Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

The first product of a three-year-long Faculty Learning Community project

Posted 06 Dec 2019 / 0

I am so proud to announce the publication of “The Art of Designing a Curriculum Optimized for Learning Transfer” in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning. This is the first article published by Pratt’s interdisciplinary Transfer of Learning Faculty Learning Community (aka the “Transfer FLC”). I got to spend the last three years working with Read More

A Major Post, Center for Teaching & Learning, Interdisciplinarity, Pratt Institute, Research Projects, Teaching

I will be a 2019-2020 Center for Teaching & Learning Fellow

Posted 19 Jun 2019 / 0

I am proud to have been named one of five inaugural Center for Teaching and Learning Fellows at Pratt Institute. I join Film and Video Professor Kara Hearn, Architecture Professor Jonathan Scelsa, Communications Design Professor Nida Abdullah, and Industrial Design Professor Matthew Hoey in the first cohort of Fellows working on pedagogical research projects supported by Read More

A Major Post, Center for Teaching & Learning, CTL Fellows Project, General Education, Higher Education, Pratt Institute, Teaching

How does this professor really spend his work time? (Spring 2019)

Posted 29 May 2019 / 0

Last semester I got serious about my time budget. Although I had been tracking my time for years to assure that I was “working enough”, I had spent too many of those years “just doing what seemed like it needed to be done”, a practice that had led me to pay some serious opportunity costs: Read More

A Major Post, Higher Education, Research Projects, Teaching

How does this professor really spend his work time? (Fall 2018)

Posted 11 Jan 2019 / 0

After my first year of being a tenure-track professor, I knew that I had a problem: I wasn’t being mindful of how I spent my time. This had been a problem for me in graduate school, but once I got on the tenure track, the stakes became a lot higher. I knew that if I Read More

A Major Post, Higher Education, Research Projects, Teaching

I am honored to be part of Moral Sense III

Posted 03 Apr 2017 / 0

Although the final program and registration information are not yet solidified for Moral Sense Colloquium III, what I do know is that I am going to be included as a speaker. My talk, “Dual Inheritance, Ecological Peril, & the Morality of Procreation”, will be featured alongside a variety of philosophers, anthropologists, and biologists. I am Read More

A Minor Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Reproductive Fitness, Sex and Reproduction

You can check out my first Breeders, Propagators, & Creators talk (at St. Francis College) on YouTube

Posted 18 Apr 2016 / 0

This has been up on St. Francis College’s YouTube page for awhile, but I was just made aware of its existence. The audio’s a bit weak, but it gives you can mostly tell what I am saying!

A Minor Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Uniqueness, Memetic Fitness, My publications, Reproductive Fitness, Sex and Reproduction

Great conversation at my Columbia University Population Biology Seminar talk

Posted 14 Mar 2016 / 0

It was a great honor to speak on this past Monday, March 7th, 2016 as part of Columbia University’s Population Biology seminar series. I gave a talk entitled “Breeders, Propagators, & Creators: Culture, Biology, and the Future of Human Evolution” to a small group of biology faculty and students from a nice diversity of different Read More

A Major Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Uniqueness, Kin Selection, Parenting, Population Pressure, Public Outreach, Public Policy, Reproductive Fitness, Sex and Reproduction

My next Breeders, Propagators, & Creators talk: Columbia University on March 7th, 2016

Posted 25 Feb 2016 / 0

I am excited to be speaking on March 7th, 2016 at Columbia University about the topic of my book-in-progress: Breeders, Propagators, & Creators. The talk, a part of the Columbia Population Biology seminar series, starts at 6 pm at the Faculty House. Here’s an abstract for the talk: For most species, evolutionary immortality can be Read More

A Major Post, Behavior, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Evolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Memetic Fitness, Public Outreach, Uncategorized

What do we know about Cultural Transmission?

Posted 29 Jan 2016 / 0

As I have been working on my book-in-progress (Breeders, Propagators, & Creators), I have encountered a difficult-to-answer question of road-block proportions: how do we quantify cultural transmission? The focus of my book is the tradeoff humans face between making babies, spreading existing culture, and inventing new ideas. If such a tradeoff exists, we need to be able Read More

A Major Post, Behavior, Belief, Books, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Communication, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Evolution, Emotion, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Memetic Fitness, Parenting, Psychology, Religion, Sexual Conflict, Sociology

Is there a trade-off between reproduction and creativity?

Posted 12 Jan 2016 / 0

One of the ideas that I am exploring in my work-in-progress book Breeders, Propagators, & Creators is that human beings face a fundamental trade-off between three activities: Breeding: behaviors that lead to the production of offpsring (which might — but does not necessarily — include parenting); Propagating: behaviors that spread existing cultural ideas; and Creating: behaviors that introduce Read More

A Major Post, Behavior, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Data Limitation, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Evolution, Hypothesis Testing, Memetic Fitness, Reproductive Fitness, Sex and Reproduction, Sociology