2019-2020 Professorial Lectures

From Beautiful Cockroaches to Beverly Hills Chihuahuas: A Humane Education Approach to Cultural Products for Latinx Children

Stacy Hoult-Saros, Ph.D.

(Department of World Languages & Cultures)

The growing field of Humane Education provides a fruitful approach to teaching critical thinking while fostering empathy through the careful study of the cultural production of Hispanophone cultures. This solution-focused pedagogic framework invites students to think deeply about the roots, impact and potential remedies of some of the most pressing issues facing these cultures today. A newly created course I am offering this semester, Latinx Studies, guides students to explore how works of literature, film, art and music reflect and shape elements of U.S. culture. By sharing excerpts from two of my recent publications, included in the syllabus, I will demonstrate how Latinx characters in children’s materials engage, interrogate and subvert well-worn stereotypes while opening new spaces for cross-cultural dialogue and understanding. In bringing a Humane Education lens to our close readings of these disparate texts, I aim to model the respect, reverence and compassion for diverse cultures that will be indispensable for our graduates as leaders and servants in church and society. 

Designing a Public Advocate: The Story of Alice Hamilton, MD

Matt Ringenberg, MSW

(Department of Social Work)

Alice Hamilton is the person most responsible for establishing workplace safety standards in the United States.  She is often referred to as the “mother of OSHA” (The Occupational Safety and Health Administration).   For 22 years she was a resident of Hull House in Chicago, as well as a close friend and personal physician to Jane Addams.  It was during that time that Hamilton established a new applied medical field, investigating physically toxic work environments. As the unquestioned national expert in workplace toxicology, she became the first woman to teach at Harvard University in any field.  During her retirement she became a vocal advocate for immigrant rights in the face of the 1950’s Red Scare, resulting in an FBI case being opened on her when she was in her 70s. This presentation will explore the personal characteristics that led to her remarkable achievements and examine how she evolved into the advocate she became.

Engineering a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow

Mark Budnik, Ph.D.

(Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering)

Few words are less understood than “engineering.”  What is engineering?  What is its purpose? Yet every year, millions of students across the world head to college to enroll as engineering majors – without knowing what they will be studying or what engineers do.  As the global population grows and our resources continue to shrink, engineering still holds the promise of a great big beautiful tomorrow.  But only if we can decide what that tomorrow will be. 

The Return of Reason: Contemporary Juvenile Justice

Dawn Jeglum Bartusch, Ph.D.

(Department of Sociology & Criminology)

Juvenile justice systems have existed in the United States since 1899. Significant transformation of juvenile justice philosophy, policy, and practice began in the 1960s. In this talk, I will discuss key changes in juvenile justice in the past five decades. These changes include the “due process revolution” in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the shift toward initiatives for juvenile punishment and accountability in the “get tough” era beginning in the 1980s.  I will also discuss more recent reforms that signal the return of the rehabilitative ideal for juveniles.  These reforms are based on evidence-based practice and contemporary research on adolescent development.

Student Development of Valpo’s Solar Furnace and A Program to Prepare Students to Obtain High Quality Employment

Scott Duncan, Ph.D.

(Department of Mechanical Engineering & Bioengineering)

The Mechanical Engineering program at Valpo recognizes that it is critical to prepare our graduates for immediate success once they begin their employment.  This presentation will describe two methods that we use to prepare our engineering students in this regard.  First, we provide them with the opportunity to participate in real-life engineering projects such as the design and construction of our solar furnace (one of only five such at research facilities in the United States).  Second, we require all engineering students to complete a program that prepares them to obtain high quality internships and full-time jobs.

From Light to Color: A Scientific Explanation of Poetry

Carlos Miguel-Pueyo, Ph.D.

(Department of World Languages & Cultures

Since the origins of civilization, humans have viewed the concept of “light” as paving the way to a higher dimension, whether spiritual or artistic. Ever since we became conscious of our own existence, our brains have experienced multisensorial experiences, and we have tried to identify what happens in our brain when we perceive an artistic stimulus.  

Not only painters, but also poets and architects have identified “light” as a higher element. This lecture will examine the presence and meaning of “light” as creator of “color” in the history of Spanish literature and painting, with some examples from music and architecture.  I hope to show how a purely scientific experience, such as our vision of color through light,  is a founding element of the artistic experience of reading a poem.

The Pedagogical Importance of Happiness

Lissa Yogan, Ph.D.

(Department of Sociology)

Twenty years have passed since Martin Seligman, 1998 President of the American Psychological Association, pitched Positive Psychology to the behavioral and social sciences. New research highlights the important benefits of happiness in the classroom. High-energy, positive emotions like joy inspire play and play produces durable physical and cognitive resources.  People who are put into a good mood select higher goals, perform better, and persist longer on a variety of tasks.  In my talk, I will share additional research and thoughts about why it is time we, as faculty, consider and use happiness as an important pedagogical tool.

Auf Wiedersehen!: A Teenage Girl Chronicles the Destruction of Her Hometown and Worldview during the Second World War

Kevin Ostoyich, Ph.D.

(Department of History)

In this lecture, Professor Ostoyich will present the experiences of “Hildegard Weber,” a thoroughly-indoctrinated member of the League of German Girls (the female division of the Hitler Youth), who chronicled her war-time experiences in diaries. Her diaries provide an unfiltered view of what Adolf Hitler, National Socialism, and the war meant to her.  With each passing year, Hildegard increasingly filled her diary with horrific accounts of Allied bombing raids and lists of the city’s dead. With the end approaching in April 1945, she embraced the impending defeat.  She also chronicled the first year of the post-war occupation.  Her assessments of the Allied soldiers and her fellow countrymen are frank and scathing.  She described how the Allied soldiers kept Nazis as prisoners in her former school and how her fellow Germans turned on each other and disassociated  themselves from National  Socialism.  By investigating the impact of the Third Reich  on ordinary people such as Hildegard, we can truly start to discern the lessons of this dark history. 

The Academic Roots of Martin Luther King’s Moral Vision

Aaron Preston

(Department of Philosophy)

Martin Luther King’s moral vision had many sources, but he identified only one of these as his “basic philosophical position”: a now largely forgotten view called  “Personalism,” which he learned at Boston University.  Personalism shaped King’s theology and his reading of the history of philosophy, which in turn shaped his moral vision. In this talk, I discuss the history and nature of personalism, note the main ways in which it influenced King’s thought, puzzle over its demise in academic philosophy, and consider its relevance to crucial matters confronting us in the academy today.

A Whimper and a Bang: Finding Novel Ways to Study the Past and Future of the Universe

Todd Hillwig

(Department of Astronomy)

Our understanding of the universe around us continues to grow at an amazing pace.  Today we hear terminology such as “Dark Matter,” “Dark Energy,” and “Accelerating Universe” in relation to how we understand the past, present, and future of our universe.  However, while our these are important concepts, we really don’t know what they are or even precisely how they work.  For example, the existence of dark energy was discovered through a specific type of exploding star, or supernova.  But at present we aren’t even certain how those stars explode.  Because of the importance of understanding these supernovae, a lot of work in astronomical research is being dedicated to this problem.  But how can an astronomer at a small institution like Valpo contribute?  I discuss how I discovered the “road less traveled” and how I am using it to add new perspectives to these studies.