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Seminars 2023-24

Registration opens on September 5, 2023 and closes on September 25th. 

**Unless otherwise noted, all seminars run from 9:30 am to 3:00 pm.

Click here to view the seminars ordered by starting date.

Arts

Behind the Scenes at The Huntington Theatre. October 20, 2023, December 21, 2023, & February 29, 2024

This three-day seminar offers an intimate look at theater-in-action at Boston’s leading professional company. Through discussions with the artists and artisans responsible for producing, designing and managing a full-scale production, participants will gain valuable insight into the theatrical process. Participants will attend three matinee productions, all at the Huntington Theatre: 

  1. Fat Ham, October 20, 2023. In this deliciously funny, Pulitzer Prize-winning new play by James Ijames, sweet and sensitive Juicy wants to make his own way as a queer Black man growing up in a Southern family, until his father’s ghost turns up at a backyard barbecue and insists that Juicy avenge his murder. Ay, there’s the rub! This smart and sharp reinvention of Shakespeare’s masterpiece takes Broadway by storm this spring before coming to The Huntington this fall!
  2. The Heart Sellers, December 21, 2023.  Jane and Luna run into each other in the grocery store on Thanksgiving in 1973 and find they have much in common: each are recent Asian immigrants, a bit homesick and lonely with hardworking absentee husbands, and adjusting to a new country filled with new opportunities. Over sips of wine and a questionable frozen turkey, they dream of disco dancing, learning to drive, and even a visit to Disneyland, and share their hopes and challenges for making a new home in a new land with grace and dignity. A funny, moving, and big-hearted new play by Lloyd Suh (The Chinese Lady).
  3. John Proctor is the Villain, February 29, 2024. At a rural high school in Georgia, a group of lively teens explore The Crucible while navigating young love, sex ed, and a few school scandals. With a contemporary lens on the American classic, the young women begin to discover their power and agency, finding a way to hold both the classic text and their community to account – with a profound sense of rage, authenticity, and hope. Alternately touching and bitingly funny, this new comedy by Kimberly Belflower captures a generation in mid-transformation, running on pop music, optimism, and fury, writing their own coming of age story. 

Marisa Jones, The Huntington Theatre Company
Dates: October 20, December 21, 2023, & February 29, 2024, 9AM-2:00PM
Location: The Huntington Theatre, Boston.
NOTE: We ask participants to attend at least two of the three days of this seminar.


MARISA JONES earned a B.F.A. from Emerson College and Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Marisa Jones joined the Education Department at The Huntington Theatre Company in 2002. As a long-standing member of The Huntington’s Department of Education, Marisa facilitates and manages multiple programs while serving as a director, writer and teaching artist. Marisa currently serves as the department’s Associate Director of Education and Practical Learning.

Printmaking Primer. October 27, November 6, & November 15, 2023

In this three-day seminar you will be introduced to various kinds of prints and will learn how to use the new, easy to use and clean water-soluble inks (AKUA) in your classrooms. Printmaking is a marvelous introduction to other art forms as it stimulates both creative and analytical problem solving. We will start with trace monotypes, and move on through stencils and viscosity monotype, to exploring various ways to achieve variety and texture by making collographs. I emphasize experimentation and encourage investigation of personal imagery. Please note that even if you don’t have access to a press in your classrooms, you will learn techniques that can be used without equipment. Teachers of all subjects and grade levels are welcomed and encouraged to enroll. The seminar will be conducted in Randy’s Somerville Mix-It Studio in Davis Square.

Randy Garber, Artist
Location: Mix-It Studio, Somerville
Dates: October 27, November 6, & November 15, 2023


RANDY GARBER’s art practice is divided between her studio in Somerville, MA and the Mixit Print Studio also in Somerville, MA. She teaches printmaking at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and is a recipient of many artist awards and grants including a 2023 Fellowship Award in printmaking from the Mass Cultural Council, the Traveling Fellowship from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and awards from the Puffin Foundation, St. Botolph Foundation, and Somerville Artists Grants. Randy’s work can be found in museum, corporate, and private collections including The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the DeCordova Museum, the Boston Athenaeum, The Boston Public Library, the Children’s Hospital, Karp Cancer Research Building, and the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf in Portland, ME. Recent solo and group exhibitions of her work include the Currier Art Museum, Lesley University, Simmons College, Sage College of Albany, DeCordova Museum, Boston Convention Center, and the Dishman Art Museum in Beaumont, Texas. Visit her website at: www.Randygarber.com.

Collage: Abstraction and Narrative. December 7 & 15, 2023

In this collage class, we will use design principles, intuition, choices about scale, texture, and detail for emphasis and storytelling. Collage is simultaneously an accessible art form and sophisticated design practice; personal and pre-eminently modern, it grabs materials from the rush of daily life. “What is around you” becomes your materials and even your subject, while making choices to express a meaning. We will consider the use of text as part of a design or work of art, whether your own writing or another’s. Materials will be provided, and you can also bring your own. Exploring the materials of collage includes different kinds of adhesives and mediums, cutting tools, and resources. Also, we’ll share – explaining our intentions can expand our ideas and incorporate narrative into our images. The course will include discussion about using collage as part of curriculum, and also a brief slide show about collage in art history. Some collage materials and tools will be on hand, and you will need to purchase some basic supplies from a provided supply list. Estimated cost: $20.

Laurie Sheffield
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates:  December 7 & 15, 2023


LAURIE SHEFFIELD is a printmaker, painter and collage artist, focused on landscape, close observation, painterly gesture, and creating narratives through imagery. She earned her BFA and BA at Cornell University in printmaking, painting and English literature, and her MAT at Simmons College. She has done advanced work at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts College of Art, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Boston University and is part of an online collage community/ongoing class through the South Shore Art Center. Along with teaching English in the Brookline Public Schools (retired 2019), Laurie studied printmaking at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education for 20 years and now teaches printmaking at CCAE. Her work has been shown at CCAE, the Cambridge Art Association, the Nave Gallery in Somerville, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, South Shore Art Center, and the Brickbottom Artists Building.

Introduction to Thinking Through Art at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. December 4 & 11, 2023

What happens when we gather before a work of art? How do we view and understand it? This two-day seminar for teachers of all subjects and ages, held at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, will introduce participants to the Museum’s learner-centered approach to teaching visual art. Participants will learn about and practice Visual Thinking Strategies, a research-based method for facilitating discussions that make art accessible to all students and allow their ideas and perspectives to take center stage. We will reflect on the benefits of using Visual Thinking Strategies in the classroom across disciplines and grade levels. Learning will take place primarily in the galleries. Teachers of all subjects and grade levels are encouraged to enroll, no prior experience with art is required.

Sara Egan, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Location: The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Dates: December 4 & 11, 2023

 


SARA EGAN is a museum educator whose work is grounded in constructivism and the use of discussions about works of art to affirm all voices. She connects Boston students and teachers with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum as the Associate Curator of Education. Sara holds a B.A. from Vassar College and an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and is an Adjunct Professor of Art at Simmons College.

R&B, Motown, and Classic Funk: Soundtracks of Empowerment and Civil Rights. January 12 & 19, 2024

This course (which neither assumes nor requires previous training in music) follows the line from Rhythm and Blues and the influential Motown, Atlantic, and Stax labels of the 1960s and ‘70s, through funk, concluding with the influence of this music on Rap, sampling, and hip-hop culture. These records provided the soundtrack for African American identity, from the civil rights protests of the late 1950s and early ‘60s, to the Black Power movement of the 1970s and, eventually, to the urban commentary of the Hip Hop era. Embedded within America’s quest for equality, the racial inequities laid bare by the Vietnam war, the urban decay and poverty corroding cities, and the promise – and mirage – of the “American Dream,” are the lyrics and sounds produced by the artists of this music – Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, The Supremes, The Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and James Brown, to name just a few. As we find ourselves today at yet another critical stage in this history, the cry for justice and reparation echoes more loudly than ever in the music that anticipated this moment. Participants in this class will become familiar with the history of Black American music through recordings (including field recordings) and performances. The class format will be interactive to permit discussions about the music, film clips, performances, and class readings.

Victor Coelho, Boston University
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: January 12 & 19, 2024


VICTOR COELHO is Professor of Music in the Dept. of Musicology and Ethnomusicology and Director of the Center for Early Music Studies at Boston University. A musicologist and performer on lute and guitar, he works primarily in the areas of Renaissance music and popular culture, with a particular interest in interdisciplinary approaches, global perspectives, music and culture, African-American music, rock history, blues, improvisation, and performance issues. His books include Instrumentalists and Renaissance Culture,1420-1600 (with Keith Polk) (Cambridge), Music and Science in the Age of Galileo (Kluwer), Performance on Lute, Guitar, and Vihuela (Cambridge), The Cambridge Companion to the Guitar, and the recently published Cambridge Companion to the Rolling Stones (ed. with John Covach). http://people.bu.edu/blues/

Sketchbook Journaling: Mixed Media Painting and Drawing Techniques (online). January 17 & 31, 2024

In this workshop, we will look at examples of types of journaling (Nature Journaling, Illustrated Daily Life Journaling, Travel Journaling, Diary, Garden Journals, Idea Journaling, Zentangles and Patterns, etc.) and how you might incorporate visual learning with your students. Most of the class will focus on actual painting, collage, drawing and composition techniques with some writing prompts for those interested in combining images and text in their journals. We will explore color mixing in watercolor and create abstract landscapes, and hone our observational skills making a pattern and color mini-book based on our individual surroundings. We will also learn the benefits of doodling and explore patterns and creating depth in your sketches and collages in various ways. This workshop is meant to be a jumping off point for those who want to reignite their journaling practice and also for those who are new to artmaking. If starting from scratch, participants should expect to spend between $25-$45 on supplies, including a journal.

Miranda Loud, Artist
Location: Online
Dates: January 17 & 31, 2024


MIRANDA LOUD is a multimedia artist producing works in a variety of media: video, painting, collage, photography and music. She has held fellowships at the Banff Center for the Arts in Banff, Canada, the St. Botolph Club of Boston and, among a variety of awards, won a Massachusetts Cultural Council Gold Star Award for her multimedia performance Buccaneers of Buzz: Celebrating the Honeybee which was performed as part of the Cambridge Science Festival. Her work is available at www.mirandaloudartist.com.

How to “Hear” Jazz and Enjoy It. March 12 & 20, 2024

In this seminar we explore jazz from at least three different angles: a) its origins and subsequent history – including important people, places, and related social trends; b) a brief consideration of some basic musical theory, including melody, harmony and rhythm, that will aid us in knowing better how and what to listen to (the instructor will demonstrate some simple examples on a piano; and c) the actual listening itself, with selections from the very earliest recorded jazz up to contemporary artists, including such jazz giants as Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk and Miles Davis. These three strands will be interwoven throughout the two days, so that participants can experience a varied mix of history, theory and listening, and appreciate how they all interconnect. Along the way we will consider – and listen to – plenty of these three fundamental aspects of jazz: blues, syncopation and improvisation. I will even dare to suggest that the Oxford English Dictionary’s current definition of “improvise” is in need of some significant clarification and enhancement.

Prerequisite: a desire to listen attentively and intelligently; knowledge of musical theory not required.

Graeme Bird, Gordon College
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: March 12 & 20, 2024


GRAEME BIRD studied classics and mathematics in his native New Zealand, before coming to the US in 1981 to pursue his interest in jazz piano at the Berklee College of Music. He later got his PhD in classical philology at Harvard, and has been involved in education ever since. He currently teaches mathematics, including Greek mathematics, at Harvard Extension and Summer School. He also teaches linguistics and classics at Gordon College, and plays piano in their jazz band.

Women, Work, and Success in American Film. April 2 & 9, 2024

The American success myth, with its familiar tales of the rags-to-riches ascent of aspiring young men, is central to many of our cultural narratives, movies foremost among them. But professionally ambitious women in film tend to experience a more problematic, less rewarding rise through the ranks. From the early sound era to the present, films about ambitious women reveal cultural schisms between professional attainment and personal fulfillment, between public and domestic spheres, between material and spiritual values. In this seminar, we will consider how an array of movies from across the decades illuminate ongoing cultural discourses about gender, work, and success.

Julie Levinson, Babson College
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: April 2 & 9, 2024


JULIE LEVINSON is Professor of Film, Chair of the Arts and Humanities division, and Associate Dean of Faculty at Babson College. She is the author of The American Success Myth on Film, editor of Alexander Payne: Interviews, and co-editor of Acting: Behind the Silver Screen. Her publications in journals and edited collections focus on a wide range of topics including genre and gender, documentary film, metafiction, and narrative theory. She has been a film curator for arts institutions including Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Boston Film/Video Foundation, the Flaherty Film Seminar and the Celebration of Black Cinema. She has served as an editorial consultant for many documentary films and as a panelist for organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

Social Studies

Women and the Supreme Court. November 14 & December 5, 2023

In the wake of the SCOTUS decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) that struck down Roe v. Wade (1973), we explore some of the Court’s most significant decisions on key women’s rights, specifically political, economic, and bodily autonomy and privacy rights. At issue in many of these cases is whether women constitute a special and separate class in need of unique treatment (in terms of opportunities and protections) or women comprise a group of citizens with rights equal to those of men, in terms of both opportunities and protections. Among the cases we’ll analyze and discuss are: Minor v. Happersett (1874) which held that the 14th Amendment did not guarantee women the right to vote; rather women constituted a special class of non-voting citizen; Muller v. Oregon (1908) which opined that the state could limit women’s working hours in order to protect women’s health in direct contrast to Lochner v. New York (1905) where the state was barred from restricting men’s working hours; and Buck v. Bell (1927) which affirmed a state’s right to forcibly sterilize a person considered unfit to procreate and enabled the sterilization of nearly 70,000 people, mostly women of color and poor women from the 1920s to the mid-1970s.

Maura A. Henry, Holyoke Community College
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: November 14 & December 5, 2023


MAURA HENRY is an historian who has taught in and co-led Harvard’s History and Women’s Studies programs. Having earned her bachelor’s degree at Smith in History and Philosophy and her master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard, Maura explores gender, power, and culture in her scholarship and interdisciplinary courses. Her writings include A Duchess’s Grand Tour, The Making of Aristocratic English Culture, The Soul of the People and the WPA’s Writer’s Project, and Rescue (an award-winning screenplay). She has previously led a TAS study tour to Dublin. Currently, she is working on a manuscript on family, dysfunction, and meaning.

Black/Brown Power!: Race and Protest in Boston. December 1 & 8, 2023

Known as the “Cradle of Liberty,” Boston often prides itself for its progressive politics, but many locals argue it is one of the nation’s most racist cities. Why is the city’s racial past hidden? Why is the city obscured in dominant narratives of the civil rights movement? In this two-day seminar, teachers will be introduced to Boston’s postwar racial history, including segregation, migration, and “urban crisis” in Boston’s “Black Boomerang” neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, and the South End. We will examine how African American and Latinx residents organized the local long freedom movement, a series of interconnected grassroots mobilizations around issues like poverty, welfare, housing, and education from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Tatiana Cruz, Simmons University
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: December 1 & 8, 2023


TATIANA CRUZ is an Assistant Professor and Director of Africana Studies at Simmons University. She is also the Founding Co-Director of the North Star Collective, a group of colleges and universities in the New England region that are committed to transforming their institutions and uplifting BIPOC faculty on their campuses. Her research interests include African American and Latinx history, urban history, 20th century social movements, comparative race and ethnic studies, oral history, and women’s and gender studies. Her work has been published in the Journal of Urban History and the New England Quarterly and she is currently working on a book manuscript titled Deep North Uprising: African American and Latinx Identity, Community, and Protest in Boston (under contract with University of Pennsylvania Press). She received her B.A. from Williams College, and a M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

The Border and Immigration Enforcement: Legal Barriers, Trends, and Challenges. January 10 & 18, 2024

This two-day class will start by addressing pressing issues at the U.S-Mexico border with a focus on challenges facing immigrants seeking humanitarian protection in the U.S. The course will then look at trends in immigration enforcement in the interior of the United States, including the barriers presented to accessing justice. Participants will leave this course with a general understanding of the U.S. immigration system, as well as strategies and tools for teaching about immigration in the classroom.

Sabrineh Ardalan and Philip Torrey, Harvard Law School
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: January 10 & 18, 2024


 SABRINEH ARDALAN is a Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Director of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program. Ardalan supervises and trains students working on applications for asylum and other humanitarian protections as well as appellate litigation and policy advocacy. She has authored briefs submitted to the Board of Immigration Appeals, as well as to the federal district courts, circuit courts of appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court on cutting-edge issues in U.S. asylum law. She has also published book chapters, law journal articles, and essays on a range of topics including comparative immigration law, U.S. asylum law, and interdisciplinary legal practice. Ardalan’s scholarship has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, Brooklyn Law Review, and the Boston University International Law Journal, among others. She also teaches courses on immigration and refugee law, strategic immigration litigation and advocacy, as well as on trauma, refugees, and the law, and on international labor migration.

PHILLIP L. TORREY is the Director of the Harvard Law School Crimmigration Clinic, which is part of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. The Crimmigration Clinic engages in appellate litigation and affirmative district court litigation, represents individual clients in removal proceedings, and works closely with non-profit and community-based organizations on policy advocacy. Torrey’s research includes the immigration system’s mandatory detention regime, the private prison industry, and the crime-based grounds of removal. His scholarship has been published in law journals, practitioner guides, and online fora including the Harvard Law Review, Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Harvard Latinx Law Review, Harvard Law Review for Civil Rights-Civil Liberties, and the Harvard Law and Policy Review. He also teaches courses on the intersection of criminal law and immigration law as well as strategic litigation and advocacy.

Exploring Buddhism through Stories. March 1 & 11, 2024

What makes someone a Buddhist? What are the central tenets of Buddhism? In this interactive two-day course, we will answer these questions by reading and discussing together various Buddhist stories, in particular past life stories of the Buddha and miracle tales. We will think through how issues such as compassion, karma, gender, and violence weave through these stories and what we can learn about Buddhism by reading them. We will also spend some time examining together Buddhist images and thinking about how to recognize different Buddhist deities.

April Hughes, Boston University
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: March 1 & 11, 2024


APRIL D. HUGHES teaches Buddhism and East Asian religions at Boston University, where she is an associate professor of religion. Her research centers on an archeological site near Dunhuang on the Silk Road where a treasure trove of medieval (pre-14th century) manuscripts and wall paintings were discovered in the 20th century. Her book, Worldly Saviors and Imperial Authority in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (University of Hawai’i Press, 2021), examines the centrality of apocalypticism to Chinese imperial sovereignty, particularly during the reign of the only woman emperor, Wu Zhao (Wu Zetian, r. 690-705). She holds a Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University and M.A. degrees in East Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Race, Citizenship, and the “Making” of American History. March 8 & 15, 2024

This two-day seminar examines how race has informed a particular narrative of American history. Due to the deliberate racialization of American citizenship, this historical narrative amplified certain voices, while muting others, particularly those of African descent. Hands-on analyses of primary artifacts (e.g. letters and newspapers), specifically drawn from archives located in Boston, will be used to identify and discuss concrete examples of historical privileging and repression—two devices employed in the “making” of a monolithic depiction of American history. The seminar concludes with the creation of a digital timeline of a specified period in American history that captures a more inclusive historical narrative.

Margarita Simon Guillory, Boston University
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: March 8 & 15, 2024


MARGARITA SIMON GUILLORY is an Associate Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Boston University. She is the author of Social and Spiritual Transformation in African American Spiritual Churches (Routledge 2018) and co-editor of Esotericism in African American Religious Experience (Brill 2014). Her current project, Africana Religion in the Digital Age (under contract with Routledge), considers how African Americans utilize the Internet, social media, mobile applications, and gaming to forge new ways to express their religious identities.

Visualizing the World: Maps as Stories. March 14 & 22, 2024

Maps tell stories. Historic maps in particular can tell us much about how our views of our world have evolved and also connect us to historic events both globally and in our own backyards. Helping students of all ages to read and analyze maps is key, not only for the where and what but also to help them evaluate the source critically, asking about the context, author’s purpose and motivations. This two-day seminar will introduce teachers to the collections of the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library, a wealth of over 200,000 maps and atlases dating from 1482 to the present. Participants will explore maps in the collection and connect to a variety of topics and time periods such as immigration, urban renewal and world maps. We will also go onto the streets of Boston to use digital mapping tools to explore how the city has changed over time and learn how georeferenced historic maps open up amazing possibilities for discovery. 

Lynn Brown, Leventhal Map & Education Center
Location: Boston Public Library
Dates: March 14 & 22, 2024


LYNN BROWN, a twenty-year veteran educator in Boston and Cambridge public schools, is interested in visual culture, interdisciplinary engagements with all kinds of things, and student inquiry and enthusiasm. After teaching education classes to university students and facilitating interactions with art for K-12 students, Lynn started working at the Leventhal Map & Education Center in 2018, creating and facilitating learning experiences with maps and map concepts for learners of all ages. Lynn holds a master’s degree in Arts in Education from Harvard University.

LGBTQ Experiences: Past and Present. March 18 & April 1, 2024

This two-day seminar explores the lives of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) people in the United States. A quick glance at the news headlines shows us how LGBTQ issues have become central to political debates, often in ways that are quite polarizing, from debates over “don’t say gay” to fights over bathroom bills. This seminar backs up a few steps from the heated rhetoric to explore the history of LGBTQ people, including the emergence of queer and trans political movements, the importance of the AIDS crisis and the gay marriage movement, and the fight for visibility in politics and media. We will also explore the history and politics of religion and LGBTQ issues, including both religious opposition to queer and trans people but also various forms of progressive support for LGBTQ people that come from religious leaders and organizations. We will come away from our seminar with better tools to understand the longer history of LGBTQ people, how to talk about and engage with these issues today, and how to support members of our communities who identify as LGBTQ.

Anthony Petro, Boston University
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: March 18 & April 1, 2024


ANTHONY PETRO is an associate professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and of Religion at Boston University. He is the author of After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion (Oxford University Press, 2015) as well as many essays dealing with the history and politics of religion, gender, and sexuality. His current project, Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, and the Sacred, looks at the history of feminist and queer artists who “got in trouble” with the Christian Right in the midst of the American culture wars. He holds a Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University, an M.A. in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. in religious studies from Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA.

The History of Baseball: The History of America. April 3 & 10, 2024

Baseball has been dubbed “America’s National Pastime.” During this two-day seminar we will trace the history of the sport from its murky origins to the present day. But if baseball is “America’s Pastime,” then studying the game should also tell us a great deal about American history. We will use baseball as a lens through which to understand various social, cultural, and economic changes in American society over the past 150 years. Among the themes we will be discussing are: the struggles between labor and capital; the effects of urbanization and industrialization; demographic changes such as immigration and geographic shifts in population; the legacy of racial segregation and race relations; the effects of scandals, gambling, and corruption; the internationalization of the game, especially related to Japan and Latin America, and the role of statistics to measure and interpret the game.

Vincent Cannato, UMass Boston
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: April 3 & 10, 2024


VINCENT J. CANNATO is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He received his BA with honors in Political Science from Williams College and his PhD in History from Columbia University. At UMASS Boston, Prof. Cannato teaches courses on New York City history, Boston history, immigration history, and twentieth-century American history. He is the author of American Passage: The History of Ellis Island (HarperCollins, 2009); The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and his Struggle to Save New York (Basic Books, 2001); and co-editor of Living in the Eighties (Oxford University Press, 2009). He is currently working on a political biography of Francis Cardinal Spellman, former archbishop of New York. Professor Cannato has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Politico, Humanities Magazine, and The New Republic.

Literature

Poetry Workshop (online, evenings). October 23 & 30, November 6 & 13, 2023

One of the best ways of understanding poetry is writing poems yourself. Whether you want to jump-start your own writing, to gather ideas for teaching poetry, or to learn more about poetry from the inside-out, this workshop will serve as inspiration and support. In a model different from the usual TAS offering, we will meet online on four Monday evenings from 7-8:30pm. Each week participants will prepare for class by responding to a writing prompt focused on a particular aspect of poetic technique (line breaks, sound, image, revision) with options to play with narrative poems, poems in form, prose poems, and poems that bend reality. In each session there will be time to share and respond to participants’ poems while we deepen our appreciation of poetry from a writer’s perspective. We will find inspiration in the work of published poets as well as in each other’s work. Teachers of all grade levels and disciplines, with or without experience in poetry, are encouraged to enroll. This workshop will be kept small to allow for individual feedback.

Mary Burchenal, Teachers as Scholars
Location: Online
Dates: October 23 & 30, November 6 & 13, 2023, evenings


MARY BURCHENAL began her teaching career in independent schools, and then joined the English department at Brookline High School where she stayed for twenty-nine years — the last fifteen as department chair. Her favorite course to teach was a year-long creative writing course for seniors. After retiring from teaching in 2019, Mary joined Teachers as Scholars, a program that fed her teaching life for 25 years. Mary writes poetry and lives in Jamaica Plain. Mary holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and an M.A. in Curriculum and Teacher Education from Stanford University.

Righting the Wrong: Love’s Folly in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. December 7 & 14, 2023

“I met a fool in the forest.” “Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.” “Bear your body more seeming, Audrey.”

These laugh lines set the tone for Shakespeare’s supremely, sublimely silly Romantic Comedy. Right and wrong switch places, with dizzying regularity in As You Like It. Two branches of the Royal family contest the throne, and both retreat from their Court fight to the forest, where they take refuge in disguise. Along with them, courtiers flee to the same forest. A fastidious court clown becomes enamored of a slovenly country lass, two royal lovers woo and win country lovers instead of each other. It seems fitting, therefore, that the play’s most famous speech begins with the phrase “All the world’s a stage.” The rule of comedy, that things which shouldn’t end well do, is nowhere more elegantly or hilariously at work than in the tanglings and untanglings of this play, which abounds in wit, wisdom, physical jokes and emotional teapot tempests. We will sort and savor how Shakespeare puts drama’s elements—character, plot, and theme—to work to bring multiple good results out of multiple flawed aspirations in this, his properly most popular love story.

Theo Theoharis, Harvard University
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: December 7 & 14, 2023


THEO THEOHARIS teaches at Harvard University.  He is the author of James Joyce’s Ulysses: An Anatomy of the Soul and Ibsen’s Drama: Right Action and Tragic Joy.  His latest book is Complete Poems of Constantine P. Cavafy.  He has lectured throughout Europe and the U.S. and has led many professional development activities for teachers.

The Graphic Novel (online). February 2 & 9, 2024

In the past several decades, the form of comics has emerged as a culturally significant medium of narrative art. Today comics works have won Pulitzer Prizes, have been adapted for Broadway and Hollywood, occupy special issues of the New York Times Book Review, inspire dedicated imprints from major book publishers, and are reviewed everywhere, and with as much fervor, as novels. Out of what histories does contemporary comics spring, and what can the form accomplish? How do we describe its differences from other kinds of narratives?

This course aims to understand what the word and image form of comics allows: why do authors write graphic narratives as opposed to prose narratives? How does comics document subjectivity, for both fictional and nonfictional characters? How does the medium build storyworlds for characters to inhabit? 

Attending to the formal language—or grammar—of comics, the course will also offer opportunities to create comics (no drawing experience required!), to turn time into space in the way that is characteristic of the medium. In creating comics of our own, we will be studying how artists slow readers down in order to grasp details, style, dense or intricate composition, and the materiality of the book as object.

Jon Najarian, Colgate University
Location: Online
Dates: February 2 & 9, 2024


JON NAJARIAN is Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Colgate University, where he teaches classes on comics, first-year writing, and the history of the essay. He is the editor of Comics and Modernism: History, Form, and Culture.

Flash Fiction Workshop (online, evenings). February 5, 12, 26, & March 4, 2024

One of the best ways of understanding the craft of writing is engaging in the process yourself. Whether you want to jump-start your own writing, to get new ideas for teaching creative writing, or to learn more about short fiction from the inside-out, this workshop will serve as inspiration and support. In a model different from the usual TAS offering, we will meet online on four Monday evenings from 7-8:30pm. Each week participants will prepare for class by responding to a writing prompt focused on a specific aspect of craft. In each session there will be time to share and to respond to participants’ work, as well as to deepen our appreciation of short fiction (and non-fiction) from a writer’s perspective. We will find inspiration in the work of published writers, as well as in each other’s work. Teachers of all grade levels and disciplines, with or without experience in creative writing, are encouraged to enroll. This workshop will be kept small to allow for individual feedback.

Mary Burchenal, Teachers as Scholars
Location: Online
Dates: February 5, 12, 26, & March 4, 2024, 7:00 – 8:30pm


MARY BURCHENAL began her teaching career in independent schools, and then joined the English department at Brookline High School where she stayed for twenty-nine years — the last fifteen as department chair. Her favorite course to teach was a year-long creative writing course for seniors. After retiring from teaching in 2019, Mary joined Teachers as Scholars, a program that fed her teaching life for 25 years. Mary writes poetry and lives in Jamaica Plain. Mary holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and an M.A. in Curriculum and Teacher Education from Stanford University.

Using Young Adult Literature for Teaching Social Justice. February 5 & 12, 2024

Historically, young people have been leading activists and advocates for many key movements for social justice and change, despite schools and curricula often failing to share these stories or teach these skills. This two-day seminar will explore how teachers might disrupt their current curricula by incorporating rich and engaging texts for young adults into a more equitable and social justice-driven curriculum. We will explore a wide range of texts for young adults that might explore issues of equity and help students explore their own activism and identity development. Participants will choose and read 2 entire works from a selected list of possibilities (fiction and nonfiction) and work with segments of others. We will use frameworks such as the Learning for Justice Social Justice Standards and the HILL equity framework to consider how incorporating these texts might create spaces to disrupt inequality based in racism, cis-heteronormative patriarchy, ableism, and dominant English monolingualism in classrooms and schools.

Christina Dobbs, Boston University
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: February 5 & 12, 2024


CHRISTINA DOBBS is an Assistant Professor in English Education. Her research interests include language diversity and development, the argumentative writing of students, and professional development for secondary content teachers. She has authored a variety of publications on these topics, following the completion of her doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the author of Investigating Disciplinary Literacy and Disciplinary Literacy Inquiry and Instruction, as well as the editor of Humanizing Education: Critical Alternatives to Reform. She is a former high school teacher in Houston, Texas, as well as a literacy coach and reading specialist.

Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath: The Three Inventors of Modern American Poetry. March 7 & 15, 2024

Ezra Pound’s 1913 advice to poets was “Make it New.” By “New” he didn’t mean previously unheard of, but timelessly important in a current way, urgently revealing of the contemporary modes in which we love, work, remember, hope, in which we long to make life beautiful and good. In Leaves of Grass (1855), The Waste Land (1922), and Ariel, (1965), Whitman, Eliot and Plath took on that project, and succeeded, presenting love, work, memory, hope and America’s desire for life to be both beautiful and good, in poetic forms that created, over a century, the Modernist project in American Poetry, the ambition to face reality with an open mind, to confess the anguish of life with clarity, and to embrace its hitherto prohibited or hidden joys with a free heart. We will read the poems with special attention to both their formal experiments with the epic and the lyric, and their cultural revision of the traditional religious, moral, and social norms of the times in which Whitman, Eliot, and Plath wrote and published. Separately and together, these three gave a new musical mind to America, one that inspires many of the best poets writing today.

Theo Theoharis, Harvard University
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: March 7 & 15, 2024


THEO THEOHARIS teaches at Harvard University.  He is the author of James Joyce’s Ulysses: An Anatomy of the Soul and Ibsen’s Drama: Right Action and Tragic Joy.  His latest book is Complete Poems of Constantine P. Cavafy.  He has lectured throughout Europe and the U.S. and has led many professional development activities for teachers.

The Beauty and Futility of War: An Exploration of All Quiet on the Western Front. April 4 & 11, 2024

First published in 1929, after a serialization in the German magazine Vossiche Zeitung, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque  has never since been out of print.  Translated into over 20 languages, an estimated 30-40 million copies have been sold and countless students have read about Paul Baumer’s disillusionment with the “glory” of war and the betrayal by the adults in his life.  From its initial publication, readers and critics have applied various meanings to the novel, with many agreeing that it is the “greatest war novel of all time.”

In this seminar, we will explore the big themes of the novel through examination of specific passages, and discuss how to make meaning of the text for our world and our students in 2024.  We will also examine contemporary and current literary criticism of the novel and look at some scenes from the 1933 Academy Award winning American film and the 2022 Academy Award nominated German production.

Jennifer Vacca, Acton-Boxborough Public Schools
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: April 4 & 11, 2024


JENNIFER VACCA was born and raised in RI. She received her BA in English Literature and Film Studies from Smith College, and her M.Ed in secondary education from UNH. She has been an eighth grade English Teacher at RJ Grey Junior High School in Acton, MA for 31 years. Jennifer has a keen interest in WW1 era history and has taught an extensive unit on WW1 with an emphasis on All Quiet on the Western Front for many years.

Math

Data and Spreadsheets. November 3 & 17, 2023

An introduction to data science using spreadsheets. We will display and analyze data illustrating a range of fields and of the participants’ choice. We will build spreadsheet models to make predictions. The seminar will not expect prior knowledge of spreadsheets. A computer which can access the internet and a google login are helpful; participants can work in google sheets or in Excel.

Deborah Hughes Hallett, University of Arizona and Harvard Kennedy School; Eric Connally, Harvard Extension
Dates: November 3 & 17, 2023


DEBORAH HUGHES HALLETT is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Arizona and Adjunct Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. With Andrew M. Gleason at Harvard, she organized the Calculus Consortium based at Harvard and she is an author of several college level mathematics texts. Her work has been recognized by prizes from Harvard, the University of Arizona, the Association for Women in Mathematics, the Mathematical Association of America, and was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for contributions to mathematics education.

ERIC CONNALLY is principal software engineer at Illustrative Mathematics, a non-profit organization that develops K-12 curriculum materials. He has taught math at Harvard College, Harvard Kennedy School, and Wellesley College, and has co-authored several math textbooks. He currently teaches a course on spreadsheets at Harvard Extension School, where he has been an instructor for close to 30 years.

Pirates, Zombies, Chocolate Bars, and Dice: How All Grades Can See Great Math through Fun Games. January 8 & 22, 2024

Using for the most part nothing more than elementary school math, we’ll explore a variety of games that serve as wonderful springboards to introduce great mathematics concepts, and share how to use them in all grades from kindergarten to high school.

Steven Miller, Williams College
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: January 8 & 22, 2024


STEVEN J. MILLER is a Professor of Mathematics at Williams College. He has written over 100 papers in accounting, computer science, economics, geology, marketing, number theory, probability/statistics, and sabermetrics, and 6 books on Benford’s law, cryptography, number theory, operations research and probability. He is active in high school mathematics, lecturing and mentoring at programs for talented students, participating in education conferences and writing problems for the American Mathematics Competitions, and serving as an elected member of the Lanesborough-Williamstown Regional School District. His math riddles webpage is in the top 10 in Google searches.

Sports Analytics in the Mainstream: What’s Established, What’s Emerging, and the Relationship to Legalized Sports Betting. March 6 & 13, 2024

We are now more than twenty years beyond the publication of Michael Lewis’ classic book Moneyball, which popularized the previously niche subject of sports analytics.  Since that time the field has grown and evolved, and now the introduction of legalized wagering on sports has made a generation much more interested in data analytics.  In this course, we will look at some of the key analytics ideas that are now deeply ingrained in sports teams and leagues, we will explore new applications including using biomedical data to improve performance, and we will examine the growth of gambling.  We will provide examples that can be used at various classroom levels from elementary through high school.  (Note:  This course will only overlap about 30% with the TAS course I offered on sports analytics a decade ago, so that teachers who enrolled in that course will see plenty of new material.) 

Richard Cleary, Babson College
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: March 6 & 13, 2024


RICK CLEARY teaches at Babson College where he is Professor of Mathematics and Statistics and Weissman family Professor of Business Analytics. He has previously taught at Bentley University, Harvard University, Cornell University and St. Michael’s College.  He works as an applied statistician in various fields, with recent publications related to sports, fraud detection in accounting, measuring creativity in business students, and biomechanics.  Rick is active in the leadership of the Mathematical Association of America, and will serve as first editor of a new journal, Scatterplot, that will debut in 2024 with a goal of helping mathematics teachers prepare students for careers in data science.  He has athletic experience as a runner (including 32 Boston marathons), a college cross country coach, a race director and a youth sports coach in soccer, basketball and baseball.

Science

Seven Wonders: Finding Ourselves in the Universe (one-day seminar). November 1, 2023

When you look at the night sky, do you feel tiny and insignificant compared to the vastness of space? If so, this workshop may change your mind. We’ll explore seven remarkable lines of recent evidence that tie life — your life — more deeply to the universe than anyone expected. Through hands-on experiments, and through discussions of selected art and poetry, we’ll seek a deeper connection to the universe itself. No background in science is needed, but a love of nature helps! This is a one-day seminar.

Roy Gould, Independent Scholar
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Date: November 1, 2023


ROY GOULD has a Ph.D. in biophysics and a delight in finding nature’s great stories. He was director of the NASA-Smithsonian Universe Education Forum, and was for many years a researcher at the Science Education Department at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, where he developed the online version of the MicroObservatory telescopes used in many pre-college classrooms. He has been associate producer at the NOVA Science Series, and has produced many exhibits for science museums throughout the U.S.

From the Big Bang to the End of Time - Don't Blink! January 12 & 19, 2024, 9AM - 3:30 PM

Human understanding of Earth’s place in the Universe is constantly being refined by new and often baffling discoveries. In this non-technical whirlwind tour of all of space and time, we’ll begin by exploring our local cosmic neighborhood – our own solar system – and along the way get an insider’s view of the Cassini Mission’s 30-year investigation of Saturn. Next, we’ll compare the Hubble Space Telescope’s greatest hits with the breathtaking initial discoveries of the new James Webb Space Telescope, providing an opportunity to learn about the life stories of stars and galaxies. We’ll estimate the number of stars in the visible universe and contemplate the chances that we are alone in the universe by learning about the thousands of recently-discovered planets in the nearest parts of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. We’ll close with an overview of cosmic time, from the Big Bang to the End of Time – and an appreciation of the humbling evidence that the Universe is mostly composed of Dark Matter and Dark Energy – names for things we don’t yet understand. 

Richard G. French, Wellesley College
Location: Whitin Observatory Library, Wellesley College
Dates: January 12 & 19, 2024,  9AM – 3:30 PM


RICHARD G. FRENCH is the McDowell/Whiting Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics at Wellesley College, where he was awarded the Pinanski Prize for Teaching Excellence. Professor French enjoys sharing the wonders of the universe beginner and experts alike and exploring the interconnections between the science and the humanities. He was a science team member of NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn from 1990 until the spacecraft was intentionally crashed into Saturn in 2017, and he enjoys collaborating with colleagues from around the world, a reminder that we are common inhabitants of spaceship Earth with a deeply shared wonderment about the world we inhabit.

The Evolution of the Mind( includes an intro online session plus two in-person seminars). April 1 (7-8:30, online), April 5 (9:30-3:00) at CCAE, and April 12 (9:30-3:00) at CCAE

The human brain is one of the most remarkable structures to evolve in the history of life on the earth. While the structural brain is necessary, is it sufficient to create a mind? In this seminar we will explore how the biology of the brain and the learned experiences from life and culture form the mind of an individual. The phrase “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” (the growth of an individual follows the evolutionary pattern of the species) will guide us as we explore the interplay between evolutionary neurobiology, the philosophical and scientific trends in human civilization, and relate to the neuro-philosophical development of children and adults. We will consider the neurology of developmental and acquired diseases of the brain (autism, genius, dyslexia, etc.) and use these models to reflect on the dynamic interplay between nature and nurture as the brain evolves into a mind.

Peter Bergethon, Independent Scholar
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: April 1 (7-8:30, online), April 5 (9:30-3:00) at CCAE, and April 12 (9:30-3:00) at CCAE.


PETER BERGETHON returns to Teachers as Scholars after almost a decade of wandering in new lands of industrial science. With the reputation of being a “teaching dynamo” he is welcomed back with anticipation. Peter is a storyteller and explorer. He has made a living telling stories as a teacher and making discoveries in the natural world as a professional physician-scientist. As a biophysical chemist and neurologist, he cared for patients and wandered between the bedside and the lab bench asking: “How can I build a machine that I could tell stories to and it would laugh and cry?” He is equally at home in the field looking for the earth’s story as an amateur geologist or exploring the dynamics of the oceans as a SCUBA diver. An avid outdoorsman who tells a heart stopping ghost-story at the campfire, he has written or contributed to over 130 research papers and books including the SymmetryScience K-8 science education program – a science literacy program teaching and telling the story of science as “way of looking at the world.” He is the single author of The Physical Basis of Biochemistry: The Foundations of Molecular Biophysics.

Bringing Horticulture to the Classroom. May 8 & 15, 2024

An offsite course with visits to both public and private gardens, farms, and outdoor space. We will use the outdoors as our classroom. During this course, we will learn from landscape architects, designers, and educators. These professionals all combine to bring a holistic view of the outdoors. Teachers will complete the course with a newfound or renewed appreciation of the outdoors and be able to incorporate new information into their curriculum. 

David Epstein, Meteorologist
Location: The Arnold Arboretum and other outdoor locations
Dates: May 8 & 15, 2024


DAVID EPSTEIN has been a meteorologist and horticulturist for over 30 years. Dave writes for Boston Globe and freelances weather for various stations including WBZ and WBUR. Dave has two podcasts one Weather Wisdom takes a look at the weather each day. Growing Wisdom gives tips on gardening and other aspects of the natural world. Dave has a large following on Twitter @growingwisdom and a successful YouTube channel with hundreds of how-to videos and 65 thousand subscribers.

Interdisciplinary

Creative Pedagogy and Fearless Teaching for Community-Building: The Playworlds of Gunilla Lindqvist and Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed. November 29 & December 13, 2023

What keeps us as educators from taking risks in our classroom teaching? What keeps students from taking risks in our classrooms? As educators, do we consider ourselves to be creative as people? As teachers? How does your own personal creativity show up in your classroom teaching? In this workshop, participants will investigate the non-traditional teaching and learning modalities of Gunilla Lindqvist’s Playworlds and Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed in the embodiment of creativity, community, and dialogue in classroom spaces. Participants will build their own mutual-aid support community through sharing stories and experiences; this collective material will serve as workshop content in the learning and practice of these modalities. This is a discussion-based collaborative workshop where we will talk about our own relationship with play and creativity, think about ways to build playworlds within our content, and get on our feet to embody the stories of our teaching and the stories of our student experiences through Boal’s techniques. With each exercise we do, we will dialogue as a group about its purpose and the many ways in which this work can be implemented in a variety of educational settings/situations. No performance or arts experience necessary, all are welcome.

Jennifer Cleary, Brandeis University
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: November 29 & December 13, 2023


JENNIFER CLEARY is a Senior Lecturer in Theater Arts at Brandeis University where she has taught and advised students for 23 years. She is an affiliated faculty member in the Education Studies Program at Brandeis. Jen earned her Ed.M. in Arts-in-Education from Harvard in 2005 and an M.S.W. in clinical social work with a focus on adolescent/emerging adult mental health from Boston University. Jen went back to school mid-career to gain experience and evidence-based knowledge to support the mental wellness of teens, young people, educators, and artists; as of Fall 2023, she will be a licensed clinical social worker. She teaches creative pedagogy, applied theater for social change, public speaking, small group communication, and stage management, and will teach a new course in Fall 2023 on Wellness and the Artistic Process. As an educator and advisor, Jen also supports student stage managers and future educators. As an artist, Jen is still working on being fearless; she is a classically trained singer and has had to overcome her own stage fright, and she also started to write a coffee-shop blog and has had to overcome her own fear of putting her creative work out in public.

Teaching in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. January 11 (Section 1) & January 16 (Section 2), 2024

This is a comprehensive workshop tailored for high-school educators, primarily focusing on unraveling the intricacies of the technology behind state-of-the-art AI models such as ChatGPT and DALL-E. This workshop will explore the foundational concepts of supervised learning, transformers, self-supervised learning, multi-modal and diffusion models, reinforcement learning, RLHF, and fine-tuning. The workshop will also delve into the art of effective prompting strategies to optimize the utility of these AI tools. Participants will gain hands-on experience through demonstrations and activities, fostering a deeper understanding of these complex models. Furthermore, it will address the critical challenges associated with AI, including bias, misinformation, lack of interpretability and fairness, misalignment, safety, and ethical considerations. While integrating AI into teaching is a workshop component, the emphasis is on understanding the technology and its implications. This workshop is an invaluable opportunity for educators to deepen their knowledge of AI, enabling them to confidently and competently navigate the evolving technological landscape.

[Written by GPT-4]

Hanspeter Pfister, Harvard University
Location: The Science and Engineering Center (SEC) at Harvard University
Date: Offered on two dates, January 11 & January 16, 2024


​​HANSPETER PFISTER is the An Wang Professor of Computer Science and Academic Dean of Computational Science and Engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He is an affiliate faculty member of the Harvard Center for Brain Science. His research in visual computing lies at the intersection of visualization, computer graphics, and computer vision and spans a wide range of topics, including biomedical image analysis and visualization, image and video analysis, interpretable machine learning, and visual analytics in data science. Pfister has a Ph.D. in computer science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and an MS in electrical engineering from ETH Zurich, Switzerland. From 2013 to 2017, he was Director of the Institute for Applied Computational Science. Before joining Harvard, he worked for over a decade at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories as Associate Director and Senior Research Scientist. He was the chief architect of VolumePro, Mitsubishi Electric’s award-winning real-time volume rendering graphics card, for which he received the Mitsubishi Electric President’s Award in 2000. Pfister was elected as an ACM Fellow in 2019 and an IEEE Fellow in 2022. He received the 2010 IEEE Visualization Technical Achievement Award, the 2009 IEEE Meritorious Service Award, and the 2009 Petra T. Shattuck Excellence in Teaching Award. Pfister is a member of the ACM SIGGRAPH Academy, the IEEE Visualization Academy and a director of the IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee.

Geospatial Explorations: Learn to Map Data with GIS. January 23 & February 1, 2024, 9 am to 3 pm

Interactive maps create opportunities to explore and understand specific topics and our world at large. In this 2-day class, participants will learn how to find and map data using a GIS (Geographic Information System) called ArcGIS online. GIS connects data to a map and integrates locations with all types of descriptive information. ArcGIS online licenses are offered free to K-12 schools and educators and students can use it for everything from creating surveys to collect and map geospatial data to finding already-created interactive maps that cover a wide range of topics, from climate change to gerrymandering. Participants will leave the course with some basic skills in ArcGIS online and new ideas on how they might use it in their classrooms. 

Lynn Brown, Leventhal Map & Education Center
Location: Boston Public Library
Dates: January 23 & February 1, 2024, 9 am to 3 pm


​​LYNN BROWN, a twenty-year veteran educator in Boston and Cambridge public schools, is interested in visual culture, interdisciplinary engagements with all kinds of things, and student inquiry and enthusiasm. After teaching education classes to university students and facilitating interactions with art for K-12 students, Lynn started working at the Leventhal Map & Education Center in 2018, creating and facilitating learning experiences with maps and map concepts for learners of all ages. Lynn holds a master’s degree in Arts in Education from Harvard University.