Scientia colloquium set for April 9

At the April 9 Scientia lecture, four faculty members from across campus will discuss ideas that have influenced and engaged them in their careers and intellectual lives — from computational thinking and choice behavior to the concept of gender and society’s fascination with beauty.

The colloquium, which is free and open to the public, will be at 4 p.m. in Ray Courtyard, Rice Memorial Center, with a reception to be held afterward. In case of rain, the colloquium will be held in Duncan Hall’s McMurtry Auditorium.

The speakers and their topics are:

* Devika Subramanian, professor of computer science and of electrical and computer engineering, who will discuss computational thinking and why it is important for all students.
* Richard Batsell, associate professor of marketing, who will talk about modeling individual choice behavior.
* Lora Wildenthal, associate professor and chair of the History Department, who will examine how and why the concept of gender has spread through humanities scholarship.
* Rick Wilson, the Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Political Science, who will consider the consequences of society’s fascination with beauty in others.

Scientia is an institute of Rice University faculty founded in 1981 by the mathematician and historian of science Salomon Bochner. The lecture series provides an opportunity for scholarly discussion across disciplinary boundaries; its members and fellows come from a wide range of academic disciplines. For more information on Scientia, visit http://scientia.rice.edu.