Honors Colloquium

The title of Dr. Jim Sheppard’s talk was Environmental Ethics in the 21^st century: Exclusions, evaluation, and the burdens of knowledge.  Dr. Sheppard is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy.

I think we would all agree after listening to Dr. Sheppard’s presentation that we feel a burning desire to make a difference with our lives. Dr. Sheppard began with the words of David Foster Wallace, “Why are we here and engaging in a university education?” Dr. Sheppard elaborated that learning comes with responsibility and a new perspective. If you get an education, why then go out into the world simply to conform to society’s limitations? You should take your education and push new boundaries, test the social norm.

Dr. Sheppard then elaborated on humanity’s suffering. The big 5 wounds: anthropogenic climate change, threats to biodiversity, freshwater shortages, depleted oceans, extreme poverty. The problem that confronts us is that every living system in the biosphere is in decline, and the rate of decline is accelerating.  Dr. Sheppard believes we should follow the lead of Jane Addams. She dedicated her life to helping the poor. He concluded that humanity is blind. In the words of William James, “We grow stone blind and insensible. The remedy under such conditions is to descend to a more profound and primitive level.”  We must be observant and see the horrific tragedies happening around us everyday. One of Dr. Sheppard’s favorite writers, Arundhati Roy, stated that we should “… never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar display of life around you.”  Dr. Sheppard went on to explain his point by quoting Emile Durkheim on Homo Duplex, “In brief, this duality corresponds to the double existence that we lead concurrently; the one purely individual and rooted in our organisms, the other social and nothing but an extension of society.” Are individuals incapable of seeing past themselves to see what real evils are plaguing our planet? Dr. Sheppard finds the solution to be simply that individuals must become aware of the people around them. William James stated, “What most horrifies me in life is our brutal ignorance of one another.”

Through this ignorance of each other, individuals create groups and exclusions. Ultimately, we must maintain these groups and exclusions. This matters because what we rationalize is determined by what we include and exclude. How can we ponder new ideas and break through the obstacles and wounds armed only with information that is meant to hinder humanity? We have to start from scratch. Change our thinking entirely. As the great Albert Einstein stated, “The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation.”

Dr. Sheppard them warned us of what would come next. In the words of William Gilman, “… people are stupid and when you speak of realities it seems to them conjuring.” Dr. Sheppard then asked us to use our knowledge to deploy our greatness of spirit. For us to do the greatest good we must first figure out what humanity’s greatest evils are. But where should we begin? Dr. Sheppard had answers. “First we must break down and challenge the force of categories and exclusions. We deceive ourselves if we think our self-drawn categories don’t exist. Open yourself up to the world in a new way and feel, love things and understand things to develop a faith for those things. As Jamaica Kincaid noted, every native of every place is a potential tourist. But don’t be just a tourist in your own city. Your role now (and how to make your generation great) is to be the cultural leaders! Be those cultural leaders that make the connection to further envision the change. With it comes the responsibility to be creative.”

Are you going to be the cultural leader or the tourist? Make your choice.

Dr. Julie Wood obtained her medical degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and completed her residency at Via Christi St. Francis. She has served as the president of the Missouri Academy of Family Physicians and met with legislators in Jefferson City to provide testimony on tort and insurance issues as well as access to care. She is currently a delegate for the MAFP to the AAFP Congress of Delegates.

Dr. Wood’s presentation started with the first topic, “Does Your Zip Code Matter?”  She discussed the many problems that have to do with health care and health care policy. The beginning of the PowerPoint covered the many social determinants of health care: income, insurance, economics, education, culture, taxation, housing, food, stress, employment, transportation, social standing, discrimination, and ignorance towards healthy food preparation. All of the aforementioned determinants are things that poorer families in under-privileged communities face when it comes to obtaining health care. Wood explained that children who come from poverty have issues getting a good education which is directly linked to health. Those with lower levels of education normally have poorer health. A study done in Oakland, California showed that white children from an affluent area are far more likely to have better health than a black child in poverty just across town.

The second slide titled “How Can A Neighborhood Affect You?” addressed how one’s environment can be a large determinant to good health. The general safety of an area, access to equipment and healthy food, exposure to targeted advertising and harmful substances, and the support an area has all affect how a person can take care of themselves. While there are many determinants, there are also things being done to improve these areas. In Chicago, you can only go seven blocks without hitting a safe park for exercising or sports. Also, some grocery stores have started replacing alcohol sections with fresh produce.

Dr. Wood said that based on the amount of money our country spends, our citizens should be much healthier. One of the main factors as to why we aren’t more healthy is because government isn’t addressing the social determinants or looking into prevention of health problems. Health isn’t the only thing that will benefit from preventative measures. Wood said that a “healthy workforce is a productive workforce.” She called us to action, stating that contacting officials with the ability to change what is going on and supporting policies that would create a healthier population would be a great way to start. It takes all types of people to change the health care system. Her lasting words, “Health has a lot of things that play into it besides the obvious….we all definitely play a role. Keep that in mind when you’re out there changing the world,” were not only thought-provoking but inspiring.

On April 10 Dr. Deep Medhi spoke to the Colloquium students.  He is Curators’ Professor and Trustees’ Faculty Fellow in the School of Computing and Engineering.  His presentation was called “A Few Bits About Networking: Past, Present and Future”.

Modern communication means that people who are in different places can communicate quickly.  The first part of Dr. Medhi’s presentation was on the history of communication. The telegraph first deployed in 1844 which said “What hath God wrought?” Next in 1876 the telephone was created which was significant because you could talk between two people in two different places, and in 1895 the wireless signal was successfully sent. At that time it cost $25.00 a minute to call across the Atlantic.  In the early 1960s the Packet Switching Concept was created. This allowed large messages to be sent as a whole instead of small pieces.  In the 1970s the birth of software-based telephone switches was created and in the 1980s the idea of packet switching was expanded and set the foundation for the internet.  In the past 25-30 years there has been an explosion of technology and some obvious successes are fiber optics, internet and mobile telephones, and mobile internet.  Fiber optics was a huge advance because it allowed the cutting of costs of sending messages.  There are cable maps that connect the fiber optic cables of different countries.  This allows us to have different search engines located at different places around the world.

Next Dr Medhi talked about the internet today and the problems and interesting facts that come with it.  Before continuing he mentioned that when he speaks about the internet he is not talking about Facebook, but instead the planning systems and their capacity.  Today there are many issues and policies that can be found within technology.  The first was Routing Policies in Global Internet, which is how the internet is organized worldwide and how nations made an agreement to ensure that information always travels. The idea of routing policies can cause a problem because if a server decides to stop serving than all information can be lost or rerouted or spammed.  Second Dr. Medhi talked about Software-defined networking which is a way to reduce the complexity of configuring and managing networks. But this is more applicable in data centers than all internet search engines. Third he spoke of Information Centric Networking which is a host centric networking.  It is basically the idea that when watching a video, it is better if the information you are trying to access is located closer to the user to allow for faster download time.  He closed with a philosophical context which is that in the past the end device or the phone was “dumb’ but today the end device is now “intelligent” but the network is “dumb.”

Dr. Laurie Ellinghausen, an associate professor in the Department of English at UMKC, has a busy weekly schedule. Between teaching a plethora of classes, serving on multiple administrative boards throughout the university, and maintaining a healthy home life, she still finds time to instruct yoga classes at a local yoga studio. Her definition of yoga is the practice of balancing and healing the mind, body, and spirit through conscious breath and movement.

The common myths and misconceptions about yoga were quickly dispelled by Dr. Ellinghausen. Despite popular belief and media representation, yoga is not a flexibility contest among upper-class white women. Yoga has been around longer than all of the religions that are associated with it, can be done by anyone, and can actually be a great source of cardio. As an instructor of yoga, she hopes to implant the idea that yoga is realistic and practical for the busy lives that we all have in today’s society.

Students participated in a few instructional exercises that taught them to be conscious of their breathing, acknowledge any physical or emotional stressors present within the body, and to consider that their own bodies can be a source of relaxation for coping with stress.

Since she first began practicing yoga as an undergraduate student, Dr. Ellinghausen was able to give students advice about how to begin yoga on a budget. She mentioned many studios around the metro area that often times have Groupon or similar discount class fees. Another great source is to look for community yoga around the city or search for instructional videos online.

Dr. Ellinghausen concluded by handing out a brief instructional guide to a few basic yoga poses and with the traditional “Namaste.”