News > October 11, 2007

By Lee Ferran | Staff writer

For many undergraduates, the university’s Bowman Gray campus is like Canada – they’re vaguely aware that it exists, but do not have much of an idea about who goes there or why.

In truth, the Bowman Gray campus, along with the Reynolda campus, is a playground to the university’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and ground zero for some of the grad school’s most interesting ongoing research.

Now, the first ever “Hot Topics Community Forum,” which is organized by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences will take place Oct. 16.

All university undergraduates as well as anyone else from the community who is interested in the subject will be able to catch a glimpse of what goes on at the university’s second campus through the hot topics forums.

“We’re hoping to enhance the image of Wake Forest and show the range of activities we’re engaged in,” said Lorna Moore, who was recently appointed Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science, of the goal of the forums.

“An underlying idea is to show people what the graduate school is all about and the best way to do that is to show it in action.”

The forum, which will take place at 3 p.m. Oct. 16 in Brendle Recital Hall, will feature a panel of both faculty and graduate students that will discuss “Language, Technology and You: Social and Moral Controversies Transforming Public Life.”

“Hot Topics” will also be an opportunity for emerging and complex disciplines, including such topics as bioethics and more, to showcase their specific range of study and effect on technology and communication.

“It’s really about the ways in which the internet and language in general affect our ability to communicate, and about how all this technology shapes human interaction,” Moore said.

Fittingly, the panel will be dominated by faculty with doctorates in communication.

However, Moore said that in future forums other disciplines, and perhaps even undergraduate students, could join the discussion.

“They’ll be talking about active research,” Moore said of future forums.

As of now, the graduate school is already planning to host another forum during the spring semester, but this time the topic will be especially controversial: stem cells.

Ananda Mitra, professor of communication, is excited about the forum’s potential.

“This is an opportunity to take the work of our faculty and graduate students to a much larger group,” Mitra said.

“It’s a way to translate it and inform people about what we do.”

Moore said she hopes that the forums will not only educate attendees about the topic at hand, but will also raise the graduate school’s profile both on campus and in the community.

“We’ll be able to showcase how graduate education is a vital ingredient to connecting various parts of Wake,” Moore said.

“We can help show how the university functions as a whole.”

According to Moore, the inspiration for the forums came to her when conducting graduate student interviews.

“I realized there’s a lot of learning to be accomplished about what graduate programs are all about.”

The university’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences offers 28 different graduate programs, including 16 PhD programs.

Sixteen interdisciplinary research programs are also offered at the graduate school, including a foreign exchange opportunity in Brazil for science majors.