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curricula/potentials</title></head><body>
<div><font face="Arial" color="#000000">Dear All:</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" color="#000000">Congratulations on this
terrific forum. The following are ruminations on my own experiences,
but I put them forward in case they may be of interest.</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" color="#000000"><br>
I am an artist who is also a Professor of Communication design at New
York City College of Technology in Brooklyn New York, as well as an
Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Cooper Union for
the Advancement of Science and Art and a member of the Faculty of the
Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Certificate Program at CUNY's
Graduate Center. This litany of credentials was achieved almost as an
aside to a struggle to create conditions to allow the development of
meaningful and effective curriculum for the advancement of creative
work in any discipline in these institutions. By creative work I mean
any endeavor in any discipline engaging conceptual development
embedded in new technologies. My driving point here, simultaneously
considered "visionary" and "totally insane" by some of my
peers (and that's not helpful either way), is the importance of
putting forward "invention" in the classroom as the overall
umbrella for developing curriculum.<br>
<br>
To sum up prior to the short digressions below, at any one or more of
these institutions, I am involved in these endeavors: listed in the
order of my favorite things to do from 1 to 4.<br>
<br>
1. The creation of labs and production facilities for innovative
research and practice out of which newly appropriate curriculum can
develop.<br>
2. Individual interdisciplinary courses.<br>
3. Developing protocols in an institution for considering
curriculum development solutions as a process, not a "package"<br>
4. Full programs housed in an upper or new division, which are linked
to individual departmental courses plus new courses.<br>
______________________________________________________________________<br
>
<br>
Cooper Union<br>
At Cooper Union I was invited to move from the Art School to the
School of Engineering in 1997 because the truly visionary Chair of
Mechanical Engineering instituted a course called "Design, Illusion
and Reality" (sort of reminiscent of Lacan's Borromean
knot</font><font face="Wingdings" color="#000000"> J</font><font
face="Arial"
color="#000000"
>[http://web.uvic.ca/~saross/lacan.html#RSI_and_the_Borromean}</font><font
face="Wingdings" color="#000000"> J</font><font face="Arial"
color="#000000"> This course is for collaborative projects between
art, architecture and engineering undergraduates and is offered on
different topics each year - some recent topics being: Urban
Planning, Building Bridges, Robotics And Theater, Inventing The
Inventor. Currently I am teaching "Where Will We Live?
Self-Replicating Habitats" with a roboticist since a high point of
"Building Bridges" was a collaborative student project which
designed a self-replicating and self-repairing bridge for the Bering
Strait. In each course, whether students are creating something
that is "real" or conceptual they explore both the
"environmental" conditions their product or process is subject to as
well as develop appropriate research methodologies. These courses have
had a profound influence on students who have taken it as they mingle
in each other's disciplines and adds some credence to developing a
whole program based on its premises of "real, imaginary and
symbolic". (documentation, in need of update, is at<u>
http://www.artnetweb.com/wortzel/robottheater/<br>
</u>This course is supported by a lab which is both a video production
facility and a robotics lab.<br>
<br>
NEW YORK CITY COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY<br>
Citytech is one of twenty-one Colleges in a cumbersome City University
of New York system and the only College considered a "technical"
college. Therefore, for many years it was considered a "trade"
school, which really sells it short. When I got there in 1998 it
was apparent that the faculty consisted of outstanding researchers and
innovators in their fields who were trapped in outdated curriculum and
overwhelmed by a staggering course load only recently reduced from 27
to 24 hours. For me, the College offered a luscious and inviting menu
of expertise -Departments in the Division of Design and Technology
include: Physics, Architectural Technology Electrical Engineering,
Computer Engineering, Computer Systems, Entertainment Technology,
Mechanical Engineering And Industrial Design. Also included in
that Division is my dept, Advertising Design and Graphic Arts
("ADGA") Up till now, this has been the only "content"
providing dept. Currently, ADGA houses the digital video, multimedia,
and IT courses. We also have a new Administration that is ready and
willing (with resources) to revolutionize the College. I am on many a
steering committee for this and it is being accomplished in the three
ways listed above which are not ultimate solutions, but steps in a
process. For instance, I am initiating a new CUNY-funded lab
which is a combination of a video production studio, physical
computing facility and robotics laboratory. The College is also
reorganizing depts. and they are building facilities such as a new
huge video production studio for college wide use. I hope to get back
to this forum in the near future about overall programs being
written.</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" color="#000000"><br>
ITCP PROGRAM AT THE CUNY GRADUATE CENTER<br>
The Interactive Pedagogy Certificate Program at the CUNY Graduae
Center offers doctoral students a chance to develop their own
technological tools for teaching in their discipline. This is
quite nice because it drives these students who are about to enter
classrooms as teachers away from the teaching 'packages" towards
their own, custom-made pedagogical tools, and gives them an
opportunity to start from scratch in considering how they would
optimally want their students to learn their subject and whether or
not they want students to engage in interactivity with a teaching tool
and/or with each other. Workshops in technological tools
accompany the courses according to student need. Both the faculty and
the students are from myriad disciplines. The web site at<u>
http://web.gc.cuny.edu/provost/apit/gcitp/</u> - contains past
syllabi, but actually that is all changing now as we are going to do
it as a seminar series for the first time this semester. It has been
decided to make the courses more experiential in terms of hands-on
development of tools.<br>
<br>
<br>
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