“When Sex Meets Science” Colloquium at Rutgers-Camden Sept. 24

CAMDEN – The author of the popular college textbook Developmental Biology will deliver a free public lecture on “Misconceptions of Conception: A Confluence of Science and Feminism” at Rutgers University—Camden at 5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 24.

Scott Gilbert, the Howard A. Schneiderman Professor of Biology at Swarthmore College, visited Rome in 2007 at the request of the Vatican for a dialogue on the beginning of human life. The bioethics expert says he was the sole speaker there to contend embryos aren’t the same as human beings. And still, he was invited back for more of his scientific insights on this hotly contested issue.

Sponsored by the Rutgers–Camden Women’s Studies Program, this lecture is part of the colloquium “When Sex Meets Science,” which is funded through Rutgers University Faculty Advancement and Institutional Re-Imagination (RU-Fair) initiative that seeks to promote women into science majors and into the sciences faculty.

“It is well known that women in the sciences face challenges related to gender that often leave them at a disadvantage in the hiring pool, in the classroom, and as applicants for post-doctoral grants and fellowships,” says colloquium organizer Laurie Bernstein, an associate professor of history at Rutgers–Camden, where she directs the Women’s Studies Program.

The Rutgers–Camden lecture series will continue this fall with Swarthmore College physicist Amy Bug, who will address “Why Physicists Have Mistresses” at 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 19.

Both lectures will take place in room 110 of the Fine Arts Building, located on Third Street, between Cooper Street and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge on the Rutgers–Camden Campus.

The Camden Campus of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, offers 34 undergraduate and 17 graduate programs, including the nation’s first PhD program in childhood studies; the School of Law; an MFA in creative writing; and a MBA from southern New Jersey’s first internationally accredited business school. Rutgers–Camden is home to more than 250 faculty whose research, teaching, and service endeavors make positive impacts throughout the globe.

For more information, call (856) 225-6627.

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