Events and Announcements
On Friday, April 19, UrbanCincy partnered with the Niehoff Urban Studio and hosted an event that showcased student work and included expert analysis and discussion of urban mobility issues in Cincinnati.
Approximately 100 people showed up to the collaborative studio space in Corryville to view the student work, and learn more about the challenges facing Cincinnati today and in the future.
Metropolis & Mobility: Bus Rapid Transit and Bikeway Planning focused on five proposed bus rapid transit and three bikeway corridors throughout Cincinnati. Engineering and planning students were paired together in groups to examine the issues and propose implementation strategies for those potential projects. Read more here!
Bearcats in the Jungle!!
MetroMob in Brasil
The UC Forward teams exploring energy, mobility, and cities ("Metropolis and Mobility", or "MetroMob for short) are in Brasil! Professors Frank Russell, Carla Chifos, and Rebecca Williamson are leading an interdisciplinary team of both undergraduate and graduate students on a field trip to one of the most fascinating cities in South America, Curitiba Brasil. Pictures are being sent to the UC Forward office on a daily basis, so here are samples. MetroMob continues next year; students can register for ARCH7036 or PLAN6032 or PLAN6098. Professor Frank Russell's HNRS2031 Inquiry to Innovation will also be participating in the theme.
Bearcats in the Market
Bearcats in South America!
Pictured: L-R Federal University of Paraná at Curitiba architecture students with Jimmie Rosen (SOP UG), Bobby Castro (SAID MArch), Nick Matthews (SAID MArch), and Justin Rex (SOP UG) in the main market of the city of Curitiba on the second day of their UC Forward Field Study.
The MetroMob also spent time in Bordeaux France working with French students "en charette" (in a workshop) that looked at scenarios for transportation in the year 2043 in the future. What would transportation and cities look like in the time post-oil and with rising coastlines from global warming?
UC Forward in the news!
Journalism Professor Elissa Yancey's UC Forward class Innovations in Science Communications put on a UC Science Idol competition in the Catskeller on April 16, attracting an enthusiastic crowd and bringing to light how important great storytelling can be for explaining science. In the photo, David Nash, UC professor of Geology, gives his presentation to the judges and audience at UC Science Idol at CatSkeller on Tuesday. See the News Record article here.
President Santa Ono talked about CCM Professor Kevin Burke's UC Forward class Post Production Master Class that produced the video on the Gold Rush Adventure Race (see below). See our President talking about UC Forward here!
EMED3002 Post-Production Master Course
Professor Kevin Burke of the e-Media program in CCM offered this announcement:
Educationally grounded, professionally driven, and student produced, the Gold Rush Expedition Race Documentary will have its debut screening on Wednesday, April 24 from 6-8pm at the Tangeman University Center's Main Street Cinema. Admission is free and everyone is invited. There will be a brief introduction before the one-hour documentary and a questions and answer session with the student producers, camera operators and editors immediately after the screening.
The Gold Rush Expedition Race Documentary is a collaborative film produced by an interdisciplinary group of students at the University of Cincinnati and a professional television and film producer/director. Sponsored by the UC Forward Collaborative, the project involved thirty-three students from four academic programs at three colleges at the University of Cincinnati:
1.) the Electronic Media Division at the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM)
2.) the Graphic Communication Design Program at the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning
3.) the Communication Department and Department of Anthropology at the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences
Over the course of the 2012-13 academic year, these students shot, edited, scripted and produced this documentary film on the Gold Rush Expedition Race shot on location in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California in August 2012. The Gold Rush Expedition Race involved fast packing/trekking, mountain biking, navigating, paddling and cliff rappelling and was part of the 2012 Adventure World Racing Series.
The project also involved Co-Executive Producers: Professor Kevin Burke, Associate Professor of the Electronic Media Division at CCM, and Brian Leitten, a professional television and film producer from VEVO, who has directed Emmy-Award winning programs for MTV and documentary films for international festivals and competitions.
The documentary is currently seeking national cable distribution from networks that include Outside Television, Universal Sports HD and The Outdoor Channel.
Bearcats in India!
Professor Lewis Owen's Geology student Greg Luken was featured in the Cincinnati Enquirer on March 29, 2013 about his experiences with UC Forward's expedition to the Himalaya. Four UC professors are taking students this summer to do research projects ranging from landsape change, pollution, and water quality, to designing survival habitats in extreme conditions. See the article here.
Collaborating on the expedition is Prof. Craig Dietsch, GEOL A&S who has a grant to research the geomorphology of the Himalya mountains. One of the most pressing issues in Himalayan geology and in other young, high, still-active mountains belts is the quantification of the rates, ages, and magnitudes of tectonic (Earth's internal) and surface (Earth's external) processes, including rates of erosion, uplift, and exhumation, that underlie landscape evolution. Geochronologic data are essential to evaluate the relative importance of tectonic vs. surface processes, to understand their controlling mechanisms, and to decipher the links and feedbacks between them. 40Ar/39Ar and (U-Th)/He thermochronology of minerals in deformed bedrock, and 10Be cosmogenic radionuclide surface exposure dating of river strath terraces are key analytical approaches. Current projects include determining rates of exhumation the High Crystalline Himalaya of Lahul and defining how the thermal and tectonic evolution of the ductile, normal Zildat shear zone in eastern Ladakh controls the exhumation of rocks tectonically buried to depths of >50 km. https://www.uc.edu/webapps/ucosmic/faculty_research/detail.aspx?id=14
Two Management Professors in the Lindner School of Business, Ratee Apana and Rajan Kamath, took students to compete in the University of Minnesota's Acara Challenge and brought back the gold! Four students created and presented "the Humble Commode" as a sustainable development project and won first prize. Read about it here and watch their presentation.
Their class called Transforming Lives INTB5020 took students on a field trip to several cities in India to interact with NGO's that are working to stop human trafficking.
Bearcats in Africa!
DAAP Architecture Professor Michael Zaretsky and A&S Journalism Professor Elissa Yancey took students to Tanzania over Spring Break. Watch their video to jump into their experience!
Please join us for a UC Forward Faculty Network Salon
"What is the Digital Humanities? And What's It Got To Do With Me?"
Thursday, March 7, 3:30-5:00 in CET&L, Langsam 480.
Register through Faculty Development One Stop or just show up.
These questions will be the center of our conversation during this faculty salon. We’ll begin from the premise that Digital Humanities isn’t one thing but includes a whole range of practices that vary from one discipline to another. At the same time, common principles informing DH are that print is no longer the default medium of communication and that digital media has fundamentally changed knowledge production and delivery. Working from these principles, we’ll consider how, as Humanities scholars in this quickly changing reality, we can benefit from the innovative potential of DH in our own work and in the work we require of our students. Some possible lines of conversation might be how to
- harness DH to create scholarship for diverse publics
- build interdisciplinary collaborative networks of faculty and students
- integrate digital media into classroom activities in meaningful, deliberate ways
- prepare students to research and compose in diverse digital environments in preparation for the work worlds they’ll enter
- develop cross-institutional remote collaboration opportunities
Our goal is to imagine and begin to realize a DH-infused Humanities experience that is forward-looking, innovative, and creative.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please join us for a UC Forward Faculty Salon
"Team-Teaching and Multidisciplinary Collaboration at UC"
Tuesday February 5 at noon
in CET&L, 480 Langsam
The next faculty salon will focus on team-teaching. When have you successfully team-taught? What are some hazards or pitfalls? Is it more work or less than teaching solo? What are the benefits? UC Forward funds team-taught classes because there are traditional barriers based on how departments are credited for students in seats. Is there any alternative way to ensure those faculty who want to team-teach can do so without penalizing the department? Is there a more sustainable policy we can imagine as an alternative to paying off the departments? All are welcome to join us in the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning, CET&L Langsam 480 on February 5, 12:00-1:30.
You can register through Faculty OneStop or just drop in.
https://webapps.uc.edu/facdev/workshops/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How can I find a UC Forward class?
To find UC Forward courses in OneStop,
select Attributes (on the right),
then select T (for Transformational!)
All our classes should appear.
Search Attributes T for UC Forward Classes
_____________________________________________
Attention Faculty:
I will be holding information sessions about UC Forward's 2013-2014 round of funding. All sessions will be held at the CET&L, Langsam 480.
November 8 (Thurs) 11:00
November 14 (Wed) 3:00
November 29 (Thurs) 11:00
December 10 (Mon) 10:00
A copy of the RFF may be downloaded.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please attend a UC Forward Faculty Network Salon on the topic “Teaching in a Brick-and-mortar University in the Digital Age”
Monday December 3, 3:00pm in CET&L, Langsam 480
Sign up at https://webapps.uc.edu/facdev/workshops/ or just show up.
This event is open to all faculty instructors and staff who would like to explore the similarities and differences between inter-, multi-, and trans-disciplinarity, and why this type of research and teaching is important for the future of UC. The conversation will include ways to collaborate within and outside of UC to add value to our communities.
Universities are under tremendous pressure to change, given the easy access to high quality free digital courses and declining enrollments, the political perception of exclusivity and elitism of the ivory tower, and the decline of government support from NIH, NEH, NEA and other traditional sources, plus the 2008 financial crisis that strained philanthropic support for higher education. The communities we serve and need support from need to see us, know us, use our students in coops, work with our faculty to help them solve hard problems, come to our campus for dialogues and support, and have us in their spaces as well. We need to be in relationships with our communities, be they geographic or professional. The UC Forward initiative to promote collaborative teaching and research that includes community partnerships is one approach to help bridge and mollify the perception that academia is increasingly irrelevant to and out of touch with society. UC Forward is an initiative designed to bridge the gap between the town and gown, to provide rich multidisciplinary methods and tools for engaging in the most important issues of our times in meaningful ways, and modeling such approaches for students. Fostering student capacities for innovation and creativity and problem-solving in an experiential and collaborative setting is something brick-and-mortar universities can do that the digital environment cannot. Yet. That's our value proposition. What do you think?