Simmons for a Day Webinars
Thursday, December 10 – Monday, December 14
Simmons will be continuing its educational conference series this winter, online! Do you remember what it was like to be in class with your favorite professor? Now you have the opportunity to learn from Simmons faculty again, but this time the classroom will come to you!
Please register today by filling out the registration form and the webinar access information will be emailed to you.
The Social World of Autism
Christine Evans, Assistant Professor, Department of Education and Judah Axe, Assistant Professor, Department of Education
Do you know the three defining characteristics of autism? Professor Evans and Professor Axe will describe these characteristics as well as evidence-based educational approaches for children with autism. In addition, they will present the results of a research project on teaching children with autism to respond to the complex facial expressions of their teachers.
The U.S. Healthcare System in International Context: Implications for Reform
Richard Coulam, Ph.D., Research Professor in Health Care Administration and Director of the Center for Health Policy Research, School of Health Sciences
This session is designed to make some sense of the current health policy debate by looking outside the U.S., to place the performance of the U.S. healthcare system in international context. If healthcare systems of all advanced countries looked the same, we might think that, notwithstanding all the policy differences across different countries, there are some underlying constraints that limit what can be done. As it happens, international comparisons have the opposite result in this case: they show the U.S. system generally does not perform well on cost (high) and access by citizens to the health system (low). Moreover, the US system does not perform notably well on quality. If healthcare reform is the "art of the possible," these international comparisons show that what is possible is remarkably different from the U.S. experience. The question then becomes: what do these comparisons mean for reform? The session will conclude with a discussion of these implications.
How Technology Will Shape the Future of Libraries
Michael Leach, Head of Collection Development, Cabot Science Library, at Harvard University, and Adjunct Professor, Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences
People face a vast array of digital information on the Internet, much of it free. This access has led some to state that "the library is dead" – replaced by Google, Wikipedia, Pub Med and other sites. There is truth to this statement – and some false assumptions. Professor Leach will highlight the major changes already occurring in libraries, due to the explosion of information technology, and discuss how emerging technologies are likely to affect (and not affect!) libraries and information services in the near future.
Racial Educational Disparities: A Function of Schools Not Working or Schools Doing Exactly What They're Supposed To?
Daren Graves, Ph.D., Director of Urban Education, College of Arts and Sciences
Professor Graves will look at some of the latest data outlining the disparities in educational outcomes along the lines of race. The questions he will be tackling are twofold. 1) What is the cause of the persistence of these racial disparities? 2) Is the persistence of these disparities a function of schools failing to serve as, what Horace Mann called, "the Great Equalizers of the conditions of man" or a function of the success of schools serving as sorting mechanisms and reproducers of inequality?
If you have questions, please contact the Office of Alumnae/i Relations at 800-831-4284 or email alumnet@simmons.edu.