Stephanie Jue

Stephanie C. Jue is a Lecturer in the Business, Government, and Society Department in the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin.  Ms. Jue received a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology and a Master of Science degree in sociology, both from Mississippi State University, a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from South Texas College of Law in Houston, Texas, and a Master’s degree in Energy, Environmental, and Natural Resources Law from the University of Houston Law Center in Houston, Texas.  Ms. Jue has experience in the energy industry as a legal analyst for a multinational oil and gas corporation and as corporate counsel for a regional electric grid operator.

• • Word for Word Single Lecture: Environmental Law

We conducted a short interview with Ms. Jue.  Enjoy, and be sure to take advantage of all the incredible Word for Word lectures we have coming up!

IC: What can students expect out of your class?
SJ: An overview of environmental law with an emphasis on some issues that have been in the news recently.

IC: What are you most excited about sharing with your students? 
SJ: I like sharing the practical side of environmental law—looking at the issues from an “ideal” v. “financially feasible” perspective.

IC: What do you as the instructor learn from working with your students?
SJ: I enjoy learning about what students feel are the important environmental issues today.  The “important issues” change over time, and I like to keep up-to-date on what students find are the most interesting and/or urgent problems that we are facing.

Dr. Robert Jensen has participated in our Odyssey program with gratifying enthusiasm.  He offered an Odyssey course last spring, Beyond Race, Gender, and Class: Social Justice and Systems of Power, then provided a free lecture in May, Journalism is Dead! Long Live Journalism?, and then offered yet another course in the fall, “Freedom’s Just Another Word for …: Conflicting Concepts of Liberty in the United States”.

We are very excited to have Dr. Jensen back with us for our winter/spring term.  He’ll be teaching a course called The Paradox of Pornography: Understanding Sex and Gender in a Mass-Mediated World.

Course Description: In the past two decades, pornography has become increasingly accepted in the mainstream of U.S. culture, while at the same time the content of the material has become more and more overtly cruel and degrading to women. How do we explain this apparent paradox? In this class, UT professor Robert Jensen will draw on 20 years of research on sexually explicit material and the multi-billion-dollar pornography industry to explain the political, legal, and sociological issues facing today’s pornographic culture.

The class will begin on April 9, but registration will open on December 3.

Faculty across campus take time out of their busy schedules to provide our Odyssey lectures and classes. One of the coolest options in our Odyssey program is the Word for Word series, which is one night out of the week, four to eight weeks in a row, with a different topic and presenter featured each night.  We have some very cool classes lined up for Word for Word for the winter/spring term, including a class on pop culture, one on environmental law, and one on fitness programs.

The class featured here is Work is Non-Work: What Do We Do When We Are Not Working?  This lecture will be presented by Dr. Daniel Hamermesh. Dr. Hamermesh earned his Ph.D. from Yale (1969) and taught at both Princeton and Michigan State, among others, before coming to UT Austin.  His research concentrates on labor demand, time use, social insurance programs (particularly unemployment insurance) and unusual applications of labor economics (to suicide, sleep and beauty). He is widely quoted in the major print media and has appeared on such national television programs as Good Morning, America, and PBS Evening News Hour.  We are honored to have him participating in our Odyssey program!

IC: What can students expect out of your class?
DH: They can expect to learn about how Americans and others spend time, and what are some of the causes of this behavior.

IC: What are you most excited about sharing with your students?
DH: What most excites me is being able to demonstrate that apparently random behavior, or outcomes we don’t really expect, can be explained by very simple theories of human behavior and responses to incentives.  That’s what economics is about, and it’s neat to apply it to unusual topics.

Course Description: The lecture deals with how Americans use their time with special focus on differences among people in non-work time.  It asks what we mean by work and by leisure. It compares time use in the U.S. to that in other countries and delineates the ways in which America is unusual in our work and non-work.

Sign up for Dr. Hamermesh’s lecture by itself or as a series with the other Word for Word lectures.  Registration opens on December 3rd.

Literature in the Middle Ages

Dr. Janie Zackin will be teaching an Odyssey course for us in the spring called Philosophers, Poets, Apostates and Pranksters in Medieval Judeo-Hispanic Literature.  What does that mean?  Read below for a peek at her course description, and be sure to visit our website on December 3rd to register and see the other new classes we’ll be offering.

Course Description: Have you ever wondered about that period of time referred to as the Middle Ages?  Particularly, about the kinds of literature medieval Jews wrote besides biblical exegesis and Talmudic commentary?  In this class, we will explore some of the most compelling themes in Jewish literature written in medieval Christian Spain, such as the debate between faith and reason, the suffering of the just,  marriage, science and wisdom.  The goal is to acquaint students with the secular writings of several Judeo-Hispanic authors and the streams of thought that inform their world view(s).  Music and video, along with short readings, will be utilized to enhance students’ understanding of the time period.

UT Professor Dr. Volker Bromm will be one of our lectures in our popular Word for Word series.  The series features 6-10 single lectures on a variety of topics.  Dr. Bromm’s lecture is From Here to Eternity-A Short History of the Universe.

Course Description: This class is an overview of the fascinating subject of cosmology, which is our attempt to understand the entire history of the Universe, from the Big Bang to our present-day Earth. What are our cosmic origins? Where do humans fit in? What is our ultimate cosmic destiny? What are the mysterious dark matter and dark energy? How did the first stars and galaxies form? Do black holes really exist? Are there more than four dimensions?

Our upcoming Odyssey course, Psychology and Religion, was developed by current UT professor, Dr. Wendy Domjan.  Dr. Domjan got her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1977. She has taught in the Psychology Department at The University of Texas at Austin since that time, with the exception of a five year period when she stayed at home raising her young children. She is now a Distinguished Senior Lecturer in Psychology and the Assistant Director of the Plan II Honors Program.  She has won numerous teaching awards including, most recently, the Regent’s Outstanding Teacher Award.

We are proud to have Dr. Domjan lecturing for our Odyssey series.  Register for her class here, and don’t wait: the class doesn’t start until September 20th, but it’s already half full!

IC: What can students expect out of your class?
WD: Religion is a subject that student who take this kind of class have given a lot of thought to in their own lives. I try to make my classes very interactive, so that students have a chance to explore their own ideas and expand them in the context of the class.  Accordingly, I encourage people to ask questions during the lectures and leave time in each class for more extended discussions.

IC: What are you most excited about sharing with your students?
WD: I am most excited when students can use the research and theory in psychology to understand their own lives and experiences more fully.  One of the really rewarding aspects of studying psychology is that it provides information about the actual processes and factors at play in situations that people may have been wondering about for years. And I have found the psychology of religion to be particularly rewarding in that way.

IC: What do you as the instructor learn from working with your students?
WD: Students bring a multiplicity of different perspectives to a topic. Every time that I teach this class, I learn new things about the experiences students have had, the nature of different religions and how psychological processes play out in them. As I result, I gain new insights and understanding of the area.

The first Odyssey course of the fall semester will be Saving Endangered Species in Texas, taught by retired UT faculty member Dr. Robin Doughty.  The course explores our dealings with animals and how its unique size, location, and natural wildlife diversity makes the state of Texas ideal for case studies on strategies intended to rebuild the populations of endangered wildlife and improve their habitats.

Dr. Doughty will focus on the status of the whooping crane, an icon in the U.S. and Texas for protecting endangered birds, as well as the recovery of the alligator. He will show how the Purple Martin has come to depend almost entirely on our help in supplying nest houses and how invasive sparrows and starlings compete for cavities.

Dr. Doughty has written ten books dealing with various ways human activities affect the numbers and ranges of many animals. He has earned college degrees in Italy, England, and the United States. He received a doctorate in Geography from the University of California at Berkeley and was a faculty member at The University of Texas at Austin for 40 years before retiring in 2010. 

Upcoming Odyssey courses: What About Opera

Dr. Robert DeSimone is the Director of the Butler Butler Opera Center here at UT.  He’s also the Associate Director for External Affairs at the Butler School of Music.  Let’s just say, he keeps busy!  A protégé of Norah Quarrie of the Sadler Wells Theater in England, he spent four years training in the tradition of England’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, with other training in Switzerland, Italy and the U.S. He has worked with the Rome Opera, Teatro Eliseo, Goldoni Opera, Opernhaus Zurich, and numerous European, Mexican and South American theaters, plus serving as Resident Stage Director for Seattle Opera. His work has been seen at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Los Angeles Music Center, and in regional opera companies. 

We are very excited to bring his talent and knowledge to our Odyssey program here at Informal Classes!  Dr. DeSimone will be teaching the course What About Opera, which will be on Thursdays starting September 13th.  I did a small interview with him for our monthly newsletter but didn’t have a chance to include it in the newsletter last month, so I thought I would share it with you here.

IC: What can students expect out of your class?
RD: Students participating in the opera class can expect to gain a more practical view of opera/the opera world and specifically come to know and understand Giacomo Puccini’s great masterpiece Madame Butterfly.  Through lecture and performances of young artists from the Butler Opera Center this course highlights the Joy of Opera, the greatest of all the performing arts.

IC: What are you most excited about sharing with your students?
RD: I am most interested in stimulating students to understand what opera is all about and why, today, audiences around the world are so attracted to this great art form.

IC: What do you as the instructor learn from working with your students?
RD: To quote a wonderful Rogers and Hammerstein song, “Getting to Know You” from the King and I, “If you become a teacher, by your students you’ll be taught.”
The more I work with students the more I learn from them and about myself.  Opera is for EVERYONE. If you are open to Music, Drama, Theatre, Dance, Art and the World….  The experience of OPERA can be overwhelming and so rewarding.