Letter from the S09 Academic Dean

A Letter from Reginald H. Garrett

Welcome aboard!

I know that you are as excited as I am about our upcoming journey around the world. The theme of our voyage is Migrations. As we travel, we will consider the myriad consequences following upon the early migration of humans out of Africa and their dispersal to all corners of the globe. We will meet our theme in many of our courses in the humanities and the social sciences, where we will see how migration has influenced art, music, language, culture, social structure, economics, history, and politics.

Migration remains a relevant concern as immigration influences many social and cultural features within today's nations. The curriculum for the Spring 2009 voyage has been expressly designed with science as a focus. Despite this focus, the academic offerings are intended to enrich the scholarship of all students, whether science majors or not.

Science is playing an increasingly prominent role in contemporary life through the technological and medical advances it has delivered. At the same time, science raises serious ethical and moral issues that demand the attention of each citizen. All educated persons should be sufficiently familiar with science to make rational decisions about their nutrition and health, their use of resources, their application of technology, and their impact on the environment.

To foster such scientific awareness among students with academic interests outside the sciences, our curriculum offers a range of courses to inform and educate non-science majors about salient aspects of contemporary science and how it touches people's lives. As you look forward to selecting the courses you will pursue aboard the MV Explorer, I encourage those among you who are humanities, social science, and business majors to find within the science courses a path to a fuller appreciation of the remarkable range of human inquiry and discovery.

Wishing you a bon voyage,

Reginald H. Garrett
Professor of Biology, U.Va.