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Knowing Others and Ourselves
Get PDFLawrence University celebrated the accomplishments of students, faculty, and staff at the annual Honors Convocation Friday afternoon, May 24, 2024.
The Convocation followed a Thursday evening Honors Awards Ceremony and Reception, where 144 students, two student organizations, and five faculty and staff were celebrated with awards that spanned the entire university experience: from academic honors in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Conservatory of Music to leadership in Student Life and Athletics.
The Honors Convocation, the third and final convocation of the academic year, highlighted those accomplishments and celebrated this year’s Faculty Convocation Award recipient, Mark Phelan, professor of philosophy.
Phelan, a member of the Lawrence faculty since 2011—he teaches courses in philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science—delivered the Honors Convocation lecture, “Knowing Others and Ourselves.” He explored two fundamental questions: how we can better understand the thoughts and desires of others and how we can comprehend our own thoughts and desires.
He did so, he said, knowing that answers in either case are elusive at best.
“I’m not going to give a definite answer to either question,” Phelan said at the outset. “As a philosopher, I’m contractually obligated to raise more questions than I answer.”
Humor aside, there is value in the pursuit of those answers, he said, if for no other reason than to make us more empathetic humans, imperfect as we are. It is what’s at the foundation of a liberal arts education, why we should strive to be critical thinkers.
“I realize that we are all, in some sense, committed to this idea of knowing others and ourselves through better explanations,” Phelan said. “After all, we are gathered here to celebrate achievements connected to a liberal arts education. The intellectual grounding that the liberal arts offers is expansive. It has asked you to investigate methods and ideas from across the humanities, the sciences, and the arts. Some founders of this model of higher education argued that the general knowledge and habits of mind cultivated through this approach are an essential basis for being ‘good…and well-informed human beings and citizens’ and that they should precede a focus on vocational skills, which can be ‘easily acquired later on.’ I don’t know if I would go that far, but I am often impressed by the productive power of general knowledge and liberal habits of mind. Ideas from one field continually inform developments within another and theoretical learning can lead to more accurate knowledge of a people, a place, a time, ourselves, and others.”
He challenged the students not to shy away from big questions that can’t be easily answered.
“As we celebrate your achievements today, let us remember the profound questions we\u27ve explored together during your time at Lawrence,” Phelan said. “Our journey of understanding others and ourselves may not result in definitive answers, but by embracing the complexity and continuous inquiry that the liberal arts recommend, we will be better able to explore the hidden depths of our own thoughts and the thoughts of others. Use the tools of empathy, critical thinking, and intellectual curiosity that you have acquired here to navigate your own beliefs and desires. Use them to connect with and understand the minds of those around you. In a world built on complex and frail inferences, let your knowledge be a beacon of clarity and compassion.”
Music at the Honors Convocation was provided by a saxophone quartet featuring students Evan Ney, Gabe Reyes, John Stecher, and Luke Kovscek.
“The talents of our students continue to amaze and delight,” said President Laurie A. Carter, who called the Honors Convocation “one of the great traditions here at Lawrence.”
In addition to Phelan, other honored faculty and staff were recognized, including: The Babcock Award for outstanding service to students (voted on by students) went to Kate Zoromski, associate dean of academic success; the Mortar Board Honorary Award also went to Zoromski; the University Award for Excellence in Advising was awarded to Jason Brozek; and the First-Year Studies Teaching Award went to Helen Boyd Kramer.
“To all members of our campus community, thank you for lifting us up every day,” Carter said. “From creativity to perseverance to intellectual investment, your collective contributions allow Lawrence to shine bright.”
Allison Fleshman, associate professor of chemistry, was announced as the 2025 Faculty Convocation Award recipient
Bella\u27s Blooms and Bees - Installation View
No full texthttps://lux.lawrence.edu/artgallery_se2024/1031/thumbnail.jp
Effects of Light Intensity and Predator Chemical Cues on Juvenile and Adult Daphnia magna Diel Vertical Migration
Get PDFMany species of zooplankton exhibit the predator avoidance behavior called diel vertical migration (DVM). During typical DVM, zooplankton ascend to surface waters during the night and descend to deeper water during the day where predation by visual predators is reduced due to lower light levels (Goldman and Horne 1983; Wetzel 1983). DVM is highly variable and the degree to which it is induced can fluctuate based on factors such as zooplankton size, changes in light intensity, and predator chemical cues (Van Gool and Ringelberg 1995, cited in Weber and Noordwijk 2002). Although DVM has been well studied using the genus Daphnia at the population level, swimming behavior at the subpopulation level has received little attention and may conflict with or expand on current understandings of typical DVM behavior (Dodson et al. 1995; Nesbitt et al. 1996). This study used a customizable 2D video analysis system to (i) characterize small-scale swimming behavior of Daphnia magna under different DVM-inducing stimuli (light intensity, predator chemical cues, stage of development/size), and (ii) determine the importance of multiple stimuli on driving DVM. Two size classes (i.e., juvenile and adult) of D. magna were reared and exposed to aged tap water (i.e., control), fish kairomone water (i.e., Lepomis sp.), or invertebrate kairomone water (i.e., Chaoborus punctipennis) and placed in a filming chamber. Videos were analyzed for vertical distribution, swimming velocity, and distance traveled by D. magna using the manual tracking feature in ImageJ. Results indicated that D. magna respond to multiple stimuli in their environment and can adjust DVM behavior accordingly to reduce predation risk
Synesthetic Symbolism: Community Engagement with the Sacred at the Boudhanath Stupa
Get PDFThis paper is a discussion of the complex relationship between the Great Boudhanath Stupa in the Kathmandu Valley, and the diverse Buddhist community that surrounds it. I argue that liberative sense experience and movement-encoded cultural knowledge make the community of practitioners a part of the stupa—and thus necessary to any examination of it. My argument is contextualized by a background on stupas and etymology of several Sanskrit and Tibetan terms, and I utilize a framework of religious studies concepts of sacred space and pilgrimage as well as on-site anthropological fieldwork focusing on practitioners’ daily lives. I investigate how the stupa impacts the community (and vice versa), how movement plays a role in religiosity, how the iconography of the stupa engages the senses, and how practitioners understand these sensory interactions with the structure. In particular, I place the Boudhanath Stupa in conversation with Joanna Tokarska-Bakir’s essay on Tibetan liberation through the senses. This paper examines how the stupa interacts with the people who create it; not as a static structure or public monument, but an alive, richly symbolic, and quite literal center of religious community life
Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Part 1: Millennium Approaches
No full textThis lecture on Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Part 1: Millennium Approaches was recorded in January 2024. The lecture was designed for students and faculty in the First-Year Studies program. This program, a multidisciplinary introduction to liberal learning, has been a cornerstone of the Lawrence curriculum since 1945.
The lecturer, Copeland Woodruff, is Associate Professor and Director of Opera Studies at Lawrence. His professional credits include work on productions for New York City Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and Michigan Opera Theatre. He has also held teaching appointments and directed for The Juilliard School, Oberlin Conservatory, Temple University, the University of Memphis, and the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia.
Since his arrival at Lawrence in 2014, Professor Woodruff’s productions have won fourteen national awards and citations. In 2018, he received the Charles Nelson Reilly Prize for stage directing in the American Prize competition, where his productions of The Beggar’s Opera and Hydrogen Jukebox tied for first place. In its announcement of these awards, the American Prize hailed Professor Woodruff as “a champion of improvisation, musical and physical, in the operatic medium as a tool for education, creation and performance.
