E-Portfolio #4-Dr. Felder (9.23.10)

On September 23rd, Dr. Felder presented a lecture to our Thursday Freshman Seminar class. The main objective of his talk was to display how Jesus of Nazareth's teachings have more than religious value. They also have moral value in the areas of freedom and righteousness. According to Dr. Felder, freedom explicitly means the ability to exercise choice. Addressing us students directly, he explains that choices can either be positive or negative correlate directly with the consequences we are given. The conversation is then directed to the origin of man and original sin. Adam, says Dr. Felder, was given a choice, and having chosen the less more one, was given a consequence. This well known story is an example of how man abuses the power that is generously given by God. The misuse of power is the reason African Americans were in slavery for so many years. Dr. Felder emphasizes this fact and explains that the Garden of Eden, having been in Ethiopia, is not a fictitious place. In fact, distortion of history is why Eden is even thought to be just a place out of a book. I concur with Dr. Felder on this concept. In English speaking lands, to have rights or say in a governmental body, a race or group of people must have a history. Depriving African decedent people of a history allows for the deprivation of rights. Therefore, we African Americans are left to investigate for themselves, which is why institutions like Howard are so important. This is when Dr. Felder segues into figures of black history, specifically Sojourner Truth. Here is when I really enjoyed the lecture. Dr. Felder recites part of Sojourner's famous speech "Ain't I a Woman?" and explains that she gave this oration in front of many white people and received applause. She also received an accusation that she was a man, to which she bravely exposed her chest. Felder then stated boldly that such a brave woman should be as admired and remembered (if not more) as much as popular rappers and other superficial idols. Like many other presenters, Dr. Felder urged us to remember what is important while we are here at the Mecca.

E-Portfolio Entry #3-Dr. Eleanor W. Traylor

Dr. Eleanor W. Traylor, in her lecture, offers the class of 2014 a chance to be inaugurated into the legacy of Howard University. Her passionate oration invited us Howard freshman to become apart of the heritage that we heard about in considering Howard. Dr. Traylor takes the seminar into the history of the University, including the names of the buildings in which we study. As she continued to speak on notable alumni and names of Howard, she continued to urge us to know who these people are, to fully comprehend the impact they've had on world we currently live in. Additionally, she implored us to realize who we are learning from; we are in an institution filled with great minds. As she continued with the distinguished alumni, Dr. Traylor gave us numerous assignments. These assignments started off plausible, but the became vague and far fetched. However, to me, her point was clear. We, as students at such a prominent university in such a prominent city, should take full advantage of the opportunity we've been given. There is no reason why we should not be interested in seeing the extraordinary Phylicia Rashad perform live onstage. Living in D.C. and being students at a historically black university should make us want to see an exhibit about our history. We're in a much too relevant setting to continue being unaware of who were are, where we've been and where we should be going. Dr. Traylor may not have been well received by the Thursday seminar class, but those of us who listened attentively well understood her motives. She was not there to assign us work, she was there to engage our minds.

E-Portfolio Entry #4: Dr.Felder's Lecture 9-23-10

Dr. Felder came to lecture to our class on 9/29/ He is an ordained inister in the United Methodist Church. He headed the black caucus of the United Methodist Church. He has been in many important periodicals such as "USA Today", The New York Times", and "The Washington Post". The main focus of Dr.Felder's lecture was on how Jesus of Nazareth was the epitomy of freedom and justice. Dr. Felder, in his powerful and inspirational lecture said that, "freedom is the unfettered ability to exercise choice", from this he spoke that even though we do have this freedom to excercise choice, we must face the conseqences of these choices. An example he gave was that if we did something good, good consequences would result, now we excericed choice and chose to do seomthing good, but we are free and are therefore able to also choose to do something wrong, which would have a resulting consequnce based off of the choice. Dr.Felder's explanation of freedom, choice and consequence was very interesting and enlghtening to me. Dr. Felder came to lecture to our class on 9/29/ He is an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church. He headed the black caucus of the United Methodist Church. He has been in many important periodicals such as "USA Today", The New York Times", and "The Washington Post". The main focus of Dr. Felder's lecture was on how Jesus of Nazareth was the epitome of freedom and justice. Dr. Felder, in his powerful and inspirational lecture said that, "freedom is the unfettered ability to exercise choice", from this he spoke that even though we do have this freedom to exercise choice, we must face the consequences of these choices. An example he gave was that if we did something good, good consequences would result, now we exercised choice and chose to do something good, but we are free and are therefore able to also choose to do something wrong, which would have a resulting consequence based off of the choice. Dr. Felder's explanation of freedom, choice and consequence was very interesting and enlightening to me. Dr. Felder also discussed many parts of the Bible that have been altered by history and many civilizations. For example, Dr. Felder spoke of how the Garden of Eden, according to the Bible must have truly been in Africa between the White and Blue Nile River. Dr. Felder’s lecture was not only informative in the basis of what he spoke about but it was also informative in the way he presented. Dr. Felder was able to capture my attention and made it seem to every audience member that he was speaking directly to you. From this, I have learned about a new way of personalizing speech in a way that all can relate which seems like a very important skill to have.

E-Portfolio Entry #3: Dr.Traylor's Lecture 9-16-10

Dr.Traylor spoke on 9/16/10 on, the eloquence of scribes. Dr. Traylor focused on the different forms they can take and she then gave examples of different people in the forms and how they fulfilled their forms. Dr. Traylor also would speak of a secret organization called HUSAID that would work against “dumbassification”. Dr.Traylor would also mention a crystal palace in the sky where knowledge was sourced from and only few could enter. Dr. Traylor, in her discussion of the different forms of scribes spoke of shape shifters, like actresses. She invited to see a play at a local theater. Dr. Traylor’s lecture was very interesting in that in changed form as the lecture continued. It began as more of a speaking lecture without use of the PowerPoint, and as she went into her discussion of the different scribes, she began using different slides filled with visuals. This transformation in the presentation was very effective, and kept our attention to the information that Dr.Traylor was giving. Dr. Traylor also gave different assignments with her presentation, and the questions that she posed for us to write about were all very thought provoking and truly extended the lecture beyond its original teachings. We were challenged to try and connect these different people in the real world to their basic root form. For example we were to see a play and see how the actress took on the form of the shape shifter. Dr. Traylor’s lecture was extremely informative and her presentation skills were extremely effective and innovative. 

E-Portfolio Entry #2: Dr. Dunston's Lecture 9-9-10

Dr. Dunston’s lecture on 9/9/10, was titled, “Abandonment, Dismemberment and Reawakening: The History and Legacy of Howard University”. Dr. Dunston began her lecture by adding on the lecture of the past week by Dr. Carr. Dr. Dunston commented on the importance of wisdom and sharing that wisdom. Dr. Dunston then continued by speaking about her work on the Human Genome Project and how from the Human Genome project, there is so much that can be learned about mankind. Dr. Dunston continued her lecture on the importance of our (the students) role in shaping the world. Dr.Dunston also spoke about how Howard University is an institution that is reawakening the process of taking knowledge and turning it into wisdom. Being a Biology major, the science that Dr.Dunston’s lecture was based on was truly amazing and interesting to me. The work of the human genome project is something that has moved the world of medicine ahead by many years. Knowing the sequence of the human genome now allows us to see some genetic expressions that predispose different people to different conditions. Dr. Dunston spoke about how we are entering an era of personalized medicine where our personal genetic information can be decoded and medicines formed specifically for a person’s genes would be able to be produced. Dr. Dunston’s pure passion for teaching, and discussing knowledge was truly inspiring and capturing. Though time did go over, many students, including myself, stayed later to participate in a question and answer session with Dr. Dunston who took all the questions that she was allowed and further extended the topic from which she lectured on. 

E-Portfolio Entry #1: Dr. Carr's Lecture 9-2-10

Dr. Carr’s lecture on September 2, 2010, was on the basis of knowledge in the world. He spoke about important concepts such as how knowledge was used to acquire wisdom and how wisdom was important to the progress made in mankind. We learned about the gods of Egypt and how the Egyptians used one of the most advanced types of writing, hieroglyphics which is still one of the most advanced forms of text in today’s world. We learned the importance of the scribes, who are the reason why today’s world has become so advanced. Dr. Carr also spoke about the many different sciences and mathematics that are present in today’s world that started in Africa, and specifically Egypt. These are things like the calendar and time, which we learned was modified by the Greeks to include their Gods, but it used to be a ten month calendar, which is exemplified by the roots in the names of the months, like the Oct in October which means eight, but because the Greek additions, October is now the tenth month of the year. From this lecture I was able to take away many important messages. One of the most prominent messages from this lecture that lingered in my mind was the importance of taking knowledge to the next level and using knowledge to acquire knowledge because without wisdom, we are unable to use knowledge for something worthwhile, without wisdom, knowledge is just a bunch of meaningless numbers. Also the explanation of the basis of many counting and scientific principles and how they were modified by other civilizations explained a lot of the discontinuity I noticed in our counting system (specifically the monthly calendar).