SUNY New Paltz Evolutionary Studies Program

What do women's health, philosophy, literature, biology, psychology and even a new theory of dinosaur extinction have in common?

They are all among the topics discussed on Mediasite at the SUNY New Paltz Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) Program at New Paltz State University of New York. 

"We really have a broad set of speakers," said Glenn Geher, Director of EvoS. "Students in the courses are eating it up because they learn the basic rules of evolution and they can totally follow these ideas that are cutting across all kinds of areas. An evolutionary lens has really been beneficial for helping understand those issues."

The EvoS program takes the basic theory of evolutionary principles and applys them to different academic disciplines, and Geher included a speaker series into the program that is now packaged into its own course and is one of the most popular on campus. The course evolved into a full Mediasite-production with every speaker being recorded and streamed over the web. 

"We can have the person speaking in one window and have the slides very clearly presented and in sync in the other window. It's a great technology and we've clearly benefitted from that," Geher said. "The Mediasite technology has been absolutely integral to us delivering this program."