Off to Cal State San Bernardino….

Tomorrow, I’m off to our sister CSU campus, Cal State San Bernardino, to meet with some of the Psychology faculty and to talk with Ali Kaufman’s Biopsych class. Ali uses my Discovering Biological Psychology textbook for her class, and it’s always terrific to get direct feedback from students. Ali, her husband James, and their charming son Jacob were all at this August’s APA Convention in San Diego, and we thought it would be great to get together to talk bio, curriculum, etc.

Ali asked me what I wanted to talk about, and I wanted to pick something that she wasn’t already doing with her students but that was still relevant to the course. At the same time, I thought it would be great to pick something that I really wanted to explore more but hadn’t taken the time to look at–and the whole issue of transgenerational transmission of epigenetic change came to mind. Too often, I still see psychologists talking in terms of nature versus nurture, and I wanted to brush up my skills for arguing “both.” I have a stack of Michael Meaney papers I’d been waiting to read, and this was my chance.

The trickiest part was to find some online videos I liked. The ones I found initially seemed too elementary–aimed at about the 3rd grade. You have to wade through the AP Psychology student project films, too, which are entertaining but not all that appropriate for my audience 🙂

So, we’ll see how it goes! I’m going to be particularly interested in what the students have to say about the ethical questions I plan to raise.