A panel of admissions staff  from Columbia’s varied schools, including the Business School, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the school of Journalism, and the School of Continuing Education, will discuss the attributes they seek in successful applicants to these top-tier programs. Topics include academic requirements, advice on writing stand-out personal essays, and creating a desirable application package.

Sponsored by the Columbia University School of Continuing Education Postbaccalaureate Studies and Graduate Programs

Dr. Lifton, psychiatrist and scholar, is chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence. He is a National Book Award winner, and is the author of The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, Witness to an Extreme Century, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, and other books. 

What power does a memory have? If you could chemically alter them, would you? Should you? These are the questions posed by biochemists today and addressed by Dr. S. Matthew Liao in his lecture. Combining scientific experiments with philosophical modes of thought, Dr. Liao discussed not just the physical possibility of memory alteration but the ethics behind adding and erasing memories and who would get to decide what was erased or added were it possible.

Dr. Alan R. Fleischman is a senior vice president and medical director of the March of Dimes Foundation as well as clinical professor of pediatrics and clinical professor of epidemiology and population health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He spoke on his professional journey from clinical and research ethics to his active role in current public health policy, stressing the importance of communication and a desire to understand the complex challenges presented by public health policy in cultures affected by economic, political and environmental problems, and globalization.