Fall 2015 - Science, Technology, and Society Program

STS ALUMNI NEWSLETTER FALL 2015 STS Alumni
Newsletter
Fall 2015
Pictured on left: STS seniors and
STS faculty at the Senior Thesis
Poster Session on Dec. 10th.
IN THIS ISSUE
Vassar College: Science,
Technology, and Society
STS Majors and faculty at the STS thesis
poster session on December 10th!
Letter from Alum/ Summer &Abroad:
Letter from Owen Brady ‘15
What did you do over the summer/abroad?
Page 2 Welcome to the STS Alumni Newsletter for the Fall Semester of 2015!
Here are a few updates about Vassar! The new science center is so Professor Interview:
Interview with Dr. Nancy Pokrywka
close to being finished; the campus-wide smoking ban has been
Page 3
implemented; Founder’s Day will be “Flounder’s Day” for the selected
theme of “Under the Sea”; political activist and feminist Angela Davis Special Speaker/Alumni Feature:
spoke in the Chapel during the month of September to commemorate Bill James / Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn (’06)
the 30th anniversary of the Women's Studies Program.
What did you do over the summer? (cont’d)
F
The STS Program is expanding with more majors than ever before! To
deck out all of our majors, Sylvia Haigh ’16 designed STS sweatshirts
Summer Internship:
with the Duck-Rabbit image (shown below!). In addition, for the first Shereen Sodder
time, the STS Program held a poster session for STS seniors to present
their thesis topics (Go to page 8 to see a few photos!).
We hope you enjoy the newsletter!
Page 4
Page 5
STS Fall Classes
Page 6
Alumni Feature (cont’d):
Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn (’06)
Page 7
Senior Thesis Poster Session
Page 8
STS ALUMNI NEWSLETTER FALL 2015 | 2 A Letter from Owen Brady ‘15 Hi STS!
I am four months into my
first post-grad job as an Associate
in the Advisory/Consulting arm of
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
(PwC) Chicago! With each passing
month, I continue to realize the
myriad ways an STS major has
equipped me to deal with the
constantly changing demands of my
(or any) first job after graduation.
I was slated to join PwC’s
healthcare technology consulting
practice, but I was instead aligned
with the Financial Services Banking
Technology practice. For those of
you who don’t know much about
consulting (I didn’t until the fall of
my senior year), it basically consists
of a business buying the time of a
knowledgeable team (consultants)
to help them with business
problems. You could call in
consultants if your business needs a
new software implementation,
advice for their 10-year strategic
plan, or a whole host of other
services. Projects are weeks,
months, or rarely years long, and
vary widely in scope, intensity, and
travel demands (For example, I
travel by air to work at a client
Monday through Thursday, and my
total project length is about four
months).
My Vassar STS major has
suited me well during my first
project, a banking technology
strategy project. The client has
asked us to work with them to
evaluate one of their older IT
systems and formulate
recommendations on how we think
they should proceed. Some of my
duties include drafting client-facing
“deliverables,” taking detailed notes
on their IT processes, and
conducting market research for
strategic discussions. If you’re
wondering how much I knew about
Banking Technology after
completing a Vassar STS degree,
the answer is basically nothing!
What did you do over the summer/abroad?
Margaret Ginoza ‘16
Katie Chang ‘17
I spent the summer in Paris doing
research at the Institut Pasteur with
the Insect-Viral Interactions Group.
My research focused on the effects of
breeding site bacteria on the
development of Aedes aegypti
mosquitoes, carriers of Dengue
fever.
This past summer, I worked as a
Lifeguard at home in Los Angeles
and took courses (Intro Philosophy
and Macroeconomics) at a local
community college.
From my limited
experience, some first jobs are not
about knowing esoteric industry
knowledge or having a narrow skill
set to offer. As liberal arts
graduates, we come equipped with
the tools to learn – how to be
inquisitive, how to ask questions,
how to work together to achieve a
common goal, and how to parse out
the important from the trivial.
Those skills were honed
partly during researching and
writing my senior thesis on selfdriving cars under the guidance of
Prof. Jim Challey and others in the
STS Program. Even though I am
merely six months into postgrad
life, I can already feel how my
Vassar education will carry me
through to the rest of my life. If any
STS majors (current or former)
would like to contact me, please
email me. I’d love to hear from you:
[email protected]
Owen Brady
Vassar STS Class of 2015
Molly Osborn ‘16
I spent an amazing spring semester
studying at the University of
Edinburgh in Scotland. I took two
classes in their Science Studies unit
as well as a Gaelic Language and
Culture class. In terms of STS-y
things I did while I was there, I
visited the National Museum of
Scotland several times and was lucky
enough to be in Edinburgh during
their annual Science Festival.
STS ALUMNI NEWSLETTER FALL 2015 | 3 Interview with Dr. Nancy Pokrywka
By Natalie Kopke Why do you teach Bioethics and Human Reproduction (STS 222)?
I teach STS 222 because human reproduction is a perfect example of how science informs
technology, and how both shape and are shaped by the world we live in. There's a lot of biology
to understand to appreciate the possibilities of technologies such as in vitro fertilization or
prenatal genetic testing, and these topics also raise a lot of controversial questions, such as
what is the moral and legal status of an embryo, or what is a disease, and what is a trait?
What do you like about it?
I love teaching this course because there is such a great range of students who take it, from
Film majors to Biochemistry majors and everyone in between. So we are exposed to a lot of
different points of view, and there are a lot of opportunities to learn from each other. I especially
love the group project, where students can explore some area of human reproduction that has
been affected by technology. I learn so much and the projects are super interesting.
What are some of the challenges you face teaching this course?
The main challenge is that often, no one in the course has been a parent, or struggled with
some of the issues raised. It is a very different experience to talk about IVF with students, and
with alums, for example. So I try to make sure and include personal stories in the readings, so
that students can get a sense of how emotional these issues are for people who are trying to
become parents.
Have you taught other STS classes?
I've also taught STS 131 (Genetic Engineering) in the past. This is also a course I have really
enjoyed teaching. And next year I'm teaching a new STS 200-level course, topic to be
determined (if there are biologically-related topics you'd love to see in a course, let me know!)
What do you like about teaching STS classes?
I love the STS program because I think it epitomizes a liberal arts education. You need to draw
on ideas and knowledge from a wide range of subjects, and work to synthesize it into a rich and
nuanced exploration of relevant issues. I believe scientists need to work harder than they have
in the past to make connections between their research and its effect on society. I also think it's
important for citizens to be able to understand and critically evaluate technological
breakthroughs and their consequences.
STS ALUMNI NEWSLETTER FALL 2015 | 4 Bill James’ Lecture
Alumni Feature
Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn ’06
On November 13th Bill James, CEO of JPods Inc.,
came to speak Vassar students and faculty. Bill James
is a West Point graduate and Infantry veteran who has
invented a process to build the PhysicalInternet®. Ultralight ‘pods’ move people and cargo in
a packet-switched network of overhead rails. Solarcollectors over those rails gather the energy to power
the networks. In his presentation, James addressed the
concept of Illicit Energy, the dependence on energy
sources outside of self-reliance. He argued that
ending dependence on foreign oil through majority
democracy and the use of smart technology can end
the catastrophic direction of Climate Change. The night Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn (’06)
was up against the final deadline to choose a
major at Vassar, he couldn’t narrow down to
less than six possibilities. Luckily for him, the
STS major provided a path to explore classes
in quite a few of the areas he was compelled
to explore, including anthropology, sociology,
history, media studies, communication and
political science. He ended up drawing
together insights from all these disciplines in
an undergraduate thesis analyzing the work
of Natalie
Jeremijenko,
drawing
out
possibilities for art and technology to animate
social and environmental justice. This thesis
whet an appetite for research that led to
a doctorate in STS at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute (RPI) a few miles up the Hudson,
where he is currently a full time Lecturer,
teaching classes on design, sustainability
studies and the relationship between science,
technology and social justice.
(Cont’d on p. 7)
What did you do over the summer?
Matthew Schwartz ‘16
I worked for Nestle Waters North America at their corporate
headquarters in Stamford, CT this summer. I worked in the
corporate real estate and facilities division, but also spent
some time in the legal and HR departments.
Kate Hennessy ‘16
For half of the summer I worked as a farmhand on an
organic vegetable farm in Maine. For the other half, I
interned at the international non-profit The Hunger Project
in the fundraising department.
Sylvia Haigh ‘16
During the past summer I interned at the National
Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD in the Environmental
Health department. I collaborated with State Department
employees and Indian partners to develop a workshop on
training and capacity building for issues of climate change
and health in India. I also assisted in the revision process
of the 2015 US Climate Health Assessment and I attended
the 2015 White House Summit on Climate Change and
Health.
STS ALUMNI NEWSLETTER FALL 2015 | 5 Summer Internship
By Shereen Sodder ‘17 This summer, I somehow
managed to take two classes for
my STS major, complete an
internship at a health advocacy
organization, and watch far too
much Netflix than I would care to
admit. At least I’ve mastered the
art of time management. My
summer started off at Boston
University, where I took classes in
Medical Anthropology and Global
Environmental Public Health.
Besides coming along with the
perks of a big city campus--like
having a Starbucks literally
INSIDE one of the colleges--these
courses definitely have made a
lasting impact on my academic
and career interests. My Medical
Anthropology course focused on
the social determinants of health
and the use of ethnocentrism in
Western biomedicine. I’m now
considering using these topics as
the basis of my thesis next year, as
I have found them to be very
relevant to my coursework and my
own personal experiences. My
course in Global Environmental
Public Health covered a wide
variety of issues in environmental
health, a topic in which I had
never really been interested
before. Now I am considering
global health and environmental
public health as possible subfields
of interest for my future career.
There is a trend in where I
spent my time this summer:
Health Care For All is in a
building with a Starbucks in the
lobby. If anything, I am consistent.
I worked at HCFA’s HelpLine,
which helps callers from all over
Massachusetts get access to health
insurance and related resources.
My job was to do statistical
analysis and make figures of caller
data (things like primary language,
insurance coverage, etc.) that were
presented by my boss to HCFA’s
donors to show how the HelpLine
is making an impact on MA’s health status. I also created two
resource guides for use by
HelpLine counselors --one
containing an extensive list of
health and related resources in
MA (including abortion funds,
health services for recent
immigrants, and more) and the
other containing a record of all the
languages offered via interpreters
or phone lines by the community
health centers in the state. The
second one required calling a LOT
of hospitals and clinics, all of
which for some reason have an
elevator version of “Africa” by
Toto as their music on hold.
This experience has
definitely made me even more
aware of my health privilege,
being from a rich suburb of
Boston with easy access to highquality health care (and being
from MA in general, which has a
much more liberal health policy
than many other states). My
internship also connected back to
my STS classes at Vassar and BU
and affirmed my career interests in
health management and equity.
Even though this was a very busy
summer, I would definitely do
something like this again as both
my classes and my internship were
relevant to issues in which I’m
genuinely interested, making those
early morning wake-up calls and
fighting tourists to get onto the
Green Line totally worth it.
STS ALUMNI NEWSLETTER FALL 2015 | 6 Fall 2015 STS Classes
Science and Justice in the Anthropocene
Geoscientists have proposed a new designation in the geologic time scale for our current time period, “the
Anthropocene.” The designation reflects the fact that human beings are acting as geological agents, transforming the
Earth on a global scale. In this freshman seminar course we explore the possibilities of reconfiguring the actions of
humans in the Anthropocene so as to lead to a flowering of a new Era once called ‘the Ecozoic’ by cultural historian
Thomas Berry.
Relatively Uncertain: A History of Physics, Religion and Popular Culture
This course examines the cultural history of key ideas and experiments in physics, looking in particular at how nonscientists understood key concepts such as entropy, relativity, quantum mechanics and the idea of higher or new
dimensions. It begins with an assumption that’s widely accepted among historians – namely, that the sciences are a
part of culture and are influenced by cultural trends, contemporary concerns and even urgent personal ethical or
religious dilemmas. In this course we are attuned to the ways that physicists drew key insights from popular culture
and how non-scientists, including religious or spiritual seekers, appropriated (and misappropriated) scientific insights
about the origin and nature of the world, its underlying laws and energetic forces, and its ultimate meaning and
purpose.
Bioethics and Human Reproduction
Scientific and technological advances are revolutionizing the ways in which human beings can procreate. This has
given rise to debates over the ethical use of these methods, and over whether and how law and public policy should
regulate these procedures and recognize the family relationships created by their use. This course examines topics
such as fertility treatments, the commodification of gametes and embryos, contraceptive development and use,
genetic screening and genetic modification of embryos, genetic testing in establishing family rights and
responsibilities, and human cloning. We examine issues surrounding the ethical use of these methods, and consider
whether and how law and public policy should regulate these procedures and recognize the family relationships
created by their use.
Interpreting Religious Fits, Trances and Visions
This course is an introduction to ways of understanding and interpreting religious experiences. The course analyzes
religious experiences from a variety of (mostly American) contexts, with attention to how religious people
themselves describe experiences and how scholars try to account for them. It examines moments of sudden
conversion, insight or inspiration, nature mysticism, and ritual practices that are performed by Muslims, Christians
and others. STS ALUMNI NEWSLETTER FALL 2015 | Alumni Feature: Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn ’06
(Cont’d from p.4)
Using multi-sited ethnographic methods, Brandon’s current research examines, and participates in, the design of
innovative media systems to address the communication and collaboration challenges of politically and
scientifically complex environmental issues. He works within a number of collaborative endeavors (always
looking for new collaborators!), including an ethnographic project called The Asthma Files, the Platform for
Experimental, Collaborative Ethnography (PECE), the Digital Practices in History and Ethnography Interest
Group within the Research Data Alliance and the Multispecies Salon.
Since completing graduate school in the Fall of 2012, Brandon has been teaching courses in the STS,
Sustainability Studies and Design, and Innovation and Society programs at RPI. Courses include Century of
Environmental Thought, Sustainability Problems and Solutions, Nature/Society, Product Design and Innovation
Studio, Sustainability Debates, Sustainability Education, Public Service Internship, Environment and Politics,
Environment and Society, Sustainability Senior Thesis and Sustainable Careers.
In the Asthma Files, an interdisciplinary ethnographic project, Brandon has focused on developing the Platform
for Collaborative and Experimental Ethnography (PECE) on which TAF operates, developing multi-media
content for the website and curating within the Communicating Asthma section. Within the Research Data
Alliance, and thanks to funding from the National Science Foundation, Brandon is working with the Interest
Group in Digital Practices in History and Ethnography, conducting ethnographic research and mapping a wide
variety of digital humanities projects.
In parallel with coursework relating fieldwork and artistic practices, Brandon has worked with Eben Kirksey and
other colleagues in a “para-ethnographic swarm” that documented and analyzed a Multispecies Salon, bringing
together artists, scientists and anthropologists during the 2010 American Anthropological Association Annual
Meeting in New Orleans. Brandon contributed to a chapter, “Life in the Age of
Biotechnology” in a book, published with Duke University Press, and designed and built the accompanying
website.
With support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Vectors and a Fellowship in Digital Humanities
at USC, Brandon contributed to Nick Shapiro’s Trailer Tracker, developing a platform using Geographic
Information Systems to map the dispersal of formaldehyde-laden trailers originally deployed in the wake of
Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
Besides work in academia, Brandon has fallen in love with life in Troy, NY and, with skills gained through
graduate coursework in the RPI Arts Department, has worked and volunteered at the Sanctuary for Independent
Media, as a critical media literacy educator, video editor and teacher with the DIY Animation Workshop.
Brandon has also taught private video editing lessons and produced content for the Journal of Cultural
Anthropology, the Multispecies Salon and Capital District Community Gardens. For nearly a decade, he has been
entranced by the music and culture of Cuba, playing with an Afro-Cuban and New World Percussion Ensemble
called Ensemble Congeros.
Brandon writes with gratitude about the life-long imprint that his Vassar years have left, including a passion for
social justice, a love of learning and a dedication to community and the arts. He hopes that any Vassar students or
alumni considering graduate school in STS, at RPI or elsewhere, will get in touch. He would be happy to give a
tour of Troy and its many delights. You can reach Brandon at [email protected]
7 STS ALUMNI NEWSLETTER FALL 2015 | 8 Senior Thesis Poster Session
On December 10th, STS seniors presented their
thesis topics in poster form. This was a great way
for seniors to present all of the work they have done
so far and to give a hint of what is to come as they
continue to research and write.
If you would like to contribute to the Science, Technology,
and Society newsletter, or if you have any comments,
questions, or feedback, please contact the 2015-2016
Science, Technology, and Society academic intern, Kate
Hennessy at [email protected].