Mammal March Madness!

This week members of the Anthropological community have come together to have a little fun with march madness...mammal style. Mammal March Madness is organized by a team of individuals (led by Professor Katie Hinde at Harvard) from various universities who have been able to create a scientific version of a game typically centered around college basketball. We came together to choose brackets, where a variety of strategies were used in order to make a winning bracket. Some did heavy research, weighing all the options, whereas others simply chose the cutest creature. Since the initial event, we have been avidly checking the blog and twitter account in order to update our standings. An incredible amount of time and research is done by the organizing group in order to determine which mammal would win each round depending on environment as well as strengths and weaknesses of the species.

Many thanks to Katie Hinde for Skyping into the event where we chose our brackets.

The QU winners that ultimately have the best bracket will have a choice of incredible mammal-themed prizes!  Who wouldn't love these prizes?!

And the winner is.....Matt Capece with a total of 154 points!!

A Semester in Review - Fall 2014

 Kyle Joyce'16 and Madeline Hardy'15 work on cleaning teeth from the BAKOTA project that were collected by Professor Giblin during the summer.

On November 15th students from various anthropology classes got together for a cupcake social. They were asked to work together in teams to create a poster conveying anthropological concepts such as cultural relativism. SAR members helped facilitate the event and judge which poster was the most creative as well as accurate, the winners received cool anthropological themed prizes. 

On November 19th Professor Giblin and some of her students from the AN300 class ventured to  Farm River State Park in order to explore and gain an understanding of the environment. After visiting the park, students worked together to raise awareness for the protection of this park that is essentially run by Quinnipiac University.

On December 4th students from the AN300 Ancient Food for Thought displayed their newly acquired knowledge by hosting a trivia table in the student center. Students passing by were able to try their luck at questions geared around the foods of the New England Native Americans in order to win yummy treats such as popcorn, maple candies, and sassafras.

The Bad, The Good, and The Great!

Addressing Campus Rape

 

One of the wonderful aspects of teaching at Quinnipiac is we are provided with opportunities to offer courses on current topics that directly impact our students’ lives.  This fall, Quinnipiac students have a chance to take a course on a topic that has dominated the media of late: campus rape. 

The bad news: we know campus rape is a huge issue, impacting thousands of lives. We are learning more about the problem as it occurs on campuses large and small, private and public, in fraternities and with athletes, and across the general student population. We all know the statistics by now—one in four students will experience some form of sexual assault or harassment in his/her time in college. We know that in the past universities have been more inclined to sweep the problem under the rug than address it, and victims were more likely to be blamed for what happened, than supported and have their experience treated like a serious crime.  A new documentary, The Hunting Ground exposes the problems of rape on college campuses and how poorly universities have handled the issue.

The good news: the problem of campus rape is finally getting the attention it deserves. The Obama administration, the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, and other federal entities have all increased and improved their efforts to address this serious issue.  Universities have stepped up their game as well, creating advocate positions, opening women’s centers, offering bystander training, and generating more awareness about the policies protecting students from acts of harassment and other forms of violence.

The great news: Quinnipiac is lucky to have many committed faculty, staff and administrators who have started a collaborative conversation about the problem of campus rape and are working together to bring about changes in our community.  The Addressing Campus Rape course is a part of that effort, to use the methods of positive activism and social science theory and methods to identify the problem and suggest solutions.  We are hosting a screening of The Hunting Ground on October 21, 2015, and we are excited to work with student organizations in an effort to have open dialogue around an issue important to everyone in a college community.  Working together we anticipate we will make Quinnipiac a model of how a college responds to, and ultimately prevents, the abuse of any member of our community.

Brooklyn Museum Trip

Dr. Tracy Betsinger joined the Society for Anthropological Research on our first trip! We went to the Brooklyn Museum to visit their mummy chamber and enjoyed a Middle Eastern lunch-Jirina

Society for Anthropological Research Host GEMS

On February 20th members of Quinnipiac University’s Society for Anthropological Research hosted 25 students from Bethany Community School’s Girls Excelling in Math and Science (GEMS) Club. The GEMs students rotated through three stations equipped with field manuals and skeleton pencils, learning about different aspects of both archeological and biological anthropology. Digging through sand boxes, inspecting bones, and rearranging skulls allowed the young girls to discover a new interest in the anthropological field and be exposed to concepts such as material culture, human evolution, and stratigraphy. The event was a great success as the enrichment teacher, Michelle Schwenger, who advises the GEMS Club remarked how impressed she was with the volunteers ability to keep the students engaged despite it being a Friday and all of the students had already endured a long full day of school. Schwenger also commented in saying that the Quinnipiac students volunteering and running the stations were such "role models" for the students and the "GEMS club members enjoy[ed] being with them", most likely wanted to "strive to be like them." With such a compliment it is clear that the event was quite the success and SAR looks forward to do this type of event with the GEMs in the future. 

Click the link to find out more about the event : QU PR for GEMS Event

MAT Students help facilitate the excavation station, demonstrating the thought process of digging, finding, and categorizing the material culture found in the sandboxes.

The lovely volunteers prepping for the event before the students arrive.

Eboard members of the Society for Anthropological Research help facilitate the evolution station by describing the different features of the various skulls displayed for the students.

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