Welcome to the Newell Seminar Series!
As Newell Scholars, you have the unique opportunity to work with the internationally renowned scientist and writer, Dr. Caitlin O'Connnell Rodwell. You can read more about Dr O'Connnell Rodwell at http://www.caitlineoconnell.com/index.php.
During your first class, you will meet with Martin Lammon and Rosalie Richards for preliminary preparations. We are very excited about the course!! Dr. O'Connnell Rodwell will formalize the online process later using D2L. For now, we will use the blogspot site.
Your first assignment is to INTRODUCE YOURSELF as a comment.
1. Tell us where you are from;
2. What is your major and rank (e.g., senior, graduate student)?
3. What do you like to do (for example, what you did last summer/fall)?
4. Share with us what you are curious about, what is your interest in science writing?
5. What do you hope to accomplish as a result of this course?
6. What do you bring to the course (talents, expertise, etc.)?
7. Identify one component/activity on the syllabus that you are excited about and why?
I will go first.
Hi!! My name is Dr. Rosalie Richards. I am professor of chemistry at Georgia College and also the Kaolin-Endowed Chair in Science. As Kaolin Chair, I direct the Science Education Center which is located across from the studio lab. At the center, our work are dedicated to excellence in science teaching and learning. We have a number of volunteer science projects that you can participate in, so please stop by the center (Herty 349). My research is in drug design and catalysis using porphyrins (derivatives of the pigments that make blood red). This past year, I started a project in soil chemistry. I teach general chemistry, physical science and other chemistry/science courses.
ReplyDeleteI am from a tiny island in the Caribbean, Antigua. This past summer I traveled a lot for work - New York, Virginia, New Jersey, South Korea and finally to Antigua for some R&R. Before coming to GC 11 years ago, I was a member of the chemistry faculty at Spelman College in Atlanta.
I am interested in a lot of things. I really enjoy doing research on issues of diversity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). I like working with different people because I learn a lot that way. I enjoy doing research with undergraduates and high school students and have been doing this for the past 22 years. I am really curious about how people learn and I have been spending a lot of time recently reading on this and applying strategies in my classroom. I am obsessed with the gravitational laws and how all bodies attract each other. I am in awe of how our great scientists could conceive of experiments to begin thinking about the nature of the atom that has led us to the digital age through our current knowledge of quantum mechanics.
For this course, I hope to be able to bring my expertise in the physical sciences to an understanding of how the world works. I hope put my understandings of the laws of nature into a context that is relevant and fun to pre-college and college students. So I’m really looking forward to the sessions on March 14: Class 5: FROM RIVETS TO WELL-OILED MACHINE—How to go from 250 words to 250 pages.
Hi there! My name is Makenna Johnston (née Held, recently married) and I am from Boulder, Colorado but I have lived all over the place (India, Cambodia, California, New York, and now Macon, GA). I am currently a graduate student in Creative Non-Fiction in the MFA program at GCSU.
ReplyDeleteI'm an avid outdoorsy type, with a penchant for Snow Skiing, crossfit, hiking, mountain biking, climbing, water skiing, etc. If I am not enjoying the outside world, I am likely sitting on various porches in Macon with my neighbors, or working at my various jobs (currently a professor of economics and international relations at Wesleyan College and Mercer University up in Macon, GA and a birth Doula) and enjoy quiet nights in with my family (a wife, two dogs, and two cats).
There is such a need for quality writing in the sciences, especially in a way that is easily digested by the public. And my interest in science writing was piqued when I felt called to do work as a midwife. So much of the writing out there is flat out wrong, not evidence based, and simply conjecture. I have a desire to express the science behind childbirth in a way that is easy to understand, follows sound evidence practices, and much more.
I hope as a result of this course I am able to bring new light to numerous scientific issues and gain new skills in writing, understanding the ways in which science writing is most effective, and perhaps some tools and tricks about how to captivate audiences on seemingly dull topics.
I think my talents and expertise are primarily in simplifying complicated topics, and in descriptions of the unknown. My writing career started as a travel writer, and has morphed into literary non-fiction slowly but surely.
As for the syllabus I am most excited the HIV case study. I have worked for the past two years on HIV prevention in Muhuru Bay, Kenya through my organization Bridge Beyond (currently people closed due to funding cuts) and would love to know more about the writing that is out there on the subject.
Can't wait to meet all of you!
Hi, all! My name is Amy Landau and I am a first year graduate student in the MFA Creative Writing Program from New York City. My genre is fiction, however, I have written a lot of creative non-fiction as well.
ReplyDeleteI spent a portion of this past summer in the remarkable city of Davis, California, the “City of Bicycles,” where I experienced a refreshing retreat from the noise and chaos of NYC and was able to form a small fiction writing group in preparation for my transition to GC. In Davis, I got many opportunities to ride my bike through beautiful spacious fields at sunset.
I am interested in science because I’m an innately curious person. I spent the last four years of my teaching career working as a science teacher in NYC where I taught 2nd-4th graders. Each week I was responsible for the creation of experiential science lessons for up to 140 kids -- a daunting task! The work required a huge learning curve for me since my science background was minimal. However, I had complete freedom in terms of curriculum design. We grew vegetable gardens on the green roof, launched a “no idling” campaign based on an air quality study around the school and studied the Hudson River through both water quality testing and visits to an active marine science field station. Despite the intense pressures of science teaching, I found that I enjoyed developing my lesson plans because I was able to indulge my own curiosity in the process. My hope for this course is to develop my science writing skills so that I can add science journalism to my repertoire.
I am fascinated by the lives of animals and happen to have a strong interest in elephants, particularly in their complex emotional and social lives; hence, I am looking forward to Dr. O’Connell-Rodwell’s first presentation on “The Social Lives of Elephants”!
Good evening, everyone! I’m Hayley M. Lambert, from Lawrenceville, GA. I’m a senior psychology major here at GCSU; this is my last semester before graduation. I love reading, both fiction and non-fiction, and I have books crammed into every inch of the bookshelves in my dorm. I also play a good amount of videogames, since many of them have great stories these days and they take me a lot longer to complete than a novel does.
ReplyDeleteMy interest in narrative science writing most recently comes from reading news articles and non-fiction books about psychology. Whenever a new study gets mainstream media attention, its results are blown out of proportion and the scientific processes involved get left out. They do this in order to make attention-grabbing headlines, but the resulting articles aren’t saying the same thing as the study. In contrast, many non-fiction psychology books can go on for three hundred pages or more and stay true to the science involved. These books do this without losing reader interest like a scientific journal article on the same research might. They are written in such a way that makes the technical aspects accessible and the concepts understandable even without prior knowledge of the subject.
I want to be able to write about the science of psychology, and specifically the emotion research I hope to continue in graduate school, in a more effective manner. Psychology is frequently misused in movies and TV shows, and misunderstood by the public. I hope that through this course, I will be able to write more effectively and engagingly throughout my career. Since it goes along with my concerns about how current writing treats science, I’m especially excited for the second class session, Words Tell the Truth You Want to Tell.
Hi Everybody! My name is Kate St. Ives I am a first year graduate student in the MFA Creative Writing Program. I moved here from rural Kentucky where, for the most part, I've lived for the past ten years. I am originally from Cleveland Ohio, but I've also spent a little time in Florida and Michigan.
ReplyDeleteI love being active, especially outdoors. I like hiking, boating, whitewater rafting, and sometimes I walk on stilts. I also love writing and reading, of course! My genre in the MFA program is fiction, and I mostly write short stories, but I also sometimes write non-fiction and poetry. When I get interested in something or someplace I usually like to explore it from a lot of different angles. For instance, if I am interested in a particular place, I'll look at maps of that place, read about its history, geography, natural environements, and fictional stories about it too. I love to learn. I enjoy observing things and learning through observation before getting involved, and I think one of the main things that attracts me to science and science writing is the neccesity it demands of being observant and articulating what one observes. Some of my particular interests in science are in ecology and natural history. I am very interested in evolution, and I love reading about how organisms adapt and interact in their environments. I also like investigating how people's living patterns are influenced by natural phenomena. I am usually able to be patient and wait for a variety of information on something before making a judgment, and I hope to develop this skill even more. I've also had some experience interviewing people about their relationships with their environments, and I anticipate being able to utilize some of the skills I gained during this process in science writing.
I hope this course helps me become better able to write about things I encounter in nature and find fascinating. Additionally, while the process of writing fiction does involve engagement with the surrounding world, it also involves a great deal of focus inward. With this class I am hoping to do some writing where the primary focus is outward. I am very much looking forward to this class, and, due to my interest in ecology, I am especially looking forward to the presentation: The Elephant - Human Interface And Associated Conservation Dilemas.
Hi! My name is Stephen Hundley. I'm a senior English major with a concentration in Literature. While my official interests in my department are centered around the classics, I've had a good amount of experience on the creative writing side of things as well. I'm one of the creative non-fiction editors on this year's Peacock's Feet staff, and I teach a creative writing class to 7th graders enrolled in Early College on Fridays (which is a blast!). Outside of that, I serve as the vice president of SGA and the president of the Georgia College circle of ODK.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy camping, hiking, reading and writing, though I doubt that will distinguish me much in this crowd. I'm originally from a small town south of Savannah, Ga, so I try to find my way to the water or marsh as much as possible.
Despite my pursuit of a degree in English, I've always been drawn to life sciences, and find them both fascinating and inspiring on a creative and intellectual level. The more I can immerse myself in an experience, and then relay it in a way that is both aesthetically pleasing and captivating, the happier I am. I've found that through non-fiction I am better able to appreciate the world around me, and take pleasure my interpretation of it. Science writing sounds like a fantastic opportunity to work in a field that interests me a great deal, but that I've had limited access to do to my obligations around campus and in my own field.
By the end of this course I would like to have a wealth of new knowledge and inspiration from which to build new pieces, be they fictitious or scientific. I would also like a better understanding of, and perhaps aptitude for, work in the field of scientific or travel writing.
The exited zoo-going-child in me is particularly interested in our first open presentation on the social lives of elephants; however, I'm also looking forward to Class 5: FROM RIVETS TO WELL-OILED MACHINE, as long term stability in pieces is always something that I've battled with.
I believe I will bring an open mind and a certain level of excitement to our meetings, as well as a love of words that will hopefully be beneficial to our goals. I enjoy writing, and I am sure we will find a great deal to write about.
Hello everyone. My name is Mary Kay McBrayer; I’m a second year M.F.A. student in Creative Writing, and I write creative nonfiction. I’m from McDonough, GA—which, if you've ever driven down I-75 from Atlanta and wondered, “Hey, why’s all this traffic happening? There must be a wreck somewhere,” and then you get a few exits up and there was no wreck… that place is my hometown, the place where traffic congeals because it didn't account for suburban sprawl and still has a tough time adjusting to the changes. I don’t like it there anymore; I like a medium-sized place where you can meet strangers and maybe run into them again at some point in life, a town where people actually get out of their cars instead of driving through. I like to be outside, like all of us so far, and I like to dance, and I like to travel, and I like to write, and I like to cook (sometimes), and I’m re-learning to like to exercise.
ReplyDeleteI’m curious about people in general (which is probably why McDonough frustrates me: no one interacts), and what makes us unique through our interests, and how our interests reflect our values. Most of my CNF spools around how ethnicity, education, personalities, and relationships are all subjective depending on who’s around, who you ask, and what you want. I’m interested in memory in particular, how it works and how we make it work for us. Psychology in general… but I’m opposite of Hayley (sorry!). I like when people bend science to fit a story, and then, once the audience is hooked, the audience questions the reader's facts, and then researches it for ourselves. I like that as a gateway. So, I think I need to learn the rules before I continue to break them. I want to learn how to use facts, and make a story out of them without changing or ignoring facts for my purposes. I THINK that’s what I want. I think, too, that that’s the part of the syllabus that most excites me is the lecture on how words tell the truth we want to tell. I’m nervous, which is why all of my sentences have parentheticals, and I’m looking forward to getting out of my comfort zone. I’m also looking forward to meeting you all tonight. See you then.
Hi, I'm Sarah Lenz, and I'm a first year MFA student studying Creative Nonfiction. I'm originally from Central Nebraska but have also lived in Idaho and most recently Ohio.
ReplyDeleteI am a foodie and love anything related to cooking and eating. Most of my nonfiction writing and publishing experience is food writing with Connotation Press's online literary magazine and a blog called Prose and Potatoes. (I also hosted an 8-episode online cooking show called Spatula.) I spend my summers teaching reading classes for the Institute of Reading Development (IRD) and organic vegetable gardening.
I'm curious about science writing because I find that as I write literary nonfiction, I am inspired by the natural world. I want my work to be emotionally meaningful for my readers and also to give them a deeper understanding of the world. Most of my writing is heavily researched. Whether I'm reading Darwin's "On the Formation of Vegetable Mould" to better understand earthworms which were a controlling metaphor for a memoir I wrote or reading William Harvey's theory that everything comes out of an egg, I want fact, form, and literary devises to fuse in my writing.
I think one of my stengths is ability to research, including using academic databases as well as parsing peer-reviewed journal articles. (After all, that is a reading skill that I teach my IRD students.)
The classes I'm most looking forward to are about "The Art of Storytelling in the Digital Age" and "Can an Image Tell a 1000 words?" I have some experience with multi-modal writing and am a nascent photographer, so I'm looking forward to see how the visual can inform the text and vice versa.
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ReplyDeleteGreetings: I’m Fred Parker, first year creative writing student (nonfiction) enrolled in the MFA program. Eatonton, Georgia is home now. I spent my early years in Alabama where I studied architecture at Auburn University before beginning my architectural career in New Orleans and continuing it in Atlanta.
ReplyDeleteSince early in my life I have been endowed or cursed with near-equal fascinations for science and the arts, a trait that shaped my career around positions involving communicating arcane recommendations of architects and engineers to non-technical clients. Although it can be challenging, it is this bridging between esoterica and the lay person that both fascinates and frustrates me. Its fascination is its potential to inform and engender interest and understanding; its frustration is the degree to which it is misused and abused by the uninformed and/or those with unrevealed agendas.
What am I curious about? From the starry nights when, as a twelve year-old, I lay in grass gazing out toward deep space, and later when college calculus and physics classes got me pondering the real meaning of concepts like infinity, zero, and the fluidity of space-time I have had a layman’s interest in astrophysics. Current happenings in genetics are equally mesmerizing.
Frankly, I do not know how any of this might come into play in my own writing. It is too early in this new venture to tell. What I am certain about, however, is that writing offers opportunities for implanting ideas that might never have otherwise existed in readers’ minds. Its tools, including utilization of the blogosphere planned for Class 6, are topics of special interest to me. If my interest in writing can join forces with more effective writing tools and my own curiosities about science, then perhaps I can implant some worthwhile curiosities somewhere that matters. I hope to refine my ability to do this in this course, and I look forward to learning from each of you.
Hello all! I'm Sarah Huskisson and I hail from Lawrenceville, GA ("baby Atlanta" to some). I am a senior biology major. I spend a lot of my free time (not studying) working at Zoo Atlanta. I have always loved animals and am happy to say that I have definitely found a niche there! I also read when I can, which is not too often. I would call myself a movie buff; if it exists, I've either seen it or it's on my "To See" list.
ReplyDeleteI am curious about all facets of the life sciences. Writing for scientific disciplines is an art; much diligence is needed to make it interesting for general audiences to read. I am interested in making literature about the "hard" subjects intriguing to everyone. I am hoping this course will help me hone my writing skills to do just this.
One of my strengths is my determination and diligence; I'm usually an extremely hard worker (a lot of times too much so). I like to think that I already have decent writing skills and a decorous vocabulary.
The things I am most looking forward to about the course are the presentations on elephant social behavior and conservation, specifically "The Elephant - Human Interface And Associated Conservation Dilemas." I am an animal person, and I love learning about their cognition, as I hope to attend graduate school to study zoology/ecology/behavior in some fashion.
Hey everyone! I’m Gretchen Korb and I’m a senior creative writing major and Spanish minor at Georgia College. I’ve spent all my life in the south-growing up mostly in Johns Creek, Georgia, where I’ve watched two lane roads stretch into highways. I may not have an accent (thanks to my Midwestern parents) but I still feel branded by southern culture and charm. Even though I hope to one day live in someplace radically different, like New Mexico or New York, I will forever be rooted to the South.
ReplyDeleteI’m obsessed with cooking, cheap dining, running, sprawling cities, new faces, green tea, painting, Sherlock Holmes, and traveling.
As a little girl I spent my summers on the coast of South Carolina and in the mountains of North Carolina with my adventurous and spunky grandfather who introduced me to the wonder of the natural world, especially birds and fish. My Granddad taught me the name of every bird we could see from our deck and then some. He had a bird book and my sister and I would sometimes sit under the table and try to memorize all of them. I knew the sound of a cooing morning dove outside my window before I was two years old. I always loved to watch the sand pipers scurry across the damp part of the sand, right after the ocean had pulled itself back with the tide. I can spot a kingfisher just about every time I’m in the marsh. I’ve worked on Turtle patrol for a few years and helped to rebuild oyster beds, because I can’t stand to watch life deteriorate around us, especially at our expense. And to this day I will pull my car over and follow a red-tailed hawk. Science is all around us and I believe this class will challenge me with research, pull me out of my comfort zone, and teach me how to convey factual information creatively. I am most looking forward to our fifth presentation: Using Animal Behavior to Solve Conservation Problems: From Coral Polyps to Flamingos to Elephants! I’m a reader, writer, and most importantly an observer, and I can’t wait to meet everyone!
Hello everyone!
ReplyDeleteI’m Amelia Zuver and I am a senior chemistry major. I’m from Atlanta, born and raised, but spent the last six years of my middle and high school in an international school so I have a love and appreciation for people and places around the world.
My biggest non-academic passions are dancing, cycling, and singing. I love learning social dances, especially Latin dances. I’ve been salsa dancing since I started here at Georgia College, and I have performed several times with our salsa club. I have been cycling with my family since I could sit up straight on my own. My family and I have done countless cross-state bicycle tours in Georgia, Florida, and Ontario. Although I don’t get the chance to do this as much as I’d like, I love spending time in nature any way possible. I absolutely love singing, and have been in various choruses since I was three years old.
After I graduate, I hope to attend graduate school studying public health. This interest was sparked from my summer job during college. For the last three summers, I worked for a physician at Grady Hospital’s AIDS clinic doing research work. This past summer we began initial analyses and then submitted an abstract to a regional meeting of public health organizations. Our work was accepted, and we will present at the conference in February. My biggest hope for this course is to learn how to “translate” science into accessible language for the common reader. I have been working on chemistry research for three years now, and I definitely appreciate how difficult it can be for people without a strong chemistry background to understand the work I do. Additionally, there are important advances in medicine that the general public remains unaware of. In my future career, I hope to be able to assist people everywhere live healthier lives, and this will be impossible unless people are aware of health advances. I am especially interested in doing HIV/AIDS research, so I am incredibly excited about the sixth open presentation which is an HIV case study.
Greetings to all! My name is Haley Davis and I am a first year graduate assistant in the Biology department at GCSU. I am striving towards getting my master's in biology, with a concentration in organismal science. My thesis work is on the comparative morphology of the hind limb in raptors, more particularly focusing on Ospreys and Red-tailed Hawks. I am currently applying to vet school to pursue working with wildlife and large animals, although I am considering looking into the CDC. My dream job would be to work with National Geographic as both a biologist and a photographer.
ReplyDeleteI am from southeast Georgia around the Brunswick area. Growing up as an only child on a small, rural farm gifted me with a fascination in science, animals, and nature. Besides helping take care of our farm animals, I spent most of my childhood in the woods around our home taking samples of water and moss, finding hidden bee hives full of honey, and rescuing orphaned and injured animals and nursing them back to health. These animals included raccoons, flying squirrels, a fox, multiple birds, and a fawn. It was because of these experiences that I chose to study biology in college and have consequently spent the past two summers out in Texas, working on deer ranches. Although I now do not agree with the practices of some of these places, it was a wonderful learning experience, as we were in charge of almost all of the medical needs of these animals, and were able to bottle-raise around 40 fawn each summer.
I have worked with multiple professors in the biology department throughout my undergraduate career, and was taught the art of creating stippled drawings of fossilized amphibian bones, checking hundreds of deer jaws for signs of enamel hypoplasia, and the delicate work of making study skins, skeletons, and shmoos from the Eastern screech owl. This combination of the study of anatomy and art not only has piqued my interest in science, but has also given me a greater appreciation for how things are composed and how things work. Always an avid reader, I enjoy the art of expression that comes with creative writing. I hope that this class will better allow me to communicate the way that I perceive the magic of the scientific realm, and will help me to narrow down a future career path.
The class that I am looking forward to most is "Can a picture tell 1000 words?". I greatly enjoy photography as a creative outlet and I believe that pictures can mean something different to everyone. I have been looking forward to this class since I first heard about it, and I can't wait to meet you all!
Hello world!
ReplyDeleteMy name is Eric Frechette, and I am an undergraduate Physics major and Math minor currently in my junior year. I began at GC in Physics despite my desire to go into creative writing, so naturally I am very excited to be in this course with all of you.
I grew up in the once-little Lawrenceville, now a bustling suburb of Atlanta. The city streets are where I made my home, nestled within busy crowds and frequent happenings, the stirrings of progress. And it has been busy: For the past few years, I've worked as a statistical analyst in a chemical manufacturing plant crunching numbers and working in operations. Before that, I made money the lazy way as a barista while juggling cross country and basketball alongside my speed and agility courses, team sports, and weight lifting. Recalling all of this makes me feel so lazy! Nowadays I'm much more of a programmer and a gamer. I've gone from free-swimming adolescent to sedentary polyp in record time.
Milledgeville is less a true residence to me than it is an escape, a quiet alcove where I can go to study. Here, my home is in my books, experiments in home-cooked meals, and late nights of feverish application. I hope to use this course as the stone which sharpens the blade, honing my focus on writing into a tool which can bring together the many disparate subjects of my liberal arts education.
As ever, my curiosity draws me toward all things and all people, often at the expense of the latter. I regard the universe and its contents with a peculiar sort of amusement equal parts detachment and fascination. Physics entices me with the promise of an infinite endeavor, offering no shortage of objects of study and a perspective on existence as only few can see. What can I say; the rigor keeps me busy and the results are satisfying. The class on dark matter & dark energy promises to be an exotic display and so interests me the most, closely contended by Class 5 on extending an idea across 250 pages. I am excited to hear what a published author would have to say on the topic.
Well as the saying goes, I'm just happy to be here. I got added to this class late and I guess I feel like a bit of an interloper. But it's right up my alley. I'm an English-CW Major, Biology Minor in my senior year. My writing is often influenced by science, but also religion and philosophy, my interactions with people, the news. I've even written a poem about furniture restoration, an underdeveloped hobby of mine. I’m forever learning that everything can be inspiring. The reason I became an English-CW major to begin with is because I couldn’t figure out what specifically I was interested in. But to the day, when I do find something that strikes the right chord, I have to share it. My friends and family could tell you that I'm an endless stream of "did you know's..." and "guess what's!?" I think that's part of what interests me with science writing; having a way to make my babblings beautiful and meaningful to people. I hope this course can give me the tools to do that.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in Savannah GA on a little island called Isle of Hope. And yes, it is every bit as idyllic as it sounds. Three generations of Quante's live on this island, and there's a good chance that my neighbor "knew my father/grandfather/uncle when he was my age." That or they can tell me, rather, insist on telling me exactly how we're third cousins. I always felt safe and loved growing up, no matter who's yard I was in. My sisters and I swam and explored the river and the woods. We bought cokes with pocket money at the Marina. We scrapped our knees to hell and back and got positively covered in mud. I’ll be the first to tell you that it was a beautiful existence. It still is.
Now I’m here, in Milledgeville on a very different kind of island, where I get to take a class as extraordinary as this one. And that’s not even half of what Georgia College has given me. I’ve had the opportunity to be influenced by so many wonderful professors and peers in what I’m convinced is one of the most forgiving, friendly, and rose-colored towns in Georgia. I hope I can bring a critical eye to workshops. My time in the writing department has helped me become fairly adept at seeing what a piece needs. Strangely enough, I’ve always been struggled with revising my own work, at times throwing whole pieces out when they aren’t right. So I’m looking forward to the “Know Your Process” class. From the lecture series, I’m excited to hear the very first open presentation: The Social Lives of Elephants. The way organisms interact with each other has always held special fascination for me.