Center for Science in Society

Working Groups

Diversity Conversations - A year-long series of events, with ongoing discussions in the online forum.

Emergent Systems: A Discussion - A weekly discussion group actively exploring emergence in science and society and its underlying mechanisms. (ON HIATUS UNTIL SPRING SEMESTER)

Exploring Science as Open-Ended Transactional Inquiry: A Working Group on Elementary Science Education - A working group created Fall 2006, whose objective is to explore alternate ways of thinking about science education that more accurately reflect the nature of science itself, viewed not as a body of knowledge but as a fundamental and generally useful style of human inquiry.

Graduate Idea Forum - A monthly discussion group using interdisciplinary books to think about intellectual issues which transcend particular disciplinary borders.

Exploring Mental Health - A new monthly discussion group (started Fall 2006) whose objective is to bring together the widest variety of faculty, students, staff and practitioners interested in both sharing their own perspectives and learning from those of others in order to explore the possibilities of achieving a broader, more integrated, and more effective approach to issues of mental health.

Past Working Groups

Brown Bag Lunch Discussion (2001-2006) - A weekly brown bag lunch discussion group addressing various topics related to the understanding and relevance of science and technology by the world at large.

Cognition and Consciousness: An Ongoing Inquiry (2003) - Had as its mission the enhancement of conversations related to the cognitive sciences, and had sponsored visiting speakers, held workshops, and assembled relevant web resources.

Explorations of Teaching: What, Why, How and Who (2003-2005) - Discussion in the Graduate Idea Forum Study Group led to the establishment of this working group designed to explore why, what, and how we teach and learn, who we are as teachers and learners, and how these questions and the answers to them are mutually influential.

Information?: An Inquiry (2004) - Having grown out of prior conversations in the Emergence working group and in meetings on "Information, Meaning, and Noise" in the Spring, 2004 Center Brown Bag series, the objective of this group was to try and understand, and perhaps to further develop, an intuition that related problems have arisen in a diverse array of inquiries all pointing to the need for a new and more general way of understanding "information".

Language: A Conversation (Fall 2001 - Fall 2004) - An interdisciplinary discussion of language consisting of a series of evening seminars which explored the rich variety of approaches available for the study of language that are represented by faculty in the tri-college community, and the relations among them.

Rethinking Parenting (Spring 2005 - Spring 2006) - What do the numbers not tell us, about happiness, fulfillment, and the choices we want to make about parenting? Can we think differently about the relation between working and having kids? Can we find ways to compose our lives that are not defined by cultural stereotypes?

Stories of Teaching and Learning: A Conversation (Fall 2005 - Spring 2006) - A monthly series of discussions intended to encourage and support ongoing thinking about the nature and practice of education using Bryn Mawr itself, and the experiences of learners and teachers here, as a case study.

Universe Bar - Ever find yourself wondering about the universe and your place in it? The Universe Bar is a weekly gathering of individuals interested in an informal exploration of questions that matter.

Xinformatics - Pronounced "zenformatics", this is a new discussion group (started May 2005) composed of faculty, students, and staff interested in combining computation with other disciplines.