The Provost's Awards Lecture Series is intended to honor and showcase the recipients of the Provost's Awards and provide them an opportunity to present, share and discuss their work with the campus. Another goal of this series is to raise the level of academic and intellectual discourse among our colleagues, and to further enrich connections with others across campus.

All lectures are held from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the Henry Madden Library, Room 2206 (Second Floor).

February 7

2017-2018 – Promising New Faculty
Veena Howard, Department of Philosophy

“Experiments with Buddhist Mindfulness in Secular Teaching”

“Mindfulness” has become a catch word in popular culture, but most people are not aware of the term’s specific religious origins. This practice, meant to be a part of the Buddhist path towards inner peace, has been utilized as a tool in medicine, positive psychology, law enforcement, education, economics, and more. In this presentation, Dr. Veena Howard will focus on her personal journey from feeling aggravated by such aberrant adaptation of mindfulness to experimenting with “mindfulness” strategies in teaching. She will share some approaches that have enhanced her pedagogy and classroom environment, and discuss how these strategies have led her to appreciate mindfulness in a secular context.

March 7

2017-2018 – Promising New Faculty
Zhanna Bagdasarov, Department of Management

“Decentering the Self: Implications of Service-Learning Pedagogy on Ethics”

Service-learning is known as a high-impact educational practice and has been increasingly incorporated into curricula across institutions of higher learning. Although various student learning outcomes have already been linked to service-learning, studies linking service-learning to ethics are few and far between. Dr. Zhanna Bagdasarov will share findings from an exploratory research project examining the impact of service-learning on college students’ ethical decision making and its related processes and strategies.

April 4

2017-2018 – Outstanding Lecturer
Mary Husain, Department of Communication

“Opening a Door to the World; Learning Beyond the Text”

Dr. Mary Husain will discuss guest speaker supported learning and the use of film in multicultural courses to foster intercultural understandings and respect for diversity. These powerful pedagogical tools encourage students to think globally and gain an experiential knowledge of the real world beyond the textbook.