Campus & Community

Duck and Cover, Female Politicians, and Theories of Luck

CAL Newsletter: October 1, 2018

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Message from the Dean

It is a pleasure to share with the entire Stevens community the official College of Arts and Letters newsletter! Every other week, this email-based newsletter will highlight the accomplishments and activities of our amazing students and faculty. You will also see details about upcoming events sponsored by CAL, which I hope you will share with colleagues.

I am especially excited to share with you all the completed CAL Strategic Plan. This plan will guide planning and implementation for our academic unit through Academic Year 2022-2023. Click here to view the plan and to download in PDF document. If you would like to provide feedback, or suggest stories for inclusion in future editions of the newsletter, please mail CAL's new Marketing and Communications Manager, Connor Durkin ([email protected]), with your request.

Best Regards,

Kelland Thomas, Dean College of Arts and Letters

Watch Alex Wellerstein's TEDx Talk

“I try to have fun when talking about it; you have to have fun and keep it interesting when you talk about nuclear warfare,” said Alex Wellerstein, the CAL assistant professor and David and GG Farber Fellow in Science and Technology Studies, after his TEDx Talk. See how Wellerstein kept it light during his address, titled Reinventing Civil Defense: Duck and Cover for the New Nuclear Age. Also check out what else was discussed at Stevens' first-ever TEDx event, themed Through Collaboration-Impact.

In The News

NY Liberty Statue

Americans favor women politicians over men. That's what Stevens political science professors Lindsey Cormack and Kristyn Karl discovered after surveying more than 1,400 American adults. "The excitement around more women running for office is not a one-sided, female-driven phenomenon," Cormack and Karl wrote on the London School of Economics US Centre blog. "On the whole, citizens, and men specifically, found women politicians to be significantly more favorable, more competent, more apt to exhibit leadership, more intelligent, more compassionate, and more sincere than men."

Upcoming Events

Psychological Biases and Theories of Luck

October 1, 2018 — 4 p.m. — Pierce 120

Recent psychological work has found that how we attribute luck is troubling and inconsistent. Steven Hales, Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, will discuss how the perception of luck is more idiosyncratic than anything else.

How Physics Went Wrong

October 3, 2018 — 4:30 - 5:30 p.m. — Babbio Auditorium

Listing Join us as Sabine Hossenfelder, an authority on quantum gravity at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, talks about her acclaimed new book “Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray.” Before her talk, get to know Hossenfelder better by reading her blog Backreaction, enjoying her Q&A with CAL's own John Horgan, or watching her music video, Outer Space.

Opening Night Celebration of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra

October 5, 2018 — 5:30 p.m. — New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark

Buy tickets today! New Jersey Symphony Orchestra is dedicating its opening night to honoring President Nariman Farvardin of Stevens Institute of Technology, and alumna Danielle McPhatter will wow the crowd with her project that fuses gaming with music.