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| Fall Quarter 2020
Hello STS Community - It's fall and we have nearly completed the first quarter of 2020-2021. Welcome to our new STS scholars and welcome back to our returning students. The Wire shares news about our program, our courses, our resources and our special events. Please feel free to send us any events or suggestions for activities to share with the STS community wherever you are. Email us!
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| Message from the Director
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It’s the beginning of the holiday season: a time for celebration, reflection, and looking ahead.
We all deserve to celebrate, just for surviving the first quarter of academic year 2020-21. All Zoom, all the time, is exhausting! I know that some celebrations will be tempered by deep personal losses. By now, some students, faculty, and staff have seen family members laid low by the pandemic. Some have endured long-haul recoveries, while others have died. We sincerely hope that most of you have escaped these effects, and our hearts go out to those who did not.
The STS Program has been busy since last summer. We’ve been reflecting on the horror of the George Floyd killing, police violence against Black people, and the rise of the BLM movement that has renewed national focus on racial injustice of all kinds. In response, STS led a coalition of some 18 campus units to mount a year-long speaker series and 1-credit course on Race in Science, Technology and Medicine. We’ve just finished STS 51A, Race in Science. In Winter 2021, we’ll move on to STS 51B, Race in Technology. In Spring 2021 we’ll offer STS 51C, Race in Medicine. If you don’t want to enroll in the course, watch for announcements of individual talks, which anyone at Stanford can attend.The lectures are recorded and are available to the Stanford community through a link on the series page to a Stanford Box recording.
We’ve also been reflecting, and looking ahead, toward the state of the world and what an STS education can prepare you for. One way we’ve done that is to introduce two new concentrations:
Catastrophic Risks and Solutions (CRS) lets concentrators focus on major threats to the human future, such as climate change, nuclear war, and pandemics, as well as catastrophes on smaller but still enormous scales, such as genocide, major earthquakes, and other threats to people and infrastructure.
Social Dynamics of Data and Information (SDDI) responds to the wave of interest and concern regarding how data about people and groups are collected and used – or misused – in governance, on social media, and in the rampant phenomena of misinformation and disinformation.
As we often say, STS is a liberal arts education for the 21st century. “Liberal arts" here refers not to a political position, but to an older meaning: “knowledge and skills required of a worthy free person.” To be a free human being in a world constituted by technological systems, global infrastructures, and scientific knowledge requires deepening our understanding of all those things, and of how societies and individuals interact with them. Taking control of your own life means navigating through these society-shaping phenomena with full awareness of where you are – and are not – truly free.
It may be that not everyone reading this message will be as relieved as I am about the results of the November election. If you’re not, I’m sorry for your loss – but to me, and to the majority of Americans, it means that we get one more chance to try to build a politics guided by open, honest, evidence-based thinking rather than rumor, science denial, and conspiracy theory. If you agree, I invite you to celebrate with me, and look ahead toward a new phase in our collective social experiment. We must use the two years before the next midterm election wisely: to rebuild trust in democratic elections, to rebuild ways of talking across the great cultural divide, and to renew our commitments to anti-racism, social justice, and the all-out effort to reach net zero carbon emissions within the next ten to fifteen. The risks of failure are huge. The power to succeed lies with you and your generation, and we the faculty and staff will do our best to help and show you how.
Enjoy your holidays, and please stay safe. We're in the most dangerous phase of the pandemic yet. It will be better to spend a few more months enduring isolation and Zoom rooms to make it to the other side. Vaccines are coming soon. If we all mask up, stay socially distant, and avoid unnecessary travel, we’ll get through this together.
- Paul N. Edwards
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2020 STS Honors SymposiumIn May 2020, STS hosted our first Zoom version of the annual STS Honors Symposium. Professor Kyoko Sato and her teaching assistant Efrain Brito worked tireleslly to support the students and their faculty advisors to complete the projects they shared with us. The students presented their senior honors project to an appreciative audience of STS students and staff, family and friends. STS Student Services Officer Dominique Topps hosted the event.
The honors designation signifies intellectual independence, analytical rigor, organizational skills, discipline, and perseverance. These skills and attributes are broadly applicable beyond the specific area of expertise, and serve individuals well after graduation. STS honors students have capitalized on their projects as a springboard for graduate studies and for careers in fields such as information technology, entrepreneurship, finance, public policy, media, education, law, medicine and the nonprofit sector. Here is a link to a video celebrating the day. Congratulations to all!!
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Virtual Celebration of 2020 Graduates
On June 19, 2020 STS celebrated the first (and hopefully only) Zoom and Powerpoint-powered commencement for the class of 2020. Graduates, family, friends, faculty and staff from across the globe cheered on our 46 students.
Congratulations and best wishes for a bright future!
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New Issue of Intersect Journal: The Impact of Incarceration on Moral AgencyIntersect is an international, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary, STS-focused, academic research journal run by undergrads that publishes online quarterly at intersect.stanford.edu and is regularly cited in Google Scholar. Intersect is one of two undergraduate STS journals in the world.
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Denise Geraci joins STS as Program Manager. Ipshita Sengupta moves to Princeton University
Denise Geraci, former manager at Stanford Global Studies has joined STS as the new program manager. Ipshita Sengupta held the position for more than four years before she left Stanford to join the M.S. Chadha Center for Global India at Princeton University this summer. Ipshita's strong and effective leadership of STS through an important transition in the program's growth gives Denise the opportunity to expand STS alliances and influence on campus and beyond.
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| Virtual Well-BeingWell-Being at Stanford and Vaden Health Services are actively building additions to this set of virtual resources that are designed to support your well-being.
Check out Well-Being Resources for on campus and beyond for learning and academic resources, financial well-being, emotional support, general health, queer community and spiritual well-being.
Well-Being Tips for Candid advice from the Well-Being at Stanford team. We will continue to prove ourselves capable of compassion, resilience, and flexibility. Please take whatever steps you need to stay healthy, safe, and connected to each other.
Well-Being Virtual Events check here for a virtual touchstone with the Office of Religious Life, Meditation Mondays, Yoga classes and more.
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| We add new opportunities as we find them.The BEAM Blast: A Humanities & Sciences Careers Newsletter
Visit the BEAM website to learn more about career coaching, internship opportunities, current events, signup for the Blast newsletter and much more! BEAM offers Career Ventures, a team for customized industry connections and employer engagement.
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Good Ideas for Taking Action_____________________________________________________________
offers updated listings for job search events. ______________________________________________________________
Check out the Cardinal Careers NewsletterIt has many postings for Public Interest Tech careers. Subscribe to the Cardinal Careers Newsletter
for a list of the best opportunities.
We are looking for a Business Analyst intern to work at the intersection of cutting-edge technology,
cost-effective supply chain and manufacturing, complex healthcare systems, and highly regulated airspaces. We are looking for a student strong in both strategy and execution with proven success delivering cross-functional, technical programs efficiently, and on-time. At Dove Air, we envision
technology as the key solution to achieve our ambitious mission of providing every human on Earth
with instant access to vital medical supplies.
Deadline December 19, 2020
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The John Gardner Public Service Fellowship provides opportunities for graduating seniors and
coterms to work full-time for ten months with a government agency, NGO, or nonprofit within the
continental United States of their choosing.
Deadline: January 7, 2021
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Through the Tom Ford Fellowship in Philanthropy, graduating seniors and coterms can gain first-hand experience in philanthropy by working full-time for 11 months with community, private, corporate, or family grantmaking foundations of their choosing
Deadline: January 7, 2021
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The Oakland Mayor’s Office is currently recruiting interns for Summer 2020. We are seeking respon-
sible, motivated and intellectually curious individuals who have an interest in political science, public
policy, community engagement or related fields, and who are reflective of the diversity of Oakland.
We do ask that students be able to establish connection to Oakland or the Bay Area.
Deadline: January 8, 2021
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The Internship Recruiting Team is driven by the passion to recognize emerging talent. Our year
around program places the best students in positions that they will grow both technically and
personally through their experience working closely with their Manager, Mentor, and team. We
are dedicated to providing an experience that allows for the intern to experience life at Tesla by
given them projects that are critical to their team’s success.
Deadline: February 28, 2021 11:55 PM
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To Attend or to Not Attend? Grad School EditionWeighing the decision of whether to attend grad school? This article from Peterson's details reasons
to attend and reasons not to attend. And if you've already decided to attend and need a process for choosing between schools, this article by The Muse provides one such approach. Still conflicted?
Talk with a Cardinal Careers advisor by clicking this link below and selecting the "Public Service and
Social Impact" category.
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