“I remember a tiny dark room at the Kapitza
Institute in
club” would meet every day for endless
exchanges on the latest advances in physics….
More science was done in that place than
any other room in the building.”
.Sebastian Balibar: The Atom and the Apple,
“The Power of Words.”
Cultivating Local Food For Thought
To Staff, Faculty, and Student Bodies
The President and Academic Dean in
conjunction with funding by the Danforth
Foundation and National Endowment
for the Humanities have asked me to
serve as Facilitator for what is being
described as a Home Grown Think Tank
& Colloquium Seminar aimed to put in
play both our analogies across the
curriculum and our ideas concerning the
General Education & the Nature of Residential
College Academics in the Hyper-Media
Mediating the Post Literate Neo Oral Age
of Anxiety..
Cultivation will be comprised of interested
staff, faculty, and students of a size no larger
than 12 and will meet mornings (10 am to 12)
at the Garden Cabin for the first three weeks of
summer, and then continue as an e-mail seminar,
posting to faculty, staff, and students throughout
the next year—concluding with a second 3 week
session summer of 1011.
For the Garden Cabin sessions, the procedures are
simple, low maintenance: a small-is- beautiful footprint.:
1. Each morning participants bring to table (with a
copy for each) a sheet of writing— think-piece:
conversational, blue sky, brain storm,—whatever
represents one’s idiosyncratic thought, concern, ideas
and possibilities re our disciplines and teaching.
Loose thought & playful. Defer rigor.
(Productive, like sustainable conversation: one day’s
writings stimulate, provoke, and educe the next day’s
offerings: generative reciprocating mutual collaborative
process— and edifying. Cultivating Local Food. for
Thought. )
2. “Life of the Mind”: From 10 a.m. to about 10:40: :
participants silently read each piece.
3. “Life of the Body Politic” Beginning with any one
who raises an observation, comment, question and
continuing as open discussion until 12:00 noon..
At the conclusion of the summer session, each member
will have accumulated a shared “text of our own”
[Local Food] of c. 180 pages— possible resource for
reflection during the next years' e-forum, and providing
research for the facilitator with help of the Office of
Assessment in reducing thoughts and insights to
Zoomerang polling and evaluation: possibilities for the
whole community to participate in ongoing joint &
collective conversations on
General Education Consideration.
Collaborative Genius.
A healthy and appropriate stipend (thanks to Danforth
and NEH) will be awarded to each participant—exact
sum to be announced shortly.
Please e-mail me (staff, faculty, students) your interest
asap. Membership will be appointed on a first-come-
first-served basis. Or possibly—if a huge number
seem interested—I'll simply have to chose the most
playful—you know: fool-worthy & innovative.
Sam Scoville
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