Tag Archives: TCCD

The joys of a conference co-chair

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So after months of not hearing so much from anyone else involved with our biannual conference, my co-chair, Betsy Eudey, and I have taken the bit in our collective teeth and chosen “Empire: Migrations, Diasporas, and Networks.” Now we just have to line up speakers and finalize the dates… Hopefully I can get the website up and the call out next week.

And, I’m having two meeting. with our new dean, Carolyn Stefanco, today about all the projects we are trying to get started–the new MA, the new minor, the faculty workshops, my own research…and there are all the grant proposals! And the conference…We had one meeting, and that just wasn’t enough time this morning, so we are meeting this afternoon as well! She’s really interested in the idea of collaborating with Piet Zwart (yay!) and in international education generally. In fact, she will be away herself on a Fulbright scholarship during the fall term. I need to get her advice on applying for one of those…in a year or two.

The Big Picture

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Early on I introduced this blog and why I was writing it, but didn’t say much about the overall plan of which my trip to the Netherlands was part. Here’s a brief summary:

last fall I started organizing faculty that were interested in New/digital media to talk about possible projects and to write grants. We really got going on it in January and now we are really picking up steam (except of course the first grant was submitted in late April and the rest are underway, so we won’t know about money until Late Sept., at the earliest). Money aside, we all felt that students really needed far more experience using and thinking about computer technology and the ways it has changed almost every aspect of our culture. We want them to gain the skills they really need for future employment, which now go beyond sending email and making powerpoint presentations, but most of all we want them to be active creators and users of digital technology, not just passive consumers.

So we decided to create a center through which to develop projects and programs, but interestingly, it’s hard to get money for a center and easier to get it for projects, so we are just trying to do the projects and say they are through the center so that at first it will just exist in name. Hopefully, if the projects and programs succeed, we will be able to convince our administration to give us structural support (meaning space and money) so that someday the center will exist as a physical reality and a line in the base budget. Or maybe we’ll make a space like Worm did (see my second entry on them) where almost everything is salvaged.

Anyway, we are working on the following projects:

  • Running a series of workshops for faculty who want to incorporate technology or teach about it in their classes. We have funding for the fall portion and are seeking funding for the spring to offer small stipends to 15 faculty who actually create new classes or course modules and to bring in some visiting speakers.

  • Connecting with local organizations such as the Turlock Library, the local schools, and the Arts Commission to run public programs for, students and teachers and the public. We’ve already got a letter of support from the Arts Commission.

  • Creating a new minor in Digital Media–We just submitted a letter of intent to the NSF for a grant in support of this. –If the minor proves popular, I imagine in 5 years or so we might propose a major.

  • Creating a new Interdisciplinary MA in Digital Media (or Technology, the title is still up in the air)

  • As part of the new MA, we are proposing an international collaboration with the Piet Zwart Institute Media Design MA in Rotterdam, NL. This would involve an optional exchange program for students that would allow them to receive a Joint MA from our programs. I have been communicating with the Director of the Program and met with him and the of Piet Zwart this month and they are enthusiastic. I also attended the first-year student exhibit and the graduation exhibit, and spoke at length with students and staff, besides looking at student papers, class syllabi, etc. We are developing a plan that will be part of the MA proposal.

  • We are planning to create a lost cost wireless mesh network in Turlock to provide cheap high-speed internet access. Lack of high-speed access is a nagging problem for many students and resident in the area and certainly would hinder our efforts to provide more educational and cultural material via the internet.

  • I am conducting a study of cultural and academic institutions organized around new/digital media which will lead in the near future to articles and conference presentations and ultimately to a book. This summer I conducted a series of interviews with some directors of these kinds of programs in the Netherlands and will be continuing these over the next few years. –A lot about these interviews are covered in earlier entries.

As we work on all of these we are applying for grant after grant and I’m writing a lot of them. If I combine all the proposals, I’ll have a book-length text by December. Too bad they don’t count as publications!

Letters of intent (LOI)

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Some granting agencies encourage (or require) applicants to submit a letter of intent before applying so the agency can decide on reviewers more easily. So, OK, coming up with a 2-page letter with one inch margins, 12-point font in an NSF approved typeface is slightly tiresome, but I write so many conference abstracts, it wasn’t a big deal. Doing it while emailing drafts around with my colleagues while we are all on vacation and dealing with family stuff was a little more tiresome but still, it’s only two pages. We got it done and sent it to our Office of Sponsored Research and Programs, and Nancy, one of our devoted pre-award staff, was to submit it through that delightful online Fastlane system.

Surprise surprise, when Nancy logged in she found that the Fastlane system had a different set of requirements than the program solicitation had listed. Since by then I was offline and we were up against the deadline, she and one of my other colleagues had to improvise, and they did yeoman work re-writing the letter to fit texts fields with very limited character-counts.

–I actually like character counts in one way; they force much leaner, more elegant prose. But trying to produce that on a short deadline is trying. To paraphrase something Henry Jenkins once wrote in his blog, I write long when I don’t have time to write short.

Anyway, here’s what we ultimately submitted:

PROJECT TITLE
Pilot: Increasing underrepresented groups in computer science through interdisciplinary and community collaboration

SYNOPSIS
Historically, women and people of color have been under-represented in Computer Science. California State University, Stanislaus, designated as a Hispanic-Serving institution with an enrollment of over 50% female undergraduates, experiences this same under-representation. Faculty from an array of disciplines that span the physical and mathematical sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities have come together to develop a new curriculum based on an inter-disciplinary and project-centered approach, and to connect with students and teachers at the secondary level in order to increase underrepresented student population in Computer Science. Our approach will emphasize creativity, teamwork, and the development of projects relevant to students and the local community. These have been shown to make computer science more attractive to women and paint a more realistic picture of the skills needed for a career in computer science. We are transforming existing courses and developing additional ones to create new routes into Computer Scie

nce for our undergraduates, and to create new connections with the community. We intend to develop a new minor in Digital Media and a variety of courses and outreach programs to attract our target student population. These will include workshops for local high school teachers and students; and visiting speakers, artists and industry professionals who will make presentations to both university and public audiences, strengthening ties to the community and to other schools. The visiting lecturers will reinforce the practical application and ethical implications of the projects that the students are learning within the minor, and will make those relationships explicit to the public.

OTHER COMMENTS
The target population typically chooses majors in English, Art, Communication, and Gender or Ethnic studies. Our experiences in those classes and observations of other programs suggest that many of these students can learn how to use sophisticated applications and become skilled programmers if they are taught in a project-centered way and if the applications and programming skills are presented as tools rather than an end unto themselves. They are interested in the ethical, pedagogical, and cultural aspects of computer technology. Our students have strong ties to local communities, thus projects that benefit local communities will be far more compelling.

Minor in Digital Media Capstone course: The capstone project will focus on archiving regional living histories and will have a slightly different focus each year. The specific focus will be determined by the students and will be influenced by the contributing courses from other departments, allowing direct relationships between courses revealing the intricate and overlapping ways in which the interaction of technology and culture affects all parts of our community.

Computer Science will develop a method to index and retrieve the content and the programming of the presentation. Art will contribute visual material and will
guide the design of the presentation created from the content collected. English and other participating departments will contribute interpretive content.

The presentation for the capstone course will be consistent from year to year, allowing for data integration and for the project to become more robust with time,
as each project forms part of a new digital library. During the capstone project exhibition, student creators will present and discuss their projects through public
forum.

Project-based courses and workshops for middle and high school students and teachers in digital media will be a method of outreach. These groups will collaborate on archiving the previous capstone project in an online format. In addition, we plan to have an ongoing speaker/exhibit series that brings prominent speakers from industry, arts, and academia to a university audience and also to forums in the community. These community lectures will be aimed at high school students in particular, as we work to attract new applicants to the program. The local city arts commission has already expressed interest in contributing to the realization of our projects.

More About the Trip

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So, more about the trip. I’ll be in Amsterdam for one conference and Utrecht for the second, but I’ll actually be spending most of my time in Rotterdam. Or as my Lonely Planet Netherlands guide calls it, “Mighty Rotterdam.” 🙂 I haven’t actually been there yet, but I suspect R’dam is seriously underrated. I mean, quaint old buildings are nice, I like them a lot, but when they are filled with stoned American college students, they lose their charm.

Rotterdam, on the other hand, is not so infested, has really amazing architecture, and excellent design being practiced in general. I’m looking forward to visiting a city where things are really going on and the main industry is not tourism. (I’m not saying this is true of Amsterdam, but certainly it’s a prominent feature there.) I’ll be staying there during my trip and in between conferences I’ll be interviewing people at various cultural institutions and schools that are involved with New Media (or cyberculture, or whatever term we are using this week). And, on top of that, my university and the Piet Zwart Institute Media Design program are working out a joint Master of Arts program, so I am meeting with people there too. They are putting me up, which has allowed me to stay for 16 days. I’m really excited to have such a nice long visit and am practicing my Dutch.

Yes, nearly everyone there does speak English fluently, but for one thing, it’s just polite to at least learn how to say “hello,” “please,” and “thank you.” In my case though, it’s a little more of an issue because I have a Dutch last name and I guess I am tall enough and blondish enough to be taken for a native and it’s embarrassing to be completely ignorant. Actually, not entirely ignorant, because I studied Old Saxon in grad school, from which both English and Dutch have developed. So sometimes when I hear some Dutch, I understand a lot without being able to really say how. Anyway, if you want to practice a little Dutch, try the Laura Speaks Dutch
website, by Brenno de Winter. Rather than being like a standard lesson, it’s more like talking to someone about the Netherlands and about speaking Dutch, and I find it sinks in better. You can also find it in iTunes.

Next time maybe some more about the interviews–the whys and whos.