A Message to EPICureans!
EPIC has gotten off to an exciting start in the Fall semester. On Oct 4, our Graduate Scholar Series welcomed newly minted Dr. Krista Durney, who presented her doctoral research on innovative laser techniques for dealing with osteoarthritis. Her talk was inspiring to me not only because it well delivered and presented complicated mechanisms in jargon-free terms, but also because it focused on non-surgical remedies for problems we nearly all encounter. And, to be perfectly frank, I was delighted to hear from a female biomechanical engineer and to see that two of the three younger members of her lab who attended are also female. A half-century ago, I didn't have that many female colleagues when I was a student in the hard-science STEM fields.
O
ur September 30th
EPIC Conversation
with
Alice Kessler-Harris
, R. Gordon Hoxie Professor Emerita of American History, also bore witness to the remarkable changes for women and society of the past half-century. Thank you Prof. Volker Berghahn for curating the series and Dr. Nick Juravich, (Columbia '17) for the great conversational interplay.
It is, of course, not all good news these days. It is unsettling, to say the least, for one after another of our social norms to be upended daily. I am particularly interested in hearing Columbia Emerita poet Anna Frajlich, a Polish-Jewish exile forced out of Poland during the 1968 Jewish purges, at our next Tuesday talk. My own family fled Poland in 1941 and I docked in America as stateless toddler in 1948, so I look forward to learning how Anna can create beauty and make sense of cruel acts of social injustice.
Let's not end on a downbeat -- join us Thursday for our weekly yoga classes and drop us a note about EPIC activities you'd like to see happen. Come to the Tuesday talk and stay for lunch at Faculty House at EPIC reduced rates.
Have a good day -
Jeanne Mager Stellman, President, EPIC
Professor Emerita & Special Lecturer
Mailman School of Public Health
