The Academic Minute from 09.09 – 09.13
Monday, September 9th
James Seidelman – Westminster College
End of Neoliberalism
James “Cid” Seidelman, Ph.D., is distinguished service professor of economics at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah. He returned to teaching in fall 2015 after serving 11 years as provost and vice president of academic affairs, and 13 years as dean of the Bill and Vieve Gore School of Business.
Tuesday, September 10th
Julia Kamenetzky – Westminster College
Light Pollution
Julia Kamenetzky completed a masters and Ph.D. in astrophysical and planetary sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her work focused on determining the physical characteristics of highly-excited molecular gas in the interstellar medium of nearby galaxies using the Herschel Space Telescope. Before joining the faculty at Westminster College in 2016, she was a National Science Foundation Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Arizona.
Wednesday, September 11th
Bonnie Baxter – Westminster College
Great Salt Lake and Life on Mars
Bonnie Baxter, Ph.D., is a professor of biology and director of Westminster’s Great Salt Lake Institute. She has spent two decades studying Great Salt Lake microbial diversity including DNA damage, repair and photoprotection in halophilic archaea. She has a long-standing interest in biopreservation in halite salt-saturated fluid inclusions, from both modern and ancient environments. This work explores the mechanisms of dormancy of halophilic microorganisms over geologic time with respect to astrobiology implications of bio-signatures that may remain on other space bodies. She founded the Great Salt Lake Institute to facilitate research on the lake and provide outreach opportunities for science education. She has a Bachelor of Science degree from Elon University and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Thursday, September 12th
Christopher LeCluyse – Westminster College
Academic Writing as Fantasy Role-Playing Game
Christopher LeCluyse began his writing center career in 1999 while completing his Ph.D. in English at the University of Texas at Austin. Since 2006 he has directed the writing center at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, where he is also a professor of English. He served as president of the Rocky Mountain Writing Centers Association and co-chaired the 2015 National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing and the 2017 International Writing Center Association Summer Institute. He continues to draw on his background as a medievalist by relating medieval literacy, ancient rhetoric and religion to academic writing and writing center pedagogy and by singing early music.
Friday, September 13th
James Seidelman – Westminster College
Student Loan Debt Crisis
James “Cid” Seidelman, Ph.D., is distinguished service professor of economics at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah. He returned to teaching in fall 2015 after serving 11 years as provost and vice president of academic affairs, and 13 years as dean of the Bill and Vieve Gore School of Business.
