Service and Potpourri

I’ve served my department, college, University, and profession in many ways. First, I co-founded SSoCIA, the Society for Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology, served as its first vice-president, and organized its second conference.

I’m also an associate editor for the International Journal of Astrobiology.

My former students, co-students, and wards have gone on to do quite well for themselves:

• T.D.P. Brunet — is the Leverhulme postdoctoral fellow at the University of Exeter. After collaborating with him while he was a master’s student in another program at Dalhousie University, he went on to do his Ph.D. at Cambridge University with Tim Lewens.
• Alex Lerner – I co-advised Alex while he was at UNR on his thesis “Mental Health Nosology and Animal Models.” He is now a student at Springfield College, pursuing a Psy.D. in Counseling Psychology
• Kass Freitas – After working with me on her thesis, “Environmental Existentialism: An Environmental Ethic for the Individual,” Kass is considering pursuing a career in environmental law and non-profits
• Erica Dietlein – After writing “Gamifying Nature: the aesthetic experience of science as a puzzle-game,” Erica left academia briefly to focus on her family, but is now teaching bioethics and core humanities for us at UNR

In my chimerical spare time, I have created a few websites when they have been needed. Usually, I am associated with an organization or colleague that needs some help fixing a terrible website. I’ve now lent my support to four other people in the creating of various websites, webmastering, and logos for various academic organizations. Observe:

• Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology
• The Center for the Philosophy of Biology
• ISHPSSB
• This One
• Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s Home Page.

For reasons that not even I can make sense of, I keep trying to produce logos for people. These are my attempts as of 2017.

• The logo for a group I co-founded, Social & Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology.

• Proposal for APA Logo. Obviously, they chose a much better designer and a much better design.

• Adjusted ISHPSSB Logo: (This one was designed by Andrew Yang, though I modified it from his submissions.)
• Duke Philosophy, Arts and Literature. This one was eventually rejected in favor of a much simpler logo.
• This was designed for a neuroscientist friend of mine’s side business: Infinite Monkey Business.