Scholar Recognition Day

Saturday, February 23, 2013 at 8:45 AMUTC -06:00


Luther College, Center for Faith and Life Lobby
700 College Dr
Decorah, IA 52101
United States

Scholar Recognition Day

Scholar Recognition Day offers the opportunity for students to meet Luther faculty doing what they do best--sharing their love of learning with others. It's also Luther College's time to publicly recognize those individuals for their achievements. Prospective students who have been awarded Dean's, President's, or Founders Scholarships will receive an invitation to this event. Parents are also invited and encouraged to attend.

Scholar Recognition Day Schedule

8:45 a.m. -- Registration - Center for Faith and Life Lobby

9:20 a.m. -- Welcome and Introduction to the Day

9:50 a.m. and 10:40 a.m. -- Academic Seminars for Students, Alternative Activities for Parents

11:30 a.m. -- Presentation of Certificates

12:30 p.m. -- Lunch with Luther students and faculty

1:30 p.m. (Optional) -- Campus tours, visits to first-year residence halls, auditions, and/or information about study abroad, honors, research opportunities, and internships.

Note: We are no longer able to offer overnight housing with a current student.

 

Academic Seminar Choices and Descriptions

1. Are You Deviant?  Sociological research has suggested that characteristics like the length of your fingers, the bumps on your head, or the amount of sugar you eat can predict your chances of doing criminal behavior. Is this true? Come evaluate your own characteristics and chances of becoming a criminal, and discuss the implications of this research.

3. Born To Run: The Anthropology of Distance Running.  Humans possess a capacity for endurance running that is virtually unmatched in the animal world. We will look at the physiological traits that underlie our capacity to run long distances as well as the environmental and cultural conditions under which this ability evolved.

4. Chemistry Makes Scents.  The human nose is a very sensitive detector of odor. Explore with us the molecular characteristics that make one molecule smell fruity and another smell like sweat socks. Bring your nose!

5. Classical Mythology: What Your Teachers Never Told You.  Forget the happy bedtimes tales of Greek and Roman gods and heroes you read as a child. The real, unfiltered stories from classical mythology are full of sex, cannibalism, and brutal violence. Come discover why Zeus was not a kindly father-figure, how Jason really found the Golden Fleece, and why you should never wander through the woods alone at night.

6. Computer Generated Images.  When you go to a movie or look at a picture in a magazine or online, it’s hard to tell which characters and scenes are real and which are computer-generated. In this workshop, we will explore some of the techniques used to create these computer-generated images.

7. Did Hobbits Really Speak English? J. R. R. Tolkien and the languages of Middle Earth.  J. R. R. Tolkien is best known as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but he was also a linguist and an eminent scholar of Old English. We’ll examine how he applied the linguistic genius he developed as a lexicographer, a philologist, and an historical linguist to the shaping of the languages and alphabets of Middle Earth.

8. Expereince Missa Ave maris stella by Josquin des Prez.  Lecture/Demonstration by James Griesheimer and Kathryn Reed with student performers. Learn about Martin Luther's favorite composer and aspects of early music performance including Renaissance choral notation and instrumental tablatures.

9. Fractals: Random and Predictable.  Fractals are self-similar subsets of Rn with "fractional dimension." We will explore two different constructions of a fractal: one based on a random process (rolling a die) and another that is deterministic.

10. Godless Europe vs. a God-Blessed America?  In America, someone who attends church on a regular basis is considered normal. In Europe, such a person is more likely to be considered a fanatic. What explains this difference? Come and explore with us the possible reasons why Americans appear to be much more religious than Europeans.

11. Human Anatomy.  We will use prosected (previously dissected) human cadavers to look at some of the major human muscles, arteries, nerves, and joints. We will also examine organs such as the human heart, brain, and lungs. This session is appropriate for anyone who has an interest in what the human body looks like inside.

12. Let’s Make A Deal For Justice?  Plea Bargaining in the American Judicial System.  Approximately 95 percent of all felony charges in the United States are settled by plea bargains between the defense and the prosecution. This presentation will introduce you to the basics of plea bargaining and allow you to see how you would settle real-life criminal cases.

13. Luther College Goes to War.  Perspectives from the Scuttlebutt and World War II Letters.  This session will highlight a collection of letters written by Luther students serving in World War II. They offer unique insights about the war from the vantage point of the young men and women serving around the world in that conflict.

14. Managing Stress: The Wisdom Behind a Good Belly Laugh!  Life can seem serious at times, but we can do much to bring balance to our lives through laughter and humor. Humor and laughter have shown physiological, psychological, social, spiritual, and quality-of-life benefits. This seminar will point out the benefits of humor and laughter as a means of helping manage stress.

15. Open Rehearsal: Charles Gounod's Petite Symphony for Winds  An open rehearsal is an opportunity to observe a professionally run chamber music rehearsal and witness student/faculty collaboration in music. Winds and brass will rehearse Charles Gounod's, Petite Symphony.

16. Open Star Clusters in the Milky Way.  Thousands of open clusters are scattered throughout the plane of our galaxy.  Each cluster is a group of hundreds of stars.  The clusters have been an essential tool for understanding how stars process material and age.  We will construct a luminosity-temperature diagram for an open star cluster we have been studying at Luther for the past decade.  Then we will investigate how to use these diagrams to determine cluster ages and distances as well as for mapping the shape of the Milky Way and the dust in the plane of the galaxy.

17. Performing Arts: Cabaret: The Musical.  A workshop exploring the process from page to stage for Kander and Ebb's musical Cabaret.

18. Research and Study Away Opportunities as Important Components of Your Luther Biology Program  Tour biology research labs and visit with current biology students and faculty to find out about some of the collaborative research projects that are happening at Luther College.

19. Simulation in Health Care Education: What is It and How Does It Work?  Simulation is a hot topic in the education of health-care professionals and yet this practice has been used for over 100 years. Simulation encompasses a variety of practices including role-playing among students; use of special actors known as standardized patients, and use of anatomical models, virtual patients, and electronic patients. This seminar, conducted by a member of the nursing faculty,  will include a brief introduction to health-care simulation and provide an opportunity to participate in a simulation activity.

20. So You Think You are Not Creative?  So You Think You are Not Creative? Creativity is essential to success in today's business world. Fortunately, creativity is a thinking skill that can be learned. Come learn how you can be creative on demand and develop new ideas for businesses and products.

21. Strategies for Working with Groups.  Join an interactive workshop in which students will explore some basic theories of group work, try some activities related to group work, and generate their own ideas for working with groups in their own schools or communities.  Students will be guided through analysis of various creative and healing group intervention strategies.   No experience is required.

22. That Voice Inside Your Head is Not Your Own.  Dramatic Monologues in Poetry and Prose: We think the form of a dramatic monologue only belongs on the stage, but poets and fiction writers use this trick as well, and writers can often be surprised by what they learn when they start letting the characters inside their head have their say.  In this workshop we will read some poems built around this form and begin writing our own versions of someone else's "live talk" on the page.

23. The Hunger Games as Equipment for Living.  Given the tremendous literary and box office success of The Hunger Games, this seminar considers the way in which science fiction contributes to our understanding of contemporary human life. Embracing the futuristic, the spectacular, and the speculative, how does The Hunger Games film invite viewers to enter a public dialogue concerning such wide ranging issues as gender, economics, and politics? To what degree does the film function as a parable, a narrative capable of reinforcing or challenging cultural beliefs, values, and norms?)

24. Using NMR to Determine the Structure of the Painkiller Ibuprofen.  We will use a molecular modeling program to visualize the ibuprofen molecule and then investigate this structure using our 300 MHz NMR spectrometer to probe the carbon skeleton of the molecule and the location of hydrogen atoms in the molecule.

25. Viva l’Italia!!!  In this short introduction to Italian, we will build on Italian words that students already know perhaps without realizing it (for example about food and music) in order to learn to say more and explore the language, linguistically and culturally.

26. When Protecting the Environment and Protecting One’s Property Collide.  The 5th Amendment of the Constitution says the government can take your property for a public use if you receive just compensation. But what if the government passes an environmental regulation that lessens the value of your property? In this session we will look at some real cases and ask you to decide whether you would protect the property owner or the environmental interest.

27. Yuck!  That’s disgusting!  Disgust is a universal human emotion. From open sores to cockroaches, the things that gross us out reveal important things about our evolved psychological nature. In this lab we will activate your disgust emotion (in a fun way!) and demonstrate how disgust is an adaptive system

 

 

Registration is no longer available because the registration deadline has passed.