Outreach Programs

Faculty Speakers Bureau

Reed College facilitates a Speakers Bureau of faculty members who are available to address topics of interest and expertise to Portland area high school classes and clubs.   High School teachers should contact Barbara Amen, director of special programs (503-777-7259), to submit requests for a faculty speaker. The director will take the teacher's information, contact the faculty member about availability, and then notify the teacher accordingly. While we will accommodate as many requests as possible, schedule conflicts and demands upon a faculty member's time make it difficult to complete all requests. Each faculty member generally is available for no more than two presentations during the academic year, and will make one presentation at the designated schools (occasionally high school teachers combine multiple classes in the same subject for the presentation). Fall break (October 15-19), January, Reed's spring break (March 18-22), and late May are times when Reed faculty often have the most flexibility to leave campus during high school hours.

High School teachers interested in inviting a Reed faculty member come to their class or after school club can facilitate the request process by providing the following information when making initial contact with the special programs office:

            1)  Name of teacher requesting a speaker
            2)  High School
            3)  Phone number and best time to reach teacher (including home number,
                  if appropriate)
            4)  Reed faculty member requested
            5)  Topic to be addressed
            6)  Class/group to be addressed
            7)  Year of students and size of class/group
            8)  Date and time frame for faculty member to address the class
                  (flexibility works best!)


2012-2013 list of available faculty members by department.  It also may be possible to accommodate requests for additional Reed faculty members, or requests for topics other than those listed.

Art

The Open Gallery program is a visual arts outreach program. It coordinates presentations on the current exhibitions on-site at the Cooley Gallery or at the schools.

September 4—November 18, 2012 
Kara Walker, More & Less                                            

Biology

Professor Kara Cerveny

1)  Cellular and developmental biology
2)  Genetics (as it relates to embryonic development)
3)  Career options as a biologist (prior experience as a high school science teacher, reasearcher in the UK and Germany, and writer/editor for Cell, a scientific journal)


Professor David Dalton

1)  Pacific NW Forests
2)  Biological Legacy of Lewis and Clark

Classics

Professor Walter Englert

1)  Greek Tragedy          
2)  Homer (Iliad and Odyssey)   
3)  Greek and Roman literature and philosophy

Professor Ellen Millender

1)  Greek and Roman history
2)  Ancient Sparta
3)  Women in the Ancient World
4)  The benefits of a liberal arts college; Classics as a college major

Professor Nigel Nicholson (Available only January-May)

1)  Tragedy
2)  Epic
3)  Greek and Roman culture

Economics

Professor Denise Hare

1)  China's economic policy and development: what it means for China and for the rest of the world

History

Professor Margot Minardi   

1)  19th-century American social reform movements
2)  Doing history with images
3)  Social history of the American Revolution

Linguistics

Professor Matt Pearson     (Available only mid October through mid March)

1)  "What is Linguistics?" General presentation on topics such as speakers' unconscious knowledge of their language and how linguists investigate it, careers in linguistics, etc.

Literature/Literary Studies

Professor Jan Mieszkowski   

1)  Why are literary studies important?
2) What is the broader historical, social, and political signifance of literature and literary studies?

Mathematics

Professor Irena Swanson     

1)  Calendars and modular arithmetic  (history of calendars; the usual and unusual arithmetic behind them; on what day of the week were you born?)                   
2)  Perspective drawing and projective geometry
3)  Tessellations of the plane (with group theory or quilting)

Nuclear Science

Melinda Krahenbuhl, director of the Reed Research Reactor

1)  Basic Radiation Science
2)  Radiation Health Effects
3)  Nuclear Ractor Accident Analysis

Physics

Professor Lucas Illing    (Available only October through December)

1)  Light and Optics

Professor David Griffiths

1)  Special relativity
2)  Elementary particles
3)  Quantum mechanics

Political Science

Professor Tamara Metz    

1)  Current debates on marriage and the family

Psychology

Professor Enriqueta Canseco-Gonzalez     (January only)

1)  Language acquisition
2)  Language and the brain: evidence from brain-damaged patients
3)  Sign language and bilingualism

Professor Cara Laney

1)  False memory
2)  Psychology and law

Professor Kathy Oleson

1)  Social psychology
2)  Stereotyping and prejudice
3)  The self
4)  Interpersonal perception and relationships

Russian Literature

Professor Lena Lencek

1)  Russia and Italy: a romance
2)  Gogol and Dostoevsky
3)  The Tolstoyan Idyll of work