through lectures, class discussions and hands-on learning activities. The course will culminate in students pitching, planning and producing a meaningful XR project made to benefit a campus or community partner.
Tuesday, AUG. 23 6-7PM View David Smith's RecordingWhat Makes for a Just World
Rose Casey, English, Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.
“What Makes for a Just World” brings together law and literature to engage global perspectives on justice. By reading novels, poetry and drama alongside legal statutes, resolutions and conventions, students will see how law and literature employ similar methods to build a more just world. They’ll learn about laws that have discriminated based on race, gender and nationality and examine how legal systems around the world have protected individual and group rights. By exploring continuities between countries as diverse as India, South Africa, the U.S. and the U.K., “Legal Fictions” inspires students to think expansively about justice: what it is, what is has been, what it could be.
Tuesday, AUG. 30 6-7pm View Rose Casey's RecordingUse and Abuse of Science
Vagner Benedito, Division of Plant and Soil Sciences, Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design
In “Use and Abuse of Science,” students will explore the mechanisms and limitations of science from its potential to solve societal problems to cases of intentional scientific fraud and abuse. They will develop the skills to analyze the world around them and evaluate scientific claims in advertising, politics, commercial products and on social media. From ongoing societal issues, such as global warming, food and energy production, and the pandemic, to historical cases of scientific flaws or misconduct, such as bias in Artificial Intelligence algorithms and the clearly unethical experiments with the Tuskegee syphilis study, scientific literacy is an indispensable skill for full participation in civic discourse and our communities.
Tuesday, SEPT. 6 6-7pm View Vagner Benedito's RecordingEthics and Organ Transplant
Lynsey Biondi, Surgery, School of Medicine
Students in “Ethics & Organ Transplant” will study the science of transplant surgery and immunology and analyze its bioethical implications using case studies of real-life dilemmas faced by medical professionals, patients and families. Students will form a foundation of scientific knowledge on transplant surgery, meet with multidisciplinary experts in organ donation and transplantation and develop an understanding of the four pillars of bioethics. Using this newfound expertise, students will confront the ethical complexities of impossibly difficult medical decisions from the perspective of the patient, family and medical professional. Students will be challenged to reconsider their preconceived ideas about transplants and to develop empathy for those with views that counter their own.
Tuesday, SEPT. 13 6-7pm View Lynsey Biondi's RecordingExploring How Films Produce Meaning and Impact
Lynne Stahl, Research Services, WVU Libraries
“Screening Knowledge” will teach students literacy in the art and language of film, pushing students to analyze the stories we tell in relation to the sociopolitical contexts and information economies in which they are produced and viewed. Students will learn how films produce meaning and impact and how our own cultural contexts shape our intellectual and emotional responses. How is the production, dissemination and consumption of information bound up in our political systems and norms? Students will consider how these contexts change our conceptions of knowledge, access, authority and merit.
Tuesday, SEPT. 20 6-7pm View Lynne Stahl's Recording