Guest Lecturer Series

Friday, Nov. 9, 2007, 4 p.m.
Science Center 106
Co-sponsored by the Suter Science Seminar

Changing climate of US Politics by Dr. David W. Orr

Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College & James Marsh Professor at the University of Vermont

David Orr is the recipient of four Honorary degrees and other awards including The Millennium Leadership Award from Global Green, the Bioneers Award, the National Wildlife Federation Leadership Award, a Lyndhurst Prize acknowledging “persons of exceptional moral character, vision, and energy.” He serves as a Trustee for several organizations including the Rocky Mountain Institute and the Aldo Leopold Foundation.

His career as a scholar, teacher, writer, speaker, and entrepreneur spans fields as diverse as environment and politics, environmental education, campus greening, green building, ecological design, and climate change. In 1996 he organized the effort to design the first substantially green building on a U.S. college campus, the Adam Joseph Lewis Center, which was later named by the U.S. Department of Energy as “One of Thirty Milestone Buildings in the 20th Century,” and by The New York Times as the most interesting of a new generation of college and university buildings. The Lewis Center purifies all of its wastewater and is the first college building in the U.S. powered entirely by sunlight. But most important it became a laboratory in sustainability that is training some of the nation’s brightest and most dedicated students for careers in solving environmental problems. The story of that building is told in two books, The Nature of Design (Oxford, 2002) and Design on the Edge (MIT, 2006).

Friday, Oct. 26, 2007, 4– 5:30 p.m.
Suter Science Center 106
Co-sponsored by the Suter Science Seminar

Spirituality and Health in a Therapeutic Culture: Theological Considerations and Concerns by Dr. Keith G. Meador

Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences; Co-Director, Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health, Duke University Medical Center & Senior Fellow in Theology and Health, Duke Divinity School, NC

“Much attention has been given to the intersections of spirituality and health in recent years. The research and popular reports have frequently lacked theological considerations and implications of the current conversations. This seminar will examine these theological concerns and consider some possibilities for further developing the conversation.”

Respondents

• Dr. Beryl Brubaker, Provost & Professor of Nursing, EMU
• Dr. Ted Grimsrud, Associate Professor of Religion, EMU

Adolescence and the Family Conference of the Shenandoah Family Systems Network: We Know that Stress Affects Health, but What is the Stress?

Navigating the adolescence years is often a challenge for families. Does it have to be a time of turmoil? Is acting out inevitable? How can one sibling have so many problems while another child does so well?

Dr. and Mrs. Kerr are married to one another and have three adult children. Michael Kerr is a psychiatrist and the director of the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family. He has published extensively and co-authored Family Evaluation: An Approach Based on Bowen Theory with Dr. Murray Bowen. Kathleen Kerr is the director of the clinic at the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family, where she is on the faculty and has a private practice as a psychotherapist. She is a Research Associate of the Jane Goodall Center for primate studies.

There is also an all day conference on Friday, October 12, 2007 for which you can register ($40 for students, $75 full fee) by contacting Shenandoah Family Systems Network, PO Box 1762, Harrisonburg, VA 22803.

Book Studies

Time: Thursdays at noon (12:00 - 1:00) November 1 - November 29.
Location: The East dining room at EMU
Cost of book: $20 for SASSy students, $35 for other SASS members (list prices 65$). Please email sass@emu.edu to reserve your book! Reserved books can be purchased from Cheryl Doss in the Suter Science Center.

Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?: Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will
by Nancey Murphy and Warren S. Brown

Led by Philosophy Professor, Christian Early

If humans are purely physical, and if it is the brain that does the work formerly assigned to the mind or soul, then how can it fail to be the case that all of our thoughts and actions are determined by the laws of neurobiology? If this is the case, then free will, moral responsibility, and, indeed, reason itself would appear to be in jeopardy.

Murphy and Brown take on two problems in philosophy of mind: a response to the charges that physicalists cannot account for the meaningfulness of language nor the causal efficacy of the mental qua mental. Solutions to these problems are a prerequisite to addressing the central problem of the book: how can biological organisms be free and morally responsible?

Time: Thursdays at noon (12:00 - 1:00) September 27th- October 25th.
Location: The East dining room at EMU
Cost of book: $15 (list price of $35) for SASS members. Please email sass@emu.edu to reserve your book! Reserved books can be purchased from Cheryl Doss in the Suter Science Center.

Heal Thyself: Spirituality, Medicine, and the Distortion of Christianity
by Keith Meador and Joel Shuman.
Co-led by Seminary Professors, Mark Nation (mark.nation@emu.edu ) and Kenton Derstine (derstine@emu.edu )

"We have long needed a book like Heal Thyself, and it is interesting to ask why it has not been written. Theologians seldom know enough about medicine to write a book like this and physicians, even if they are Christians, seldom know enough about theology. That is why it is so important that this book is jointly authored by a doctor with theological training and a theologian with training in the care of the body (physical therapy). Keith Meador and Joel Shuman have joined forces not only to write a book that helps us understand the power medicine exercises in modern society and the effect that power has on our lives as Christians, but also to make an argument in this book with implications that reach far beyond medical care." --From the Foreword by Stanley Hauerwas

Luncheon Dialogues

Saturday, Nov. 17, 2007, at Martin Chapel

Dr. Francis Collins

Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief

9:30-10:00 am -- Light brunch
10:00-10:30 -- Dr. Collins
10:30-11:00 -- Q & A