From war
correspondence to reporting from Moscow to South Asia, radio journalist Dick
Gordon has seen and told a lot of stories of uncommon people that connects to
his listeners' lives.
That makes
Gordon a perfect keynote speaker for Duke's University Scholars Program "Puzzles"
Symposium to be held Saturday. The talk will
be a part of a special program that will include student presentations and
audience participation in creative puzzle solving. The public is invited to the free event.
"I
think the puzzle for all of us exists in how we react to circumstances,"
Gordon said. "That's when we make choices, and struggle with reason, and
emotion, and ethics. The people I interview have made certain choices that
create their narrative. They choose a career, or a lover, or it might be
that they get on a certain bus that day. The circumstances that flow from
that decision then present them with a myriad of other choices."
The undergraduate
students in the University Scholars Program (USP) have a record of academic
excellence and work on a special interdisciplinary curriculum. The students selected Gordon as speaker for
the program as well as the "puzzles" theme.
"It
is quite a natural topic for an interdisciplinary symposium," says University
Scholars faculty director Victoria Lodewick. "Interdisciplinarity as a concept
itself is something of a puzzle. How do
you get people versed in specific disciplines to move outside their
disciplinary comfort zone, gain sufficient knowledge in a different field to
broaden their perspectives, embrace new ideas, and collaborate with others
outside their departments to build new paths of inquiry leading to new
intellectual foundations? How do you
translate this kind of academic work to tackle problems in the 'real'
world?"
USP
wants to connect these questions to pressing issues, Lodewick said.
"Addressing
the problems of environmental catastrophe, the global economic crisis, disparities
in health or education, they all require people working together, sharing their
expertise to develop interdisciplinary solutions."
Lodewick
points to real life examples of disaster, such as Hurricane Katrina, the
earthquake in Haiti and the triple catastrophe of earthquake, tsunami and
nuclear meltdown in Japan. "Those
disasters are not simply about the weather," she said. "They are about people, policies,
economics, health, education, and more. And the solutions are not instant, but
ongoing, just like interdisciplinary inquiry should be: a constant process of learning, reassessment,
and reconfiguration by all parties involved."
Gordon
hopes to inspire conversations about puzzle-solving, not only in academia and
industry, but also in everyday life. "The puzzle we all live with is
trying to predict a course of events, when that seems so difficult to
do," he said. "I'm equally intrigued by the ever increasing speed
with which we are forced to make these choices -- and sorting through that
puzzle is what I'll be talking about on Saturday."
Following
Gordon's keynote address, University Scholars from various disciplines will
share their work. During intermission,
attendees will have an opportunity to work on actual physical and mind puzzles.