Advancing the Human Condition Symposium
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The Advancing the Human Condition Symposium objectives are:
To identify emerging questions around issues related to the human condition;
To further the role of research and scholarship across disciplines in advancing equity and eliminating social disparities;
To convene academics, scholar activists, and scholar practitioners doing cross-disciplinary, innovative work around these issues.
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Browsing Advancing the Human Condition Symposium by Content Type "Conference proceeding"
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- 2nd Annual Advancing the Human Condition Symposium(Virginia Tech, 2018-11-27)The Office for Inclusion and Diversity presents the second annual Advancing the Human Condition Symposium, Nov. 27-28, 2018 at the Inn at Virginia Tech and Skelton Conference Center. The two-day event fosters intellectual discourse around emerging questions of the human condition from multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, and adopts a dialogue format that features key discussants and respondents in conversation with other researchers, practitioners, and scholar activists.
- Advancing the Human Condition Symposium 2017 Flyer(Virginia Tech, 2017-11)Topics Include: What does it mean to be human when biological and digital life are increasingly intertwined? Are standard social scientific methods adequate to meet the challenges of communities facing historical inequities and injustices? How does political agency foster more inclusive economic systems? Who determines the work of advancing the human condition? Whose conditions are improved--and at what costs?
- Supporting Adaptive Brain and Behavior: The Abecedarian Approach to Social, Educational, and Health DisparitiesRamey, Craig T. (Virginia Tech, 2017-11-30)This paper places the Abecedarian Approach in theoretical and historical context and reviews the results from 3 randomized controlled trials that have tested an experimental protocol designed to prevent cognitive disabilities and their social consequences. Results affirm that cognitive disabilities can be prevented in early childhood and subsequent academic achievement enhanced via a multipronged comprehensive approach that contains individualized and responsive early childhood education starting in early infancy, coupled with pediatric health care, good nutrition, and family-oriented social services. Additional important findings reveal that the most vulnerable children benefited the most and that cognitive gains were not at the expense of children’s socio-emotional development or relationship to family. In general, mothers derived benefits in education and employment and teenage mothers especially benefited from their children participating in the early education treatment group. On the whole, the overall pattern of results supports a multidisciplinary, individualized, and long-term longitudinal perspective on human development and prevention science. Recent structural and functional brain imaging in the fifth decade of life shows persistent effects of intensive early educational treatment. Independent recent cost-benefit analysis in adulthood reveals a 7.3:1 return on investment with a 13.7% average annual rate of return. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications of the Abecedarian Approach to today’s highrisk population in the U.S. and with recommendations for further tailoring the protocol to better meet the multiple needs of vulnerable families.