January 28, 2004
BASE: Integrating residential life, ethics, and academics at Emory's Clairmont Campus
I’ve been living with my wife and two sons on Clairmont Campus this year on the same hall with 28 undergraduate students. This is a program called BASE, Bridging Academics, Service, and Ethics, a collaborative effort developed by folks at the Center for Ethics, the Program in Science & Society, and the Emory Scholars Program, with significant support from Campus Life. Our evolving concept is to create a residential college type atmosphere in which students and faculty talk and live learning.
It’s been a lot of fun so far. We spent this first semester getting to know each other. In addition to beginning the development of several projects—including a documentary on urban sprawl in Atlanta, a February Classroom on the Quad exploring the issues of the coming Presidential Election, and a community garden— we all got together as a group twice a month for dinners organized by the students. Our first dinner guest was Emory’s new president Jim Wagner; he discussed the importance of building community and gave us a lot of ideas and momentum. Howie Frumkin, a leader in global environmental health and urban sprawl issues at our Rollins School of Public Health, was another engaging guest. Details of these and other projects can be found in our online newsletter accessible through the Center for Ethics website.
We’re especially excited about the coming semester. It will start off running with a retreat right before the new term starts. Then I will teach a seminar entitled “Humans and Plants as Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)” which five BASE students will take. The course will focus on the science, ethics, and social implications of artificial genetic modification of life and will culminate with a visit from and public symposium on GMOs headlined by internationally known geneticist, educator, and environmental activist David Suzuki. Another important part of the course will be to develop an educational pamphlet on GMOs for the greater community.
The symposium, which will be Friday, April 9 from 10am-2pm in Cox Hall on campus, will be free and open to the public and will also feature the research projects of the students in my seminar and diverse perspectives on GMOs from Steven Stice, a UGA scientist who was the first to clone a calf, as well as from representatives of the World Bank and Georgia farmers.
Dr. Suzuki will be at Emory April 4-9 as the Nat C. Robertson Distinguished Professor of Science & Society at the University of British Columbia. In addition to visiting my seminar and participating in the GMO symposium, he will be giving a talk on the environment, free and open to the public, on Wed, April 7 at 7pm in Cox Hall. Watch the Center for Ethics website for details.
So, here we’ll have students and faculty living in the same building, engaging in research and public discourse, sharing the classroom, discussing society, science, and ethics and their interplay, and hosting and working with international scholars. A lot to look forward to; please join us in this process.
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