Please note that BIG is no longer accepting proposals.  We appreciate all of the community collaboration and have enjoyed our role in supporting and advancing the culture of innovation at Bucknell University.

 

ETC Magazine’s mission is to foster an awareness of the lives of the Bucknell community. Through the publication of a print and digital magazine that incorporates personal stories and visuals, ETC Magazine will highlight the culture formed through the interactions of students, faculty, and community members in a college campus setting. A large emphasis on design and visuals, accompanied by engaging writing in a print and digital edition will make different perspectives on campus more accessible.

ETC Magazine will create new nodes that have the potential to develop into ideas and projects when readers take initiative to act on inspiration from the stories they’ve read. ETC Magazine will encourage this action, thus enhancing Bucknell’s innovative ecosystem. In itself, ETC magazine will be an interdisciplinary collaboration. Through tying together emphases on editorial writing, photography, and design, we hope to bring the best of each component together under one publication, thus bringing students across disciplines with varying interests together.

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On Friday, April 29th from 2:00PM-4:00PM, approx. 15 female-identifying students took part in a workshop that began in the Bucknell Golf Club with an overview of the sport (equipment, mechanics, etc.) and how golf relates to the business/professional career world. This program brought multiple areas of campus together-CDC, ACS, School of Management, Bucknell Golf Club, College of Arts & Sciences. This was a pilot program itself designed as part of the Life After Bucknell Series which aimed at assisting Senior Students gain skills that will be useful in their lives after leaving Bucknell. The weather wasn’t ideal, but the experience was.

group-picture

 

 

The Bucknell Innovation Group (BIG) seeks product designs for a desktop display/case/holder for 4×6 information cards. We will 3D print the item and place on desks around campus (with cards) to raise awareness about BIG.

Specifications:
1) Must hold approximately 20 (4×6) information cards.
2) Should scream “BIG!” and exude innovation (duh!).
3) Require minimal space on a desk, and perhaps even serve multiple functions.
4) Reflect or incorporate our logo. See the blog for inspiration!

The winning designer will:
1) Visit our website for inspiration at http://bucknellinnovationgroup.blogs.bucknell.edu/
2) Submit a design (sketch, drawing, or image) to big@bucknell.edu
3) Do so by APRIL 10, 2016.
4) Receive our lasting gratitude and a $50 cash prize.

 
 

I’d like to invite you to a lunch event next week hosted by the Bucknell Innovation Group, BIG. Please consider attending, this is an opportunity to discuss ideas innovative ideas and how to put those into action. The scope of innovative is quite broad. There will be good snacks and great colleagues. Feel free to bring others!

Dec 9th in Walls Lounge from 12-1
The Bucknell Innovation Group’s mission is to support projects and ideas from faculty, staff, and students that are innovative, impactful, interdepartmental, and inclusive. We want to support action-oriented initial steps to improve the Bucknell ecosystem and at this event we will explain and take questions about our grant process, and other ways we can help you to be BIGger!

 

BIG flyer 10-2-15

 

 
Disco 2014
Discovery College, Bucknell’s newest Residential College, launched in the fall of 2013 largely due to networking that occurred at a BIG workshop.  Discovery was designed to provide a supportive living and learning environment for students interested in science, broadly defined, at Bucknell.  In general, the residential Colleges Program strives to integrate academic and residential life in a way that promotes academic engagement among the students.  Discovery College students live together in a residence hall, take one of several linked foundation seminars, and experience extensive curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular programming related to the theme of the college.  The students work very closely with faculty and student staff members.  The Discovery alumni community launched in the fall of 2014, giving upper-class students the opportunity to continue on with Discovery and serve as mentors for the first year students.

 

 

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On August 21, 2014 the Bucknell Innovation Group hosted a one-day “unconference” in collaboration with ITEC. Participants went through a series of group brainstorming, clustering, and idea-generating activities on themes that included community-building, encouraging academic engagement, and overcoming barriers to innovation and collaboration.  At the end of the day there were four ideas that emerged as potential projects:
• Instituting an annual BIG award for a project team that exemplifies our mission
• The Training, Reforming, and Uplifting Student Talents (TRUST) Project, which will consider creative ways in which we might add new curricular offerings to to increase academic engagement
• The creation of a new student center, or adapting the LC to provide students more positive outlets for socialization at night
• Exploring a limited pass/fail option to encourage students to branch out academically
 

By ROBERT J. SHILLER    The New York Times

CAPITALISM is culture. To sustain it, laws and institutions are important, but the more fundamental role is played by the basic human spirit of independence and initiative. The decisive role of the “spirit of capitalism” is an old concept, going back at least to Max Weber, but it needs refreshing today with new evidence and new thinking. Edmund S. Phelps, a professor of economics at Columbia University and a Nobel laureate, has written an interesting new book on the subject. It’s called “Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge and Change” (Princeton University Press), and it contains a complex new analysis of the importance of an entrepreneurial culture … read more on The New York Times website by clicking here

 

In the spring of 2013, students in a course called Markets, Innovation, and Design 300 created websites for local organizations.  This project was developed by Professors Doug Allen and Joe Meiser to offer students a real world learning experience in the application of design strategies and marketing theory to create value for clients.  Professors Allen and Meiser first decided to co-teach this course together during a BIG meeting, and the active learning provided in this project and focus on innovation are certainly consistent with the mission of BIG.  The Daily Item, a local newspaper, wrote an article on the project that is included below.

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http://www.meetup.com/Tech-Meetup-Lewisburg/

… bringing interesting, talented, and motivated people together to network, share ideas, and start making innovative new products with cool new technology.

4th Tuesday of every month, at noon

Bucknell’s Entrepreneurs Incubator

416 Market Street (across from the campus theatre)

Join in to explore and populate the intersections of Technology & Entrepreneurship and of Bucknell and the Community!

For more information, contact Steven Stumbris: sstumbri@bucknell.edu

 

http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/sbdc/Innovation_Workshop_2013_BucknellSBDC.pdf

7/10 and 7/31, 2013

Through Bucknell’s Small Business Development Center (SBDC), Prof. Seth Orsborn will offer summer workshops guiding area firms through ideation, opportunity identification, and product development exercises to to start them on the path to innovation, launch and growth. Faculty, staff, and students are invited to contact Steve Stumbris at the SBDC <sstumbri@bucknell.edu> to learn of ways to participate and opportunities to collaborate with companies and entrepreneurs throughout the area.

Participants will learn how to lead innovation effectively by:

* Analyzing Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT)

* Exploring Societal, Economic, and Technological (SET) factors

* Identifying Product Opportunity Gaps

 

The Bucknell Innovation Group (BIG) is hosting a social event this Friday, November 30, from 4:30 to 6:30pm. All faculty, administrators, and staff are welcome to attend, so if you’re curious about the group’s activities then please stop by.  This event will be held at the greenhouse on level 4 of the Biology building.  Refreshments will be provided.  We hope you’ll join us.

 

 

BIG’s first event of the school year will be an Inspirational Social, scheduled for Tuesday, September 4, from 4-6pm in the East Reading Room of the Bertrand Library. There you will find refreshments as well as your innovative colleagues, and will have time to chat about the status of your projects and hear some updates on other BIG projects from the 2011-12 school year.

Please plan to join us — regrets only are necessary!  Bring a friend with you to join the fun…

 

 

Project Description:

The “Square Peg Round Hole” workshop, hosted by the Department of Theatre and Dance, explored the world of Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorder with the internationally renown theatre Company The Tectonic Theatre Project. Through the generous support of the Bucknell Innovation Group and The Geisninger Health System who co-sponsored the workshop, we had an exciting and successful week culminating in a final showing and reception on Friday, May 26 2012 for Bucknell Faculty and Geisinger professionals. Our audience shared with us their responses in a talk back following the presentation. Comments were enthusiastically positive and many shared how moved they were by the engaging and theatrical approach the company used to approach the sensitive topic of Autism Spectrum Disorder. This interdisciplinary project brought together Bucknell faculty, alumni and students from several different departments in order to develop a work that promises a full production in NYC through the Tectonic Theatre Workshop in their 2013-2014 season. Below is a list of cast/workshop participants for the project, which include representation from the Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Music, Dance, Art, Philosophy, Theatre and Neuroscience. Thanks to BIG, initiatives like this have the opportunity to impact our community and others in many new and exciting ways. Thanks BIG!

 

Project Participants:

Andy Paris (Tectonic Theatre Company), Prof. Anjalee Hutchinson (Theatre), Anushka Paris-Carter (Tectonic Theatre Company), Christina Cody (Theatre ’12), C.J. Fujimura (Philosophy ’13), Prof. David Evans (Neuroscience), Diego Chiri (Theatre ’12), Prof. Heath Hansum (Theatre), Prof. Joseph Tranquillo (Biomedical Engineering), Prof. Joe Meiser (Art), Kaitlin “Sparky” Marsh (Theatre ’13), Katharina Schmidt (Theatre ’13), Prof. Kelly Knox (Theatre), Mark Hutchinson (Theatre), Prof. Phil Haynes (Music), Prof. Steven Shooter (Engineering), Prof. Sarah Martin (Theatre – Adelphi University).

 

So you’re a cyborg — now what?

By Elizabeth Landau, CNN

Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) — Quick: What’s the fattiest system in your body that has two halves and weighs between 2 and 4 pounds?

It’s your brain — you know, that thing that remembers stuff. But because of rapidly evolving information technology, your first impulse was probably to search for the answer on the Internet.

As we become ever more dependent on external sources of memory — using GPS to guide our driving, smartphones to keep our schedules — it’s time to rethink our ideas about what “memory” actually is.

While we don’t physically plug smartphones and other devices into our heads, in some ways we’re already one with them, as evidenced by the anxiety we feel when we’re without them. Would you remember to pick up milk? Would you know your parents’ phone numbers?

If you’ve ever found yourself running late because you left your phone at home, “you might be a cyborg,” says Fred Trotter, a blogger who spoke about information technology at the Health Journalism 2012 conference in April.

Brain implants that make you think of “Avatar,” “The Matrix” and “Star Trek” may still be to come, and scientists are working on ways that we can control devices with thoughts alone. Researchers at Duke University last year, for instance, showed how a monkey could control a virtual arm with its brain, as well as feel sensations the appendage delivered.

But in some ways it doesn’t matter that we’re pushing buttons with our fingers instead of our thoughts. We have become dependent on the networked devices that live in our pockets and colorful rubber cases, rather than what’s in our skulls.

“They’re really external extensions of our mind,” said Joseph Tranquillo, associate professor of biomedical and electrical engineering at Bucknell University…

* Click here to read more *

 

Velcro, Vaseline, Teflon, penicillin, and now perhaps the rocket – they were all happy accidents

A man lets off fireworks during a festival in Guangzhou. Chinese alchemists created explosive mixtures in their quest for an elixir of life. Photograph: China Photos/Getty

Any scientist will tell you – probably at length, if you’re buying the drinks – that as much as they love their career, the day-to-day benchwork can be somewhat repetitive.

It’s the eureka moments that make science worthwhile, and such moments are all the sweeter when they’re unexpected. What the Dutch call geluk bij een ongeluk (“happiness by accident”) and English speakers call serendipity – although when an irritating colleague receives serendipity’s blessing, we’re more likely to call him or her a jammy bastard.

Happy accidents have a secure place in scientific history. Perhaps the best known example is of Alexander Fleming, who was working at St Mary’s Hospital in 1928 when he noticed that a culture of Staphylococcus aureus had become contaminated with mould – and the mould was destroying the bacteria. This chance observation led, ultimately, to the development of penicillin and other antibiotics. Similarly, x-rays, radiation and pulsars – and in a less exotic vein, Velcro, Vaseline and Teflon – all owe their discovery or existence to serendipity.

Click here to read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/may/04/oops-invented-rocket-happy-accidents#

 

On Friday, 4/27, a performance was held in the Langone Center’s first floor hearth space that included students and faculty from Biomedical Engineering, Sculpture, Dance, and the Bucknell Interdisciplinary Improvisation Ensemble (BIIE)—who converged on the theme of impulse and spontaneous action.

The Biomedical Engineering students created “bioinstruments” that recorded and transformed biological signals to MIDI code that was sent out to a sound system.  The Sculpture 2 students presented wearable art that metaphorically enhanced or restricted impulsive action.  BIIE, with its practiced approach to improvisational music and dance, brought another layer of evocative action to the exchange. Participating faculty included: Phil Haynes from the Department of Music, Dustyn Martincich from the Department of Theatre and Dance, Joe Meiser from the Department of Art and Art History, and Joseph Tranquillo from the Department of Biomedical Engineering.  Special thanks to Mark Hutchinson, Heath Hansum, and Aaron Meyers for the technical support they provided in realizing this project.

*To read more and see a larger collection of photographs, click here.*

 

 
 
 

A fun clip of a workshop that Phil Haynes led with BIIE (the Bucknell Interdisciplinary Improvisational Ensemble) and Steven Shooter & Seth Orsborne’s IMPACT class earlier this spring.

 
 

“Art and Narrative Explorations” was a collaborative project conducted in 2011 and 2012 between Sue Ellen Henry (an Education professor) and Joe Meiser (a professor of Studio Art). In the Education course, students wrote detailed narratives about their lives in order to examine aspects of their identity, specifically addressing race and social class. These narratives were collected, and identifying information was removed in order to make the papers anonymous. Each of the Education students then had their photograph taken.

In the Drawing course, the students tried to match the author’s anonymous narrative to their photograph. Based on the narrative and photo they selected, each Drawing student then drew a portrait in a selected context to convey the author’s identity.

Finally, the two classes were brought together for a discussion that was facilitated by Carmen Gillespie, a professor from the English Department. Carmen merged the learning goals of the Drawing and Education classes with her own relevant insights from literary studies. As was expected, few of the drawing students accurately matched the narratives to the photos. In fact, some of the students even mistook female authors for male, and vice versa. From this exchange, Drawing students gained familiarity with the politics of representation and an understanding of how art can reflect and actively influence people in the world at large.  Due to the way that their narratives and portraits were (mis)represented and the discussion that ensued, the Education students walked away with an stronger understanding of the complexity of identity issues.  Overall, this final discussion illuminated the nebulous and ambiguous nature of identity, the pervasive influence of social conditioning, and the unreliability of preconceptions.

 


On Friday, 4/27, a performance was held in the Langone Center’s first floor hearth space that included students and faculty from Biomedical Engineering, Sculpture, Dance, and the Bucknell Interdisciplinary Improvisation Ensemble (BIIE)—who converged on the theme of impulse and spontaneous action

The Biomedical Engineering students created “bioinstruments” that recorded and transformed biological signals to MIDI code that was sent out to a sound system.  The Sculpture 2 students presented wearable art that metaphorically enhanced or restricted impulsive action.  BIIE, with its practiced approach to improvisational music and dance, brought another layer of evocative action to the exchange. Participating faculty included: Phil Haynes from the Department of Music, Dustyn Martincich from the Department of Theatre and Dance, Joe Meiser from the Department of Art and Art History, and Joseph Tranquillo from the Department of Biomedical Engineering.

 

Bioinstruments

These non-traditional instruments were imagined and built by Biomedical Engineering students as part of the Fundamentals of Biomedical Signals and Systems course. Each instrument recorded one or more biological signals and then transformed those signals to MIDI code that was then sent out to the sound system. There were no prerecorded sounds and everything was generated on-the-fly. Student teams developed their devices in collaboration with student members of the Bucknell Improvisation Intensive Ensemble (BIIE). Members of the audience were invited to try the instruments after the performance.

Sculpture 2: Body Sculptures

Students in Sculpture 2 created the wearable art objects that were on display. This assignment was an investigation of the mind-body connection and the influence of animal instincts on human behavior.  The class examined performance art and improvisational dance as catalysts for creating the meaningful action that was exhibited in this performance.  Students designed their projects to metaphorically feed or control a particular impulse.

The Bucknell Improvisation Intensive Ensemble (BIIE)

The Bucknell Improvisation Intensive Ensemble specializes in open, improvised, non-jazz new music performed by Bucknell music majors led by jazz artist Phil Haynes.  The creation of BIIE supplies a performance-oriented forum for interested musicians to build ensemble sensitivity, shed inhibitions, stimulate interpretive flexibility and improvisational breadth, and to develop the relationship between the conscious mind and sub-conscious imagination.  BIIE avidly collaborates with other faculty, staff, and student interdisciplinary artists on campus and in the community, including dancers, poets, film makers, and curious audiences. Their sensitive ensemble music is exploratory by nature–acoustic, organic, and avante-modern–as they examine music as “aesthetically organized sound,” improvisation as “spontaneous composition,” and ensemble as “instant orchestration and staging.”

Space Infiltration Project

This project also grew out of the Bucknell Innovation Group, and aims to infiltrate public spaces on campus with what might be termed “flash innovation.” Examples might include setting up interactive games for the university community to play and/or watch; teaching class sessions in residence halls to open up discussions to a wider community; and presenting Tina Cody’s Double-Take project in the LC Hearth Space or on the Academic Quad. The goal is to allow our entire community to see the different learning possibilities at Bucknell and to open up discussion about space needs and uses.

** Special thanks to Mark Hutchinson, Heath Hansum, and Aaron Meyers for the technical support they provided in realizing this project.

 

In preparation for the final performance, Joe Tranquillo and Phil Haynes led an improv workshop with BIIE and the Sculpture 2 students.

 

Project Description:

The Makers Society will be a club organized and governed by students that emphasizes the development of the skills needed to design, and create original items.  The club seeks to facilitate collaboration on extra-curricular projects between students from multiple disciplines and provide creative and practical opportunities for the students to develop new making skills.  The club will provide students with skills and knowledge that complement their coursework, an opportunity to interact and collaborate with students from other disciplines.

The Bucknell University Makers Society hosted its inaugural meeting on Friday, April 6, 2012. This meeting included an “Egg Drop” competition with prizes for the winning designs.  *Click here to see more photos of the event*

 

Project Participants:

Student Club Officers: Nick D’Esposito, John Puleo, Ben Schrock, Dan Flanigan, Abbott Cowen

Nate Siegel, Mechanical Engineering

Joe Meiser, Art & Art History

Heath Hansum, Theatre & Dance

Seth Orsborn, Management

Eric Kennedy, Biomedical Engineering

 

Project Description:

This project aims to infiltrate public spaces on campus with what might be termed “flash innovation.” Examples might include setting up interactive games for the university community to play and/or watch; teaching class sessions in residence halls to open up discussions to a wider community; and presenting Tina Cody’s Double-Take project in the LC Hearth Space or on the Academic Quad. The goal is to allow our entire community to see the different learning possibilities at Bucknell and to open up discussion about space needs and uses.

The photos above are from a BIG Space Infiltration that occurred on Tuesday February 14th with Steve Shooter and Seth Orsborn’s  IMPACT! class, which was held in the Hearth Space across from the Bison.  President John Bravman gave a guest lecture on creativity.

Tina Cody, founder of the “Doubletake” project, put on a show for the Late Night Series at 7th Street Café on Friday March 2nd.  After a long semester of researching the campus climate and being overwhelmed by the social scene on campus, Tina asked the audience to take part in a discussion of hopeful stories from students and staff at Bucknell. The venue was packed, and after Tina performed some of the hopeful stories she’s gathered from interviews on campus she opened up the mic for the audience to take part and tell their stories about what makes Bucknell special. Over twenty people spoke including current students, alum, a staff member and student visiting from another University.

Project Participants:

Mark Hutchinson, (Organizer) Theatre and Dance

Steve Shooter, Engineering

Ned Ladd, Physics and Astronomy

Heath Hansum, Theatre and Dance

Param S. Bedi, L&IT

Sue Ellen Henry, Education

Tina Cody, Student

Eve Carlson, Student

 

“Art and Narrative Explorations” was a collaborative project conducted in 2011 and 2012 between Sue Ellen Henry (an Education professor) and Joe Meiser (a professor of Studio Art).  In the Education course, students wrote detailed narratives about their lives in order to examine aspects of their identity.  These narratives were collected, and identifying information was removed in order to make the papers anonymous.  Each of the Education students then had their photographs taken.

In the Drawing course, the students tried to match the author’s anonymous narrative to their photograph. Based on the narrative and photo they selected, each Drawing student then drew a portrait to convey the author’s identity.

Finally, the two classes were brought together for a discussion that was facilitated by Carmen Gillespie, a professor from the English Department.  Carmen merged the learning goals of the Drawing and Education classes with her own relevant insights from literary studies.  As was expected, very few of the drawing students accurately matched the narratives to the photos.  In fact, some of the students even mistook female authors for male, and vice versa. From this exchange Drawing students gained an understanding of how art can reflect and actively influence people in the world at large, and due to the way that their narratives and portraits were (mis)represented, the Education students walked away with a reconsidered sense of self.  Overall, this final discussion illuminated the nebulous and changing nature of identity, the pervasive influence of social conditioning, and the unreliability of preconceptions.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bucknell University Makers Society hosted its inaugural meeting on Friday, April 6, 2012. This meeting included an “Egg Drop” competition with prizes for the winning designs.  Teams assembled their egg parachutes in the Mooney Design Lab, and then carried their projects upstairs to drop them off of the roof.  Click here to read more about the Makers Society.

 

Come join us Thursday, April 12, 1-2:30 in Dana 134

Just eight years ago, The LEGO Group was running out of cash and near bankruptcy. Many of its innovation efforts were unprofitable or had failed outright. But today, LEGO’s revenues and profits are soaring in a declining toy market. Over the past three years, LEGO has grown sales by 25% per year, and profits at twice that rate.

What is the secret of LEGO’s dramatic turnaround? David studied The LEGO Group and discovered how its managers changed the ways they managed innovation. In this interactive lecture, Robertson will explain how LEGO turned itself around from a failing venture to the healthiest, most profitable and fastest-growing company in the toy industry.

David Robertson joined the faculty of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 2011. He teaches Innovation and Product Development in Wharton’s undergraduate, MBA, and executive education programs. From 2002 through 2010, Robertson was the LEGO Professor of Innovation and Technology Management at Switzerland’s prestigious Institute for Management Development (IMD).

This will be the best 90 minutes of your spring. Brought to you by KEEN

Seating is limited. Reserve your spot by contacting Steve Shooter at shooter@bucknell.edu. Put LegoMe in the subject line.  Open to students, faculty and staff.

 
 

Project Description:

Our main goal is to give members of the Bucknell Community an opportunity to break out of their comfort zones and reach out to other people to get an insight into the aspects of Bucknell with which they are not familiar. Participants would be acquire responses to the prompt “What is Bucknell for you?” from five people that they are not acquainted with, preferably from groups on campus with which would not normally associate. We will use the boxes to build structures that spell out the letters “BUCKNELL” and display them across campus. Our aim is to unveil the structures during the Diversity Pride Week, which runs from April 7 – 12, 2012.

Project Participants:

Kelly Finley, Residential Education

The Bucknell community at large

 

Project Description:

This collaboration aims to generate mutually beneficial relationships among Bucknell students and faculty and surrounding communities that are particularly impacted by immigration. In collaboration with Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit and Bucknell Elementary School, our students will meet and collaborate with youth from multicultural communities. This initiative will afford our students the opportunity to learn “beyond the classroom” and see multiculturalism and the impact of immigration in schools and communities, as well as learn to develop rapport with young learners from different social/racial/language and ethnic backgrounds while supporting them in their learning.

Project Participants:

Ramona Fruja, Education

Sue Ellen Henry, Education

Juli Corrigan, Director of Outreach and Community Education, Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit (CSIU);

Sue Stetler, Program Manager of Migrant Education and ESL Services, Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit (CSIU);

Bucknell Elementary School, Fairfax, VA; (Tim Slayter, principal)

Students in EDUC327/627, Immigrant Youth in the U.S.

Students in EDUC 318, Multiculturalism and Education

 

Project Description:

The LPPP is a fundraiser, conducted each spring semester, to support low-income families financial access to the Lewisburg Community Pool for the upcoming swim season. This year, Panhellenic Council would like to work with students in EDUC 318/618 to co-sponsor the fundraising event, as part of their effort to philanthropic development in all sororities.

Project Participants:

Jackie Petrucci, Dean of Students Office

Sue Ellen Henry, Education

Panhellenic Representatives
Katrina Butt
Sarah Reid
Jess Morra
Caitlin McGilvery
Emily Andrews

Students of EDUC 318/618

 

Project Description:

In a success-driven society such as ours—and especially at a high-ranking liberal arts college such as Bucknell—to speak of professional or personal “failure” remains something of a taboo. This project seeks to acknowledge, understand and even, to an extent, confirm and validate failure as part of the teaching and learning process. We are especially keen to explore the meanings and implications of “failure” across academic divisions and disciplines, especially as it relates to taking risks.

Project Participants:

Doug Allen, Management
Craig Beal, Mechanical Engineering
Karen Castle, Chemistry
David Cipoletti, Mechanical Engineering
Skip McGoun, Management

Seth Orsborn, Management
James Shields, Comparative Humanities

 

Project Description:

This initiative seeks to develop a residential late-night programming series that encourages faculty/staff and student engagement outside the classroom and will provide an outlet for creativity and collaboration. The sessions will offer students an opportunity to exercise their creativity, explore problem-solving techniques, and develop communication skills.  Events will take place on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday evenings as an alternative social option.

Project Leader:

Amy Badal, Associate Dean of Students

 

Project Description:

These faculty and staff plan to create a course that studies New Orleans through a variety of disciplines, including at least music, civil engineering, and socio-cultural studies.  Our course could be taught in a regular academic calendar, but is currently being crafted as a three-week intensive course that would include travel to New Orleans and a tour of the new Army Corp Levee Projects, a variety of musical venues and a geographic and historical orientation to the city.  Their goal is to recruit students from both Colleges and provide them with a truly interdisciplinary experience.

Project Participants:

Brian Gockley, Teaching and Learning Center
Kevin Gilmore, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Phil Haynes, Music

 

Project Description:

These faculty members will develop and run a course designed to help ENGR, MGMT, and other students learn how to identify and develop innovative business ideas. Through the course the students will develop a business strategy including business plan, business model, and feasibility evaluation. They will also have to identify a customer base and do some basic market research, including surveying if appropriate. The course is scheduled to run in Fall 2012.

Project Participants:

Erin Jablonski, Chemical Engineering

Brandon Vogel, Chemical Engineering

Seth Orsborn, Management

 

The lights went out on Bucknell’s Main Quad for an evening of jazz music and astronomy on Friday, 8 June. The quartet “Free Country,” led by BIGster Phil Haynes performed jazz-inspired interpretations of tunes from America’s musical past, while fellow BIGster Ned Ladd trained telescopes on Saturn, Mars, and other celestial sights for public viewing.

“Free Country is an acoustic, jazzy, ‘NPR friendly’ string band specializing in the history of American popular music,” said Haynes. The program included Negro spirituals, Revolutionary and Civil War Hymns, Stephen Foster, Aaron Copland, Hollywood’s Western movie soundtracks, the Beatles and 1960s Rock revolution’s anthems.

More than 200 people attended the late-night outdoor concert and star party. “Jazz music and astronomy go so well together,” said Ladd. “They’re both highly technical, but also pull so strongly on our emotions. Both endeavors are about exploration — seeing what’s possible out there.”  Throughout the evening, conversations ranged from “Free Country’s” stringed interpretation of “Day Tripper” to discussions of the science of black holes and why Saturn has rings.

Joining Haynes in “Free Country” were Hank Roberts, cello and vocals; Jim Yanda, guitar; and Drew Gress, bass.

 

Project Description:

The goal of this initiative is to Introduce STEM concepts to elementary school children in an engaging, interdisciplinary way.  Will have Bucknell students (both from the STEM fields and possibly education) take the concepts to the schools that are most in need of STEM education (e.g. Milton, Sunbury).  We will attempt to pair the STEM students with Education students for training/planning of the modules.

Project Participants:

Emily Geist, Mechanical Engineering

Katie Bieryla, Biomedical Engineering;

Donna Ebenstein,  Biomedical Engineering

Michelle Oswald, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Sue Ellen Henry, Education

 

Project Description:

The primary goal will be to bring together arts and technology faculty, staff, and students to share ideas about the intersection of the arts with technology.  This meshes well with one of the goals of the Presidential Arts Initiative as well.  As an institution that combines an excellent College of Arts and Sciences with a top-notch College of Engineering and School of Management, Bucknell is uniquely equipped to take advantage of the intersection between the arts and technology, an area critical to success across disciplines in the digital/electronic age.

Project Participants:

Paula Davis, Theater and Dance

Felipe Perrone, Computer Science

Roger Rothman, Art and Art History

Joe Meiser, Art and Art History

Nathan Siegel, Mechanical Engineering

 

Project Description:

Innovation/collaboration often needs incubation. This team proposes establishing a weekly lunch table at the Refectory and a monthly Social Hour. These will be minimally billed as “Bucknellian mixers”, but may leave open the possibility for themes, i.e. folks looking for IP opportunities or talking about project-based learning. The primary goal is simply to provide a context conducive to meeting new faculty and staff outside of usual circles.

Project Participants:

Mathew Slater, Philosophy

Jordi Comas, Management

Nate Siegel, Mechanical Engineering

James Shields, Comparative Humanities

Joe Meiser, Art

Katie Beiryla, Biomedical Engineering

Jackie Petrucci, Student Affairs

Beth Bouchard, Student Affairs

 

Project Description:

The goal of this project is to facilitate greater connectivity between Bucknellians (and the local community) about common aims and interests. Increased connectivity can help teaching, research, and institutional initiatives. The exchange will explore and experiment with effective tools for storing, building, and sharing Bucknellians’ interests and aspirations to help foster collaborative efforts. One aspect of the Exchange profile will be a five-minute snap talk by the individual. The snap talks will be shared in a public symposium and then posted on the Exchange.

 

Project Participants:

John Hunter, Comparative Humanities

Mathew Slater, Philosophy

Param Bedi, VP of LIT

Jordi Comas, Management

Pete Mackey, VP of Communications

Roberta Sims, Digital Communications

Steve Shooter, Mechanical Engineering

 

Project Description:

The standardized formats of financial statements constrain their interpretation, regardless of their specific contents.  This topic is rarely addressed in the academic literature.  An interesting course might begin with speculation on how this occurs, that is, how human cognitive processes are unintentionally exploited to narrow the range of possible interpretations of the data.  The course would then proceed to imagine how the same data might be presented in ways that target the other human senses – sculpture, music, and dance among them – thereby tapping into other parts of the brain and perceiving different patterns.

Project Participants:

Elton G. McGoun, School of Management

 

Project Description:

QR codes enable users to be directed to websites via the camera on one’s smartphone. Printing QR codes on adhesive would enable faculty and students to plant virtual worlds (websites; video/audio clips) all over the real world. Were QR codes to be placed on benches and outside classroom doors, users could access their information while waiting for “the main event” to occur. In effect, QR codes could be used to engage people during the many “interstitial” moments in the day. In addition, they could be hidden about the campus so that one might serendipitously stumble upon them.

Project Participants:

Paula Davis, Theater and Dance

Roger Rothman, Art and Art History

Mike Weaver, L&IT

Eric Kennedy, Biomedical Engineering

James Shields, Comparative Humanities

Matt Slater, Philosophy

Ned Ladd, Physics and Astronomy

Michelle Oswald, Civil and environmental Engineering

 

 

Project Description:

Community Corridor is a project that brings students out of the classroom and onto the historic Buffalo Valley Rail Trail in the context of an IP course. They will conduct research on the history of the corridor, oral histories, literal and non-literal mapping, agriculture, and architecture, among other subjects. After conducting and synthesizing their research, students will create virtual (and physical) artworks to build along the trail-way. Users of the trail would access these artworks via location-aware devices like smart phones or laptops. The creative works, whether auditory, visual, semi-permanent or ephemeral, would allow visitors to the trail to access hidden layers of reality, history, and local experience.

Project Participants:

Anna Kell, Department of Art & Art History

Alf Siewers, Department of English

 

Bucknell University sophomore psychology major Lindsay Zajac talks with a sixth grader at Bucknell Elementary School in Virginia.

Bucknell University sophomore psychology major Lindsay Zajac admits she felt a little nervous as she waited for an unknown face to appear on her computer screen.

“Brittany was the first to pop up on the screen, and I was like ‘Oh my goodness, it’s working,'” Zajac recalled.

Brittany is one of several fifth and sixth grade students from Bucknell Elementary school in Virginia participating in an online learning collaboration with Bucknell University. The elementary school is part of the Fairfax County Public School district, the eleventh largest in the country. It sits on land once owned by the University, hence the shared name. Using online educational tools, including technology similar to Skype, about 20 Bucknell University students have held virtual ‘face-to-face’ meetings with the elementary students… click here to read more

 

 

Meeting the Challenges of Innovation – The 1990s Inventive Story of the Zip Drive

Ever wonder about the difference between invention and innovation? Or how they might interplay in the development of a truly market disruptive product?  The 1990s-era story of the development of the super floppy for data storage will be told here. The critical insights, competitive pressures, and inventive challenges behind the Zip Drive are described.  Products such as the Bernoulli Box, Floptical, LS-120, HiFD, Clik! Drive, industrial espionage interlopers such as the French Company Nomai, and the infamous Zip click-of-death are all part of this technology tale. Ultimately, this presentation will examine, through a few select engineering challenges faced during the development of the Zip drive, how the confluence of directed invention can deliver market innovation of the first order.  The rise and fall of a technology and product is described by one of its principal innovators.  An interesting story with a few product innovation insights is the target of this discussion.

Fred Thomas’ Bio:

Fred Thomas received a BS in Mechanical Engineering with a Minor in Physics as well as his MS in Mechanical Engineering from Bucknell University in 1982 & 1990 respectively. His Master’s Degree work at Bucknell was directed at control systems and non-linear dynamics via the construction of a Chaos Machine for his thesis.

Mr. Thomas has been employed at Hewlett-Packard for the past six years, initially as Principal Hardware Architect–MediaSmart Home Servers; and since 2010, as Champion for Innovation Intent—PC Ecosystem and Responsiveness. Previously Fred Thomas was Iomega’s Chief Technologist in Advanced Research and Development where he worked for 14 years. In addition, he was the owner/engineer of Prototype Devices, and an Electro-Optic Systems Engineer at Texas Instruments for five years.

Fred Thomas’ technical interest is in the fusion of new technologies for the enhancement or creation of new products. With 50-plus issued and many pending US patents, Fred has demonstrated his ability to deliver innovation to products that ship and are market successes. This creativity has been demonstrated in several fields, including data storage, sensors, actuators, mechanisms, electro-optics, machine vision, nano-technology, data security, network attached storage, and intellectual property. His work at Iomega Corporation was essential to the Zip, Jaz, Clik!, DCT, Floptical, Peerless and REV removable storage products. His work on subwavelength optical data storage, which allows for multiple 10s of fold increase in the capacity of DVDs, is embodied in two issued and one pending patents.

Mr. Thomas’ awards include the International Design Excellence Award in 2009, Industrial Forum Product Design Award in 2008, “Nano50 Award” for “Subwavelength Optical Data Storage” in 2005, Lemelson-MIT “Inventor of the Week” Award in 2004, Iomega “Exceptional Invention Award” in 1999, and Laser Focus World “Electro-Optic Application of the Year Award” in 1994.

 

At IDEO, a “design thinker” must not only be intensely collaborative, but “empathic, as well as have a craft to making things real in the world.” Since design flavors virtually all of our experiences, from products to services to spaces, a design thinker must explore a “landscape of innovation” that has to do with people, their needs, technology and business. Brown dips into three central “buckets” in the process of creating a new design: inspiration, ideation and implementation.

Design thinkers must set out like anthropologists or psychologists, investigating how people experience the world emotionally and cognitively. While designing a new hospital, IDEO staff stretched out on a gurney to see what the emergency room experience felt like. “You see 20 minutes of ceiling tiles,” says Brown, and realize the “most important thing is telling people what’s going on.” In a completely different venue, IDEO visited a NASCAR pit crew to come up with a more effective design for operating theaters.

After inspiration comes “building to think:” often a hundred prototypes created quickly, both to test the design and to create stakeholders in the process. Says Brown, “So many good ideas fail to make it out to market because they couldn’t navigate through the system.” IDEO counts on storytelling to develop and express its ideas, and to buy key players into the concept. Finally, IDEO relies on constantly refreshing its sources of inspiration by bringing in bold thinkers to campus, and increasingly, focusing on socially oriented design problems.

Click here to listen to the full lecture that Tim Brown gave at MIT in 2006: http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/357/

 

 

In spring, 2010, 18 students from Multiculturalism and Education (EDUC 318/618) initiated a service learning project aimed at responding to the tragedy of drownings of two local children, Assunda Rotolo (age 11) and Les Davis (age 8), when swimming in the Susquehanna River in August, 2009.

Built on the premise that no one should be denied access to the Community Pool because of finances, and that the river is an unsupervised location for recreation, the group devised an event to raise money for a dedicated fund at the Lewisburg Area Recreation Authority to support local families in purchasing pool passes. Again, a group of 20 students will undertake the task of coordinating a fundraiser to support this dedicated fund.

The students organized a Fun Walk/Run for Assunda and Les, which took place on April 25, 2010 in the Bucknell Fieldhouse. Over 260 individuals took part in the event; $4000 was raised to start the fund. Five local families contributed what they could to purchase a pool pass; the remainder of the cost was supported by the fund. The local chapter of the American Red Cross offered free swimming lessons to all members of these families.

Since this initial success, students in the spring 2011 course completed another fundraiser. Nearly $4000 was raised, supporting 16 families in the summer of 2011. This year, working cooperatively with Panhellenic, the spring 2012 class will plan yet another event, moving the fund to a more sustainable level of support.

 

Accounting majors at Bucknell will often add half-credit courses each semester, when available, in order to graduate with sufficient course credits to meet professional certification requirements.  Many courses concerning innovation attract students with a prior interest in innovation; however, accounting students’ unique course demands provide an opportunity to create a course concerning innovation (for one-half credit) targeted at a group that is less likely to have considered taking one.

The standardized formats of financial statements constrain their interpretation, regardless of their specific contents.  This topic is rarely addressed in the academic literature.  An interesting course might begin with speculation on how this occurs, that is, how human cognitive processes are unintentionally exploited to narrow the range of possible interpretations of the data.  The course would then proceed to imagine how the same data might be presented in ways that target the other human senses – sculpture, music, and dance among them – thereby tapping into other parts of the brain and perceiving different patterns.

 

Steven Shooter, a professor in Mechanical Engineering, designed and fabricated this device to assist Animal Behavior professor Peter Judge and Casey Krause in their study of cooperation among capuchin monkeys.

 

John Hunter and Joseph Tranquillo will be co-teaching a course cross-listed across arts and sciences and the college of engineering called “Brain, Mind, and Culture” (HUMN 301/BMEG 461). The course’s goal is to juxtapose and analyze neuroscientific and culturally based approaches to problems of selfhood, free will, memory, and knowledge to see what each could learn from the other. As well, it will model the lack of established pathways for this endeavor by requiring students to collectively (1) decide what course materials we will study; (2) in what order we examine them; and (3) how the format in which a body of knowledge is presented influences the conclusions that we draw about it.

 

Sue Ellen Henry and Joe Meiser conducted this project in the spring of 2011, bringing together a multiculturalism in education course and drawing course. Education students wrote narratives throughout the semester to investigate and seek a better understanding of their own identities and social conditioning.  Through an exchange of anonymous narratives and unidentified photographs, the drawing students attempted to match up the authors of the narratives to the corresponding photographs. The two classes were brought together for a final meeting at the end of the semester, and as was expected, very few of the drawing students accurately chose their narrative’s author.  In fact, some of the students even mistook female authors for male, and vice versa. The discussion that followed at this final meeting illuminated the unreliability of preconceptions and reminded all of the participants of the importance of meeting each new person as an individual.

This collaboration was organized again in 2012, click here for more information about this second iteration of the project.

 

 

People often credit their ideas to individual “Eureka!” moments. But Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story. His fascinating tour takes us from the “liquid networks” of London’s coffee houses to Charles Darwin’s long, slow hunch to today’s high-velocity web.

 

Five faculty members are working together to pursue funding for a robotic system capable of precisely milling three-dimensional forms at a large-scale.  In recent years, designers, engineers, and artists have begun to use robotic milling systems in their workflow in a variety of industries.  Acquiring this system for our university would enhance faculty research, present unique pedagogical opportunities for our students, and serve as a catalyst for interdisciplinary collaboration.

To offer just a few examples, students and faculty would use this system to:

  • Create streamlined vehicle bodies that would enable engineering students to test aerodynamics
  • Produce complex sculptural forms that would be inconceivable with traditional art-making techniques
  • Fabricate product prototypes that would be used by marketing students to better understand consumer preferences
  • Build lightweight stage props and scenery elements for theater productions

This robotic milling system would also serve as a catalyst for interdisciplinary and cross-college collaboration. Students and faculty from Engineering, Art & Art History, Theatre & Dance, and The School of Management would converge to utilize the milling system for vastly different purposes, which would create a dynamic environment of intellectual exchange.  For example, an engineering student could: learn about aesthetics by working with artists, consider the market viability of their own project in a new light after interacting with a student studying product design, or directly observe how the principles they’re learning about in their engineering courses are being practically applied in theater stage design. We believe that this milling system would bring together educational silos and act as an extraordinary platform for interdisciplinary education.

The group pursuing funding for this equipment consists of: Nathan Siegel from the Mechanical Engineering Department, Seth Orsborn from the School of Management, Heath Hansum from Theatre & Dance, Steven Shooter from the Mechanical Engineering Department, and Joe Meiser from Art & Art History.

 

This course will be co-taught by Professor John Hunter from Comparative Humanities and Professor Joe Tranquillo from Biomedical and Electrical Engineering

 

COURSE GOALS:

This course will explore the contact points between humanistic and scientific thinking about the nature of the brain, the mind (is it “in” in the brain or does it consist of the brain and other things?), and culture (here used as an abbreviation for all the things that human beings make and experience together). Its central questions will include: to what extent does understanding how the brain works allow us to understand what it thinks and produces?  To what extent does culture determine the way we think (and vice versa)? Are thought and memory properties of our brains alone or of our interactions with the world? Has science found the neurological basis for aspects of human experience that have been considered beyond scientific explanation for centuries?

No prior knowledge of these debates is assumed and students from all majors are welcome. The course is being co-taught with a biomedical engineering seminar. Learning to integrate the goals and methods of both colleges will be an important course goal.

 

DESCRIPTION OF SUBJECT MATTER

We will study novels, films, and online media to complement our readings in contemporary philosophy, art theory, cognitive science, and neuroscience

 

METHOD OF INSTRUCTION AND STUDY

Seminar discussion with active student participation (both orally and in writing); oral presentations. The course is being taught in tandem with a bio-medical engineering course, and cooperation and discussion will make use of the techniques of both groups of students.

 

 

Profs. Steve Shooter and Seth Orsborn

And special guests from Art, Theater, Music, English, Education and More

Spring Semester 2011, Tuesdays and Thursdays 1:00 – 3:00

UNIV380, MGMT386, MECH480

 

Innovation is seeing from a different perspective.

Innovation is using a different tool to get the job done better.

Innovation is learning nature’s secrets and reapplying them.

Innovation is going where no one else has thought to travel.

Innovation is succeeding despite having to try and try again.

Innovation is IMPACT.

 

Do you find yourself struggling to resist the tendency to copy what others are doing and maybe, just maybe, changing it a little?  Are you tired of the status quo, the day-after-day repetition?  Are you sick of the same old ideas being pitched with only a different wrapping?  Do you find that breaking the mold is much harder than you thought it would be?  Do you feel the desire to break free but struggle against the roadblocks in your mind?  Are you looking to make a difference?

 

Join us this Spring semester as we explore innovation across many disciplines with guest lectures from Joe Meiser (Sculpture), Heath Hansum and Mark Hutchinson (Theater), Sue Ellen Henry (Education), Phil Haynes (Music), John Hunter (Comparative Humanities), Joe Tranquillo (Biomedical Engineering), David Evans (Psychology), among others. We will examine what makes something innovative from multiple perspectives. We will employ methods to transform a creative idea into a useful solution that makes an IMPACT.

 

Enrollment is limited to 16 students from different disciplines across Bucknell.  If this course sounds exciting to you:

–       Get a recommendation from a faculty member.

–       Write a one paragraph description of why you want to explore innovation.

–       Email them to Prof. Orsborn (seth.orsborn@bucknell.edu) by October 26th.

 

“This is worth repeating. It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology is not enough. It’s tech married with the liberal arts and the humanities. Nowhere is that more true than in the post-PC products. Our competitors are looking at this like it’s the next PC market. That is not the right approach to this. These are post-PC devices that need to be easier to use than a PC, more intuitive.”