Newspapers / Chowan University Student Newspaper / March 1, 1997, edition 1 / Page 4
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Chowan exclusive N.C. recipient of ADAM, software grant Grant includes major collection of sophisticated, multimedia medical software Chanel Webster manipulates the A.D.A.M. anatomy screen as Tamra Blankenship, Craig Winter and Dr Bonnie Revelle look on. In a statewide grant competition, A.D.A.M. (Animated Dissection of Anatomy for Medicine) Software, Inc. of Atlanta, Ga., recently named Chowan College the single award recipient of a major collection of sophisticated, multimedia medical software. From a begirming applicant pool of fifty schools, Chowan was selected to receive the grant award of $20,000. Primarily designed for use by biology and physical education majors, Chowan will utilize the interactive software in the study of human anatomy, human physiology, kinesiology, exercise physiology, athletic training, and media and technology. In an excellent position to provide computer support for academic instruction, the college's commitment to technology includes a new campus-wide, fiber optic network system linking every classroom and office on campus. During the summer, Chowan will complete interior wiring in each residence hall room allowing a multitude of possibilities for software access to students and professors alike. Dr. Bonnie Revelle, assistant professor of science and author of the winning grant applica tion, refers to A.D.A.M. anatomy software as, “the gold standard,” Revelle elaborated, “Origi nally developed for use in medical schools and graduate programs, the company has broadened their approach to include software for undergradu ate study. As a physician, I have studied anatomy intensively, and no resource can compare with the ease and clarity provided by A.D.A.M. As a teacher I have seen the program change lab work from an exercise in drudgery -- ‘Do we have to study these charts?’ - to an exercise of fun and excitement.” “All physical education majors, including those entering teaching, athletic training, sport manage ment and sport science will use the software in major course work and athletic training,” according to Dr. Jane Markert, associate professor of health and physical education, and a collaborator in the grant process. Markert continued, “In addition, students in the media and technology course required of physical education majors entering the teaching profession will use the software to design and produce health units for students in grades K- 12. The software will allow our students an opportunity not only to utilize the interactive media during their own learning process, but apply what they have learned to their teaching.” With a commitment to improved instruction and learning, A.D.A.M. works to develop software applications that will transform classrooms from ‘passive’ to ‘active’ learning environments. The generous grant will allow Chowan to extensively expand their library of anatomy software and permit entire classes to study subjects simulta neously. Kcvolwtiofi \ An address delivered during Honors Day Convocation January 23, 1997 Dr. Wendy Dower Assistant Professor of Language and Uterature I have taken as my topic today “Revolution.” I want to assure President Lott at the outset that my intention is peaceful. I am not advocating a return to the sixties, as fun as they might have been. We in Marks Hall are still dealing with one of the consequences of that revolution in the form of chairs bolted to the floor so that students can’t throw them out the window when they take over a building for a sit-in. I originally thought about calling this talk “A Glorious Revolution,” after that revolution in English history, but then remembered that it was called “glorious” only because it was bloodless and that its point was a peaceful overthrow of the monarch. I hasten to assure you that I’m not advocating that either. We’ve been to rather a lot of trouble to fmd Dr. Lott; I’m not suggesting that we get rid of him. I am thinking more along the lines of a scientific revolution with just a touch of inspiration from a political one. A scientific revolution is a change in the way we think about things, the way we see things, the way we understand how things work. I’d like to couple such a change with the fervor that comes with political revolution, the feeling of brotherhood, and the inspiration to make radical changes in some of the things we do, but without the killing that goes on in a political revolution. As inspirational as the ideas and ideals behind the French, Russian, and American Revolutions might have been, however full of fervor and enthusiasm their advocates may have been, they were all a tad messy and ended up with a lot of dead people. What I am issuing here today is more of a call to metaphoric arms. As Emerson should have said, but didn't, it is the munetaphoric life that is not worth living. When I ask my students what they are doing here at college, the answer is almost always, “To get a degree.” And every semester some student or other asks me, “Why do I have to take all these courses outside my major? I’m not going to use this.” My answer to that is two-fold. One is that education isn't about preparing for a job; it is about preparing for a life. Two is: Based on my experi ence, you don’t know at eighteen or twenty-two all you’re going to need to know in your job, and certainly not all you will need to know in your life. When I was an undergraduate, I too thought that there were some things I just didn’t need to study. I was advised by various college-educated friends throughout my four years of undergraduate schooling to take a particular course that I didn’t want to take. I was never going to need it; I would never need to know it; and I would certainly never, ever, use it. And I was right, for many, many years. Until today. When I am feeling the lack of that course in Public Speaking I was never going to need and so never took. In some ways at the beginning of our educa tions we are like the first Polar explorers: not knowing what to expect, we don’t know what to take, so we take the familiar, the things that help us survive in the world we know. One of the early Arctic explorers was Sir John Franklin, who left England with 138 officers and men in 1845 in search of the northwest passage. Annie Dillard tells their story in her book Teaching a Stone to Talk. Their two 3-masted sailing ships were each equipped with an auxiliary steam engine and a 12- day supply of coal. Instead of more coal, which might seem appropriate cargo, they instead took a 1,200 volume library, china place settings for officers and men, cut-glass wine goblets, and sterling silver flatware, engraved with the indi vidual officers’ initials and family crest. Instead of Arctic-appropriate clothing, they wore the blue cloth uniforms of the Royal Navy. Not one man returned. Thirty search parties went after them when the expedition failed to return: it was these search parties that explored and mapped the Arctic for the first time, because it was these which developed the technology that would help man adapt to Arctic conditions Over the next twenty years various search expeditions came across the remains of the Franklin expedition. Franklin had died on his ship, which sunk after winters of being ice bound, and the remaining men had decided to walk to find help. Their bodies were found with those supplies they had chosen to take on this walk to survival: they took the silver. The Franklin expedition failed, but it failed with proper British dignity. What success requires is not dignity, but a change in world view. If what you’re doing is not succeeding, you need to do something different. And so the revolution that I am hoping to incite is that revolution wliich is true education, not just the garnering of facts, but a change in the way you see the world and yourself in relationship to it. As Professor Agassiz, a 19th-century Harvard scientist, said: “Facts alone are stupid things.” This revolution is a revolution in the role Chowan plays in your lives. Its battle cry is your answer to the question “What you are doing here at Chowan?” Not “Getting a degree,” but “Getting an education, becoming an educated person.” Chowan, in this revolution, becomes a place where students and faculty are engaged together in the process of becoming educated. I know that’s not fair—the faculty has a head start. But we’re older and we need that kind of advantage. But we issue you an invitation to join us on this quest which is the life of the mind. And to find yourself among those honored at Honors Convocation. For some, this will take a revision in your perception of who you are and what you are capable of Some of you have not had entirely successful educational experiences and do not expect to start now. Some are happy to just get by. Some of you are thinking, “Right. I am not a scholar and never will be.” That perception can change if you want it to. Expectafion creates perception. If you expect a negative, you will create it. Expectation of failure leads to failure; in the same way, expectation of success leads to success. Some hundred or so years ago, I was accepted into the Ph.D. program at UNC-Chapel Hill. I was ecstatic, because it was the program I really wanted to get into. But as Dr. Lowe told you a few minutes ago, 1 got both my BA and my MA from the University of South Florida, a good school, but not the Harvard of the South. And so I was afraid that the professors at UNC were going to find out that I was not UNC material, not the scholar they thought—that I was, in short, a fraud. Every semester I worked twice as hard as I saw any of the other students working, and at the end of every semester when I got my grade sheet, I said to myself, “Ha! Fooled them again; they still don’t know I don’t belong here.” Overcoming all of the hurdles that lie on the quest to the Ph.D., the see REVOLUTION, page ten Page 4 — CHOWAN TODAY, March 1997
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