December 20, 2004

Boise State Physics Professor Teaches Science Workshop To Exiled Tibetan Monks Living In India

Boise State University physics professor Dewey Dykstra is teaching a three-week science workshop to exiled Tibetan monks in Dehra Dun, India, over the winter break as a part of the Science for Monks project initiated by the Dalai Lama.   “I’m very honored to have been invited to teach this workshop,” said Dykstra, who left for India following winter commencement at Boise State on Friday, Dec. 17.  “If I can accomplish one thing, it would be to help these scholar monks develop some understanding of how Western science constructs its sense of the world.”   Dykstra said he will employ inquiry-based techniques he developed during 23 years of teaching physics classes at Boise State to work with the Tibetan monastic scholars, most of whom have had very limited exposure to Western science and don’t speak English. His workshop will focus on the physics of optics and light, a subject area that lends itself to open-ended exploration, he said.   “We will start with the idea that if light were made of rays, what explanation could we build to fit this experience,” Dykstra said. “The only math involved is the notion of a ray as a straight line.”   The Science for Monks project was initiated in 1998 by the Dalai Lama to introduce scientific knowledge and methods to Tibetan monks living in exile in India.  Other goals of the program are to develop a scientific vocabulary in Tibetan, and to introduce Western scientists to Buddhist philosophy.    “I have personally been engaged in dialogues with scientists for many years and have found them extremely useful and enriching,” the Dalai Lama said in a prepared statement about the Science for Monks program. “I also believe that modern science can benefit from Buddhist perspectives.”   Previous workshops in the groundbreaking program have been taught by professors from Cornell, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Washington and a number of other institutions in the United States and overseas. Dykstra will co-teach the upcoming workshop with Andy Johnson, the associate director for the Center for the Advancement of Math and Science Education and assistant professor of physics at Black Hills State University. -30-   Contact: Dewey Dykstra, Department of Physics, (208) 426-3105, ddykstra@boisestate.edu                                                              Media Contact: Janelle Brown, communications and marketing, (208) 426-1790, jbrown2@boisestate.edu Online at: http://news.boisestate.edu.