Darwin exhibit to be on display at Millsaps during January Make plans to learn more about Charles Darwin and the publication of On the Origin of Species with a trip to the MillsapsWilson Library Jan. 10-28. On display will be Rewriting the Book of Nature, an exhibit developed and produced by the History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, and the National Institutes of Health Office of History . Charles Darwin’s 1859 work, On the Origin of Species, was instantly seen as a potent sign of a new science, a new way of conceiving the world. His theory was an immediate threat not just to those who were wedded to an older conception, but to all who relied on a given and settled order for meaning and for power. Emerging just as liberal reforms in western society seemed headed for radical explosion, just as technological change provided a social and economic motor that sped up life beyond all imagining, changes in science portended changes in society: “things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” On the Origin of Species evoked life in all its intricacy, fecundity, and creativity. This is the world that Darwin explored and surveyed, described and explained—his enduring legacy to science, and to us. In conjuction with the exhibit, Dr. Amy Wiese Forbes, associate professor of history at Millsaps who arranged for Millsaps to host the exhibit, and Dr. Patrick Hopkins, associate professor of philosophy, will discuss Darwin and evolutionary medicine, medical understandings that have incorporated and been influenced by evolutionary theory, during a Millsaps Forum at 12:30 p.m. on Jan. 21 in the Academic Complex. The forum is free and open to the public.
Former Mississippi governor suggests grads become lobbyists for good Former Mississippi Governor William F. Winter told members of the Millsaps College Class of 2010 that opportunity awaits them to make improvements to society. “It is in times like these that we have the greatest opportunity to make corrections. We have a good reason to set aside some of the worn-out, wasteful ways of the past,” he said. Two-hundred-eleven undergraduates and 56 graduate students received degrees during the May 8 ceremony at Christ United Methodist Church in Jackson. The ceremony was the 116th commencement of the College. Winter said the most important office in the U.S. political system is that of private citizens. “We weaken democracy if we overlook that,” he said. Winter suggested graduates become lobbyists for the public good and issues such as health care, public education, the environment and responsive government. He said cynicism and apathy can be overcome by graduates with integrity, optimism, persistence, competence and compassion. He characterized Millsaps as “one of the great liberal arts colleges in America, an intellectual oasis, a place where people can seek the truth without fear of being intimidated.” Honorary degrees were bestowed upon Sister Mary Dorothea Sondgeroth,
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president and chairman of the Board of St. Dominic Health Services, Inc.; Fred L. Banks Jr., former presiding justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court; Christy Gilliland Dunaway, B.A. 1985, director of LIFE (Living Independence For Everyone of Mississippi); and Rt. Rev. Duncan Gray Jr., former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi. The Millsaps Founders’ Medal, awarded to the graduating senior with the highest grade point average for their entire college course of study and a grade of excellent on the comprehensive examinations, went to Laura Heather Litton, B.B.A. 2010. James W. Walley Jr., B.A.2010, was honored for his essay on the value of a Millsaps liberal arts education with the Frank and Rachel Ann Laney Award. The winning essay becomes required reading for the next incoming class. The Don Fortenberry Award, which recognizes the graduating senior who has demonstrated the most notable, meritorious, diligent and devoted service to the college with no expectation of recognition, reward or public remembrance, was given to Brittany Nicole Tait, B.A. 2010. Dr. Kristina L. Stensaas, associate professor of chemistry, received the Distinguished Professor Award.
fall–winter 2010
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