CELTSS sponsors a variety of events each term. The Steering committee solicits feedback from both the administration and faculty regarding the types of programs they would like to have offered and develops a fall and spring schedule. Offerings have included meditation groups, reading groups, brown bag lunches, workshops, spring faculty development day, curriculum development, and grant writing to name a few.
During the Fall 2009 term, CELTSS in collaboration with the Office of Advancement and Development was proud to reinstitute the Lyceum Lecture Series at FSC. In 1826 Josiah Holbrook, an educational reformer, established the first American Lyceum in Millbury, Massachusetts, named after the Lyceum of Aristotle in ancient Greece. Holbrook invited local people to organize a society to prepare papers on "useful" subjects such as science, history and literature, and lecture to friends and neighbors on a weekly basis during the winter months. Subscription fees were extremely modest, and membership was open to the entire community. Holbrook believed that mutual instruction for continuing education was requisite for both individual improvement and general social progress.
The Lyceum movement spread rapidly throughout New England to the North Central states and into the Middle West. Widely viewed as instructive entertainment, the Lyceum enjoyed great popularity in the decades before the Civil War. After 1845, the Lyceum came to be dominated by professional lectures like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Wendell Phillips who traveled the winter circuit via the nation's new rail network. Nevertheless, the basic goals of the Lyceum remained intact: to impact scientific and humanistic knowledge deemed vital to the moral and intellectual improvement of the individual and the community. Framingham had a Lyceum in 1834. Therefore, it is in the highest tradition of antebellum Lyceum that Framingham State College once again establishes the Lyceum Lecture Series.
The resurrected Lyceum Series is designed to allow faculty to showcase their teaching, service, and scholarship efforts to the college community and local community as well. Presentations are scheduled for the evening with a short reception prior to the event. A call for proposals is issued in the fall and they are reviewed by a committee to select the presenters for the year. The proposals are evaluated on their scope, their applicability, their appeal to the community, their thoroughness, and overall presentation idea. The faculty chosen to present are awarded a stipend of $250.00 and a crystal bowl. A permanent crystal bowl with the names of the presenters engraved is kept on display in the CELTSS center. Two presenters for the AY2009-2010 were Janet Schwartz, Professor of Nutrition, and Leslie Starobin, Professor of Communication Arts.
