This one-sheet was created for the SOPHIA of Worcester County chapter by students in the Communication Law and Ethics course at Fitchburg State University and edited by Drs. J. J. Sylvia IV and Kyle Moody. Its creation was supported by SOPHIA and the Douglas and Isabelle Crocker Center for Civic Engagement. Students included: Curtis Monahan, Sophia Ciampaglia, Emma Thomson, Kim Lier, Ken Roberts, Sam Pappas, Stephanie Fuller, Thomas Boupha, and Shannon McCarthy.
Catfish, the documentary TV series on MTV, stars two men who travel around the U.S. investigating people who they believe have been depicting themselves falsely to another user online. Since these interactions are purely digital, it is quite easy to use inaccurate photos or post misinformation of yourself in order to mislead online users. This SOPHIA one-sheet document makes it easy to guide a rich discussion on the ethics involved in “catfishing” online.
SOPHIA is grateful to Drs. Sylvia and Moody, to the Crocker Center for Civil Engagement, and to the students in Drs. Sylvia and Moody’s course in Communication Law and Ethics at Fitchburg State University!
SOPHIA Board of Trustees unanimously elects new members to leadership team
Dr. Kenneth Stikkers
SOPHIA has been enormously fortunate to have had Dr. Ken Stikkers serve as Trustee and our Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees. Dr. Stikkers has been an active participant in SOPHIA’s work and a constant champion of our mission. We are so grateful for his efforts and thank him for his long service to the organization. With his recent request to step down from SOPHIA’s leadership team, we undertook efforts to select and elect a new member of our Board of Trustees.
Dr. Tommy J. Curry
Philosophers so often disagree that it is wonderful to celebrate our unanimous decision to elect Dr. Tommy J. Curry as a Trustee of SOPHIA. Dr. Curry holds a Personal (Distinguished) Chair in Africana Philosophy and Black Male Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He won a 2018 American Book Award for The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood. He participated as an outstanding facilitator in our 2013 SOPHIA symposium at the University of Mississippi on the question: “Should Everyone Go to College?” He has given several papers on SOPHIA panels over the years and collaborated with Dr. Gwenetta Curry on the 2018 publication of a paper in a SOPHIA led panel of articles in Dewey Studies. In addition, he was a guest early on the Philosophy Bakes Bread podcast about The Man-Not, in episode 9, “Studying Black Men.” He joined us again on the show in episode 32, after he received many death threats for his important publicly engaged work, yielding one of our most downloaded episodes, “The Public Philosopher and the Gadfly,” concerning especially the challenges for Black public philosophers. Dr. Curry has been an inspirational leader of the Philosophy Born of Struggle community. He is a prolific scholar with many articles and a growing number of books published. We look forward to the rich contributions that we anticipate from him as a Trustee for the future of SOPHIA!
Dr. Sergia Hay
SOPHIA has also long needed to grow our leadership team of officers. We are grateful to Dr. Sergia Hay, who for years has served as our Membership and Chapter Development Officer. She has grown a SOPHIA chapter beautifully in Tacoma, Washington. We recognized that the job of chapter development and membership should be split up into its two parts. SOPHIA is pleased to announce therefore that we have also unanimously elected Ph.D. student Heidi Schmidt to the position of Chapter Development Officer and Lexington SOPHIA Chapter President Erik Jarvis to the position of Membership Officer.
Heidi Schmidt
Heidi Schmidt is one of the founders of SOPHIA’s Roanoke Chapter, as well as a doctoral student in the University of Kentucky’s Ph.D. in Educational Sciences’ Philosophical and Cultural Inquiry track. She is an author and has worked as a librarian. She is also a Becker Fellow and is a leader in the Philosophers for Sustainability group. She produced the Civic Connections podcast and has participated both in leading our Roanoke Chapter and in meetings with our Lexington SOPHIA Chapter. We are excited to welcome her to the position of Chapter Development Officer!
SOPHIA leaders established our goal of launching local chapters in 2015 and began planning how they would work in the time since. While we have offered seed grants to help start local chapters, we have yet to determine the best ways of sharing information about our chapters online. Planning and deliberation with Schmidt is among our highly anticipated developments. Exciting efforts are on their way.
Erik Jarvis
Erik Jarvis has participated in the Lexington SOPHIA Chapter since its very first meeting in early 2018. He serves as a Senior Facilities Information Services Administrator in the Office of Information Technology Services at the University of Kentucky. He was elected President of the Lexington SOPHIA Chapter and is energetic and a terrific facilitator of SOPHIA conversations. In addition, he has participated in drafts and revision of SOPHIA One-Sheets in planning for chapter meetings. His expertise in information technology is a welcome boon for SOPHIA as well. We are eager to work with him moving forward on our first concerted membership initiative, aiming to grow our membership and our ties with members. We welcome him to the position of Membership Officer!
If you have any questions about this announcement or about SOPHIA activities, reach out to our Executive Director, Dr. Eric Thomas Weber by email at philosophersinamerica@gmail.com.
This winter, the Lexington SOPHIA Chapter thought it would be a good idea to reflect on good will. We are accustomed to hearing around the holiday season about “Good will toward men,” a line from the Book of Luke in the Bible. It seemed like an important topic that might be on people’s minds around the holidays. What does goodwill mean, after all? Also, why do we seem to attend to it only around the winter holidays? Should it be seasonal? These questions inspired the creation of this SOPHIA One-Sheet on “Goodwill to All.”
The Lexington SOPHIA Chapter got together to test out this new one-sheet and had a terrific time talking about good will. The photos below are from our get together at the Northside Branch of the Lexington Public Library on Tuesday, December 18th at 6pm. We had fourteen people join the conversation. On this special occasion, which we labeled a “December Meet and Greet” and conversation on “Goodwill to All,” this time we had pizza and drinks. After the event, we had leftovers and one of our participants suggested that we invite everyone in the library to come partake in the pizza and drinks and join us for fellowship and goodwill cheer. It was a great idea and a fitting end to our meeting.
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Thanks to James William Lincoln for generating our first draft of this document. A number of members of the leadership helped offer feedback on the first draft and Eric Thomas Weber put some final edits into this document and generated a number of the additional questions. We encourage other members and chapters to try out this One-Sheet with your local community.
The Lexington SOPHIA Chapter is meeting at 6pm on Tues, Nov 13 @ the Northside Branch of the Lexington Public Library
The Lexington SOPHIA Chapter is meeting on Tuesday, November 13th at 6pm at the Northside Branch of the Lexington Public Library to talk about “The Ethics of Dentistry,” which was the subject of Episode 2 of Philosophy Bakes Bread with Dr. Bill Myers. Listen if you wish and can, but we will have an “Ethics of Dentistry” SOPHIA One-Sheet document ready for the event, which people can read at the meeting to be up to speed and on the same page. At the same time, for those of you with little time and a little more curiosity about what this is about, chapter members and leaders Derek Daskalakes and Erik Jarvis put together this little video to tell you about the event, only 1m23s:
What: Lexington SOPHIA Chapter Meeting on “The Ethics of Dentistry”
