“The heart has reasons of which reason does not know.”
– Blaise Pascale, 1623-62, mathematician, physicist, philosopher
The Stellar Research Lab is made up of an interdisciplinary team of neuroscience enthusiasts. A common interest in the importance of experiential learning and the brain basis of decision making unites us to explore this challenging yet exciting area. Because of our unique, oftentimes non-neuroscientist backgrounds, the lab is able to approach topics from nontraditional point of view to compose unique assortments of blogs, papers, podcasts and books for the fellow curious mind...
A Glance at our Blog Posts and Podcasts
Mecca Brooks UA’22 and Jim Stellar This blog follows up on a very recent blog from our group on implications of thinking in clinical psychology for experiential education. Those implications bega...Read More
Rachel Dolowich, Kathleen Larsen, Jim Stellar This blog continues the topic of our last blog. There we brought thinking from clinical psychology to experiential education, focusing on the integrati...Read More
By Stephanie Ortiz and Jim Stellar: Ten years ago, Stephanie and I wrote a blog about her starting a non-profit as an undergraduate at Queens College, CUNY, and then about four years ago after I moved...Read More
Ricardo Torres has been with the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) for 27 years having earned a BS degree from Manhattan College and an MBA from Georgetown University. Over that time the NSC has b...Read More
Robert Hamilton, Emily Barrett, and Jim Stellar: What underlies the success of the Ninja instructor as discussed in the last blog? We think the answer is most visible in the experiential context of p...Read More
Ken Smith founded JAG (Jobs for America’s Graduates) 40 years ago in Delaware to help struggling high school students get some work experience while they were in school. Since then, JAG has grown to...Read More
Rachel Dolowich UA ‘22, Kathleen Laursen UA ‘21, Jim Stellar: Consider a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or other patient with a serious fear reaction whose prefrontal cortex is struggling t...Read More
After graduating from RPI and starting to teach science in high school, John Cimino responded to another force within him that took him into a career in opera. At first dabbling but then introduced at...Read More
Stephanie Ortiz and Jim Stellar: Ten years ago, Stephanie and I wrote a blog about her starting a non-profit as an undergraduate at Queens College, CUNY, and then about four years ago after I moved to...Read More
In 2020, eight lab members and recent college graduates produced a book, Diversity at College: Real Stories of Students Conquering Bias and Making Higher Education more Inclusive. The book is fully co-authored (not edited) and applies lessons from experiential education and social neuroscience thinking to five key student-centered stories, such as implicit bias or stereotype threat. The book was named as finalist for the 2021 Indie book awards in the social change category and serves as a basis for recent panel discussions.
Experiential Education complements the classical academic nature of the classroom-based college experience by bringing in direct experience with industry, non-profits, and governments. In 2017, Stellar wrote a book on this topic, Education that Works: The Neuroscience of Building a more Effective Higher Education. The book argues that due to how the brain works, students develop insight, maturity, and even a passion for their career growth, as well as key work-place skills and abilities that make them of good students, good citizens, and good employees.
Explore More of Our Work
Short Blogs
Long Blogs
Podcasts
Books
