Press Release

Award Allows University to Study Atlanta’s Traffic

ATLANTA - Oglethorpe University is pleased to announce that professors Keith Aufderheide (chemistry), Lynn Gieger (mathematics education), John Nardo (mathematics) and Michael Rulison (physics) have been awarded a Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities (SENCER)/National Science Foundation (NSF) Post-Institute Implementation Award. This award recognizes the team’s plan to develop and implement a project on Atlanta’s traffic problem.

The NSF will also contribute to Oglethorpe University’s development of improved science courses on campus. The team designed a one credit course for first-year students that will address the complex, local topic of traffic. This issue brings together science, math, law, politics, regulatory agencies, health, tax, government and regional planning. The purpose of the new class is to increase interest in mathematics and the physical sciences by teaching relevant material in the context of a public or civic problem of real immediacy and consequence for the city of Atlanta.

SENCER is a faculty development and science education reform project funded by the NSF. SENCER engages student interest in the sciences and mathematics by supporting the development of undergraduate courses and academic programs that teach science and mathematics through complex, capacious and unsolved public issues.

Civic engagement is an increasingly popular way of attempting to ensure that undergraduate students are enthusiastic about their own education. In early 2007, a group of Oglethorpe faculty members came together to explore the possibility of integrating civic engagement themes into certain science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. In large part, the impetus for this program was the establishment of Oglethorpe University’s new Center for Civic Engagement, a strategic initiative of university president, Dr. Lawrence M. Schall.

The team will also offer three days of public lectures on SENCER and civic engagement as it relates to math and science. A series of presentations and discussions will occur in early April exploring in what ways it may be beneficial to retool traditional academic courses so as to enhance student engagement and the means of accomplishing and assessing the success of such transformations.

The purposes of this program include acquainting students and colleagues about the SENCER initiatives underway on our campus and to continue a dialogue about the ways in which the general concept of civic engagement can potentially be used in undergraduate curricula to foster an increased “ownership” among students for their own education.

Conversations on Engagement – Civic and Otherwise

April 1, 2008 – 7:00-8:30 p.m., Oglethorpe University Museum of Art
What We Did During Our Summer Vacation: A report from the 2007 SENCER Summer Institute by Oglethorpe’s SENCER team

April 3, 2008
A series of presentations by Dr. Terry McGuire, associate professor and vice chair in the department of genetics at Rutgers University and a SENCER senior associate

1:30-2:30 p.m., Earl Dolive Theater, Philip Weltner Library
Digital Resources to Support a Community of Scholars

2:45-3:45 p.m., Earl Dolive Theater, Philip Weltner Library
Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Tolerate/Like/Love Assessment

7:00-8:30 p.m., Oglethorpe University Museum of Art
Is it OK for Every Student to Earn an ‘A’? The ‘Backgrounder’ and Beyond

April 4, 2008 – noon, Talmage Room, Emerson Student Center
The Value of Engagement by Dr. Lawrence M. Schall