St. Joseph’s College has announced the introduction of a speaker’s bureau — a collection of faculty available to present on a series of specialized topics — which supports local academic, educational and cultural institutions or organizations in Brooklyn and Long Island in the pursuit for scholarship and service.
Presentations are available on the following topics: biology, computer science, development, education, family/public communications and youth athletics, health care, history, mathematics, philosophy, psychology and religious studies. All presentations are free.
There are 25 talks to choose from, with areas of interest ranging from Alexander Fleming, Biofilms and the First World War, all the way to The Optimal Basketball Free Throw. Each professor has indicated the intended audience for his or her talks.
“I believe that the SJC faculty is a group comprised of scholars with excellent expository skills. I felt that this fact needed to be better known,” said David Seppala-Holtzman, Ph.D., interim associate chair and professor of mathematics and computer science. “As service is one of our five central pillars, what better way to serve the community than to give access to our superb faculty?”
Dr. Seppala-Holtzman created the idea for St. Joseph’s speaker’s bureau. Cheyne Miller, Ph.D., assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at SJC Long Island, is working closely with him on the project.
In addition to serving local high schools and colleges, the talks benefit, such venues as libraries, senior centers and civic clubs.
“We have tentative plans to invite speakers on our list to give their presentations on campus and have the talks recorded and archived,” Dr. Seppala-Holtzman said. “The benefits of this are obvious: (1) This serves to enrich the extra-curricular academic environment for our own community; and (2) These archived talks could be posted online, with links to them included on the speaker’s bureau page. That way, someone requesting a talk could see a preview of it and determine its suitability for their audience. In addition, if the logistics of arranging a live presentation prove to be problematic, a recorded talk could serve in its stead.”
