Lights, lights, lights
It’s almost the end of the week (and the end of finals!) Let’s push on through to the weekend and finish strong 🙂
Students who are eligible for the 10% refund for applicable fall semester fees will be able to see those in DEAC sometime this afternoon (the processor was running this morning to load them all). If you have questions, there is a Q&A on the Student Financial Services coronavirus website. For students who did not study on campus this fall but are moving into University housing this spring, a message went out about their housing selection process.
In teaching news, there is a terrific new story about how one of our faculty members took the real-world example of COVID and integrated it into her course:
Students in biology professor Sarah McDonald Esstman’s virology class spent several weeks exploring COVID-related topics for a course project. Groups named the virologists, the physicians, the epidemiologists, the immunologists, the communicators and the policy makers – consisting of five or six students each – were responsible for creating 20-minute PowerPoint presentations. Students presented their findings virtually just before the University let out for Thanksgiving.
So depending on your group assignment, you got a different focus. For example, the policymakers group “studied the balance between health, economics, social and environmental impacts of COVID 19,” looking at topics like a decrease in smog levels, increase in suicide ideation, and the impact of the Payment Protection Act. Policymakers also tried to envision life post-pandemic “and concluded, among other things, that remote working will continue, travel will decrease – at least for a few years – and there will likely be major lasting impacts on poor and impoverished people.”
For all the awful of COVID, it is providing a remarkable real-time learning lab where students can take the theories from textbooks they study and apply them to a situation unfolding before them. Much credit to Dr. Esstman for having such a creative experiential component to the class. You can read the full story here.
Tonight is the beginning of Hanukkah. For all our families who will be celebrating, I wish you Hanukkah Sameach! For our Photo of the Day, here is a photo from a past Hanukkah when the first light of the campus menorah was lit, as well as a bonus pic from the Jewish Life newsletter that just went out from Gail Bretan, Associate Chaplain for Jewish Life (the newsletter also has a WFU Hanukkah Songs sheet you might enjoy).
As final exams continue, here is your Finals Meme of the Day 🙂
And as we think about light and the holidays, want to show you the pictures of the sky over Wait Chapel during the Lovefeast. To celebrate the 55th anniversary of the Lovfeast, a pillar of light shone into the sky over Wait Chapel. As eloquently said by my colleague on the official WFU Facebook account, “we hope the radiance of this night becomes the light within the darkness of the world.” Mad props to Ken Bennett, photographer extraordinaire, for sitting on top of one of the buildings downtown to get the long distance shot (in the cold and dark, I might add).
