The NGP faculty is large and diverse, but we have kept the number of graduate students relatively small, so grad students have great access to highly accomplished scientists. The NGP faculty includes many highly recognized senior scientists as well as a growing number of outstanding junior faculty members. Our graduates go on to excellent postdoctoral positions and a wide variety of positions in academics and industry as well as science-related jobs like science writing and work with foundations. There are vignettes about the experience of a few of our graduates at our website. Some areas in which we excel include membrane biophysics and structural biology;synaptic physiology, neuronal signaling and gene regulation, neuroendocrinology and neurobiology of disease. As a medical campus, we have strong connections to the clinical departments with their translational and clinical research activities. All students receive a graduate stipend that covers all fees, tuition and living expenses.

We have a great program and we are located in one of the most livable and beautiful cities in the United States Check out the NGP website (www.ohsu.edu/ngp ), and  feel free to have your students contact us for more information – I think they will be excited about the quality of our program and the opportunities for a great PhD experience. The application deadline for next fall is December 1, 2012.

CSEE Colloquium

Experiences Teaching Thousands Online

Professor Michael L. Littman
Computer Science, Brown University

1:00pm Friday, 26 October 2012, ITE 227, UMBC

Last Fall, a pair of well-respected computer scientists at Stanford offered their AI class for free to people everywhere via the Internet. Over 160,000 students signed up, spurring a worldwide conversation on the impact of online teaching on higher education and sending universities throughout the US scrambling to announce initiatives in this space. I had the good fortune to teach a class for one of the startups and will share my experiences.

Michael L. Littman is a professor of computer scientist at Brown University. He works mainly in reinforcement learning, but has done work in machine learning, game theory, computer networking, partially observable Markov decision process solving, computer solving of analogy problems and other areas. He has held faculty positions in the computer science departments at Duke University and Rutgers University, where he chaired the department from 2009 to 2012.  In the summer of 2012 he taught a massive open online course (MOOC) on graph algorithms.

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John 4:1-26 (NIV)

Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John—although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

“I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

Reflection

Are you thirsty today?Are there routines that you must go through in order to face the day with relative order and peace?What do you need for another 24 hours?This is the backdrop of the passage – routine and satisfaction.We all have wells and because of God’s love for us, we can be sure that Jesus will be sitting there to offer us so much more.For each day we can really live in ways that are so deeply satisfying because of the ‘living water’ that Jesus has offered us in Him. This living water is relationship with God, deep and satisfying experiences of truth and worship that will surpass our perceived or old daily thirsts and routines.We will never thirst again as we have experienced and continue to experience this satisfaction in Christ.

Responding to the Transmission

What do we really want today…what ‘well’ is drawing us out to find satisfaction?God has created in us a life where truth and worship quench every desire and overwhelm us with life and joy.Let’s pray and ask the Lord to make us deeply aware of His presence at each ‘well and thirst’ we may find ourselves at today.May we find Him and worship Him today. Drink of the Lord today and be satisfied.