 "Photo: Lennie Mahler")
Ever wondered what hell will be like? Or worried about nuclear waste dumps in Utah? Or pondered the plight of poor minorities entering the state as refugees from the Hurricane Katrina disaster?
If you are like many other Utahns, you probably have, which is why Robert A. Goldberg, U professor of history and newly appointed director of the Tanner Humanities Center, thinks the U should tackle these key questions and share the results with the wider community.
"We're fighting an old joke," Goldberg said, "that while people have heard of the University of Utah, they have never heard of any university in Utah."
Goldberg wants to change that by linking U academics from many fields of study to members of the local community to study issues of local concern, creating an in-state focus. Though he only started his three-year term as director seven weeks ago, Goldberg has already made significant steps in that direction.
An upcoming conference on race and class issues surrounding Hurricane Katrina will bring U academics and members of the local and New Orleans community together to discuss those Goldberg calls the "newest Utahns," Katrina refugees.
Likewise, a special research interest group of U faculty from a variety of perspectives will discuss the topic "Nuclear Utah."
"This will affect thousands of people. It's an issue of transporting nuclear waste right here, on the other side of the Oquirrh Mountains," Goldberg said. The group will receive funding to perform research leading to a conference and perhaps a book and direct policy recommendations.
Goldberg does not intend, however, to have the center focus only on directly applicable issues to the detriment of its support of basic research in the humanities.
Yet even this research can have a local connection. The conference on "Hell and Its Afterlife," to be held Oct. 23 and 24, will focus on something which, while not as pressing as the issue of nuclear waste, nevertheless weighs on the minds of many Utahns.
"Utah has a strong tradition of public interest in religious topics…(This conference) will explore the historical idea of hell in various religious traditions," Goldberg said.
Other Tanner offerings are being expanded to further reach the community. The Gateway to Learning program, which brings Utah school teachers to the U for one week to study subjects such as Nazi Germany and the Holocaust and African history with top U faculty, free of charge, will now offer six instead of two courses each summer.
Another program will send U faculty directly to rural Utah schools.
Current U students are another group Goldberg hopes to reach. The Center's retooled "Works in Progress at the Rough-Draft Café" lecture series will offer better food and a more relaxed atmosphere to help engage students, faculty and visiting researchers in conversation about a piece of cutting-edge research. The Tanner lecture on human values in March will feature direct student workshops with visiting artist Bill Viola.
"I can't see how students could not be interested," Goldberg said
Students seem to agree. "It's way better than other universities I've been at," said Brittany English, a senior majoring in psychology.
