ICAT Playdate — Reimagining diVersiTy

hmm good morning uh thanks everybody for joining us for today's playdate i'm holly with icat and i've got a couple quick announcements before we get things started with our presentation for today icat will be partnering with the alliance for the arts and research universities which is abbreviated as a2ru to offer some workshops coming up in march and april so it will be a three-part series on funding in arts and design and the three parts will be federal funding uh corporate funding and philanthropic funding so the first workshop is going to be on march 18th we'll have a couple panelists from the neh and from the nea ben will be moderating those workshops and they are free they will be 90 minutes each starting at 3 o'clock if you would like to join us for those for the first one we have registration and information posted on our website on the events page so hopefully you can check that out and we'll be sharing more information about those as we line up our speakers and have more details about the upcoming two workshops we also have a call for projects out for our third accelerate festival it is the accelerate um smithsonian acc smithsonian creativity and innovation festival i haven't had to say that in a while it didn't roll off my tongue quite as easily it will be in the spring of 2022 we hope to be back in person at the smithsonian where we have had the previous two festivals at the national museum of american history so we are looking for projects that would represent virginia tech at the festival these projects should be interactive hands-on appealing to the public and representative of creativity and innovation at virginia tech if you'd like information on this call for projects we'd be happy to send that to you drop us an email at icat vt.edu and we can share that with you the deadline for this this is an internal call for the virginia tech projects and those will be due on may the 7th so now i'm going to turn it over to phyllis to tell us about what is coming up for icat creativity and innovation day in may great thank you holly uh so icat creativity and innovation day will be may 3rd we will do this as an online event as we did last year we're approaching that anniversary coming up very soon um but right now is the time if you've got a project to share at icat creativity and innovation day i hope that you will let us know that the deadline for that is march 19th and you can find the link to share that info on our website reach out to any of us if you have any trouble finding it this morning i have the privilege to introduce our speakers we have the reimagining diversity team at virginia tech these folks have been working together for a couple of years now to really build some some fascinating technology um and new ways to to think about how to make diversity um better and and we and do a better job of it at virginia tech um so i want to we'll start with the video uh but our team is quentin baldwin andrea baldwin rafael patrick and todd ogle i'm so glad you all are here this morning [Applause] as a former vice president of project management at a global investment bank with a background in finance and banking i viewed the university as a pool of assets that pool of assets includes students professors administrators researchers laboratories personal spaces local businesses alumni networks etc so as an outsider accustomed to a somewhat efficient allocation of resources towards a central purpose i began to wonder if a pmo modeled university-wide infrastructure might increase the development of intellectual property technology transfer experiential learning challenges with inclusiveness i thought why not optimize the use of your assets to re-envision and restructure the future of the institution and this to a great degree gave birth to reimagining diversity let me take you on a tour of our world [Applause] [Music] reimagining diversity is a transdisciplinary team of faculty staff and students who engage in a critical reframing of traditional approaches to diversity historically institutional practices of diversity have tended to appeal primarily to the social sciences and humanities whether to embrace or critique said practices we recognize that in order for diversity practices to be effective they need to appeal to a larger audience and engage their multiple perspectives and experiences in order to move forward in a more equitable way by developing a proprietary model that utilizes a decolonial and technological framework reimagining diversity demonstrates the importance of technology to diversity and diversity to technology we have been able to demonstrate the flexibility of our model through the creation of immersive experiences with a number of stakeholders including the vt science festival where our technology interns recreated immersive versions of exhibits to make them more accessible the iwo jima living learning community for black students at virginia tech interested in the history of race on campus and the industrial and systems engineering senior design program in the development of a recruitment platform for the purpose of attracting a more diverse student body to their department these and other ongoing initiatives positioned reimagining diversity as an organization that is and will be instrumental in bridging the gap between diversity and technology and technology and diversity in both theory and practice so what does reimagining diversity look like well rematching diversity is unique in the way that we view experiential learning we don't just assume that professors represent the only sources of knowledge quite the opposite we assume a multi-tiered learning environment where the expectation is for everyone to contribute we enable our teams to express entries and display capabilities that foster their creativity because our minds are as unique and individualized as our fingerprints secondly we are creating unique opportunities for students to interact with faculty staff graduate students and undergraduate students from disciplines across the university where together we engage in meaningful work and this just doesn't happen enough in academic settings so come join us and what is unique about who we are reimagining diversity is built on the concept of one family we acknowledge the fact that each individual whether they are faculty members across disciplines administrative staff graduates or undergraduates they each bring something special and that alone represents aspects of our reimagining aspects of our teaching aspects of our learning and what is unique about what we do there is a lot to be discovered in immersive experiences and we have taken an interest in developing immersive spaces as a platform for experiential learning from both the perspective of scholarly research and in setting client expectations andrea baldwin associate professor in the sociology department in particular the women's and gender studies and africana studies programs invited reimagining diversity into her ujima african studies introductory course in the fall semester of 2020 as the campus went remote i was searching for a way to make my introduction to african american studies class impactful to students my class is not only effective but it is also community based and it is hard to build community when we are all just squares on a zoom meeting and so i decided to speak with the team about creating an immersive experience tailored to a class focused on the history of african americans and we brainstorm on how that would look we ended up with an exercise that pulled in other experts from history who worked on excavating the experiences of black people at virginia tech from slavery to the first black students to the protest movements on campus and sports the students took this information visited key sites on campus and with the help of one of our interns created an immersive experience based on their interpretation of the past and their own experiences as black students at virginia tech and their visions of the future students walked away seeing themselves as an integral part of virginia tech's history in the making [Music] [Applause] [Music] for the past five years virginia tech has hosted a science festival for thousands of kids across virginia with the disruption caused by covid19 dr phyllis newbill outreach and engagement coordinator for sunny the center for educational networks and impact was interested in exploring the potential of immersive experiences around science and of course our team was eager to contribute given the challenges that all universities are facing around recruitment and retention and the social disparities that exist our team is keenly aware of the competitive landscape for students however we were and are concerned with the impact of recruiting students who struggle to make sense of the complexities that the university experience presents for the past two years we have engaged an isc senior design team to think both technically and theoretically about recruitment and this year's team is continuing to build on the success from last year's team from a research driven and student motivated perspective reimagining diversity is a collaborative in fact a transdisciplinary project comprised of researchers from the virginia tech's human factors engineering group within the gradle department of industrial system engineering the sociology department in particular the women's and gender studies and africana studies program and the applied research and immersive environments aries program within the university libraries in addition to strategic partners all over the university based on the need for research and development specific to substantially increasing diversity of virginia tech reimagine diversity aims to provide a cross-disciplinary solution for transdisciplinary problems that are capable of addressing the advancement of the human condition and society of virginia tech to accomplish this the team designs develops and evaluates culturally appropriate user-centered immersive technology solutions hello mr baldwin how are you welcome to this process of making a webvr space um i have kind of these three questions i'm going to ask to kind of like decide what we're going to do we're going to go over what the purpose of the space is um the aesthetic sort of choices and then the design specifics i think diversity is such a um i guess not a physical concept so how do you um vision envision it in like a kind of like a physical web vr room or series of rooms i think something um when you said continue emotion i got this picture of like um sort of center a centerpiece um in this main room that kind of showcases movement and maybe fluctuation in changing a form i think that would be super interesting and i love this idea of not necessarily sticking to a certain aesthetic but having it evolved through the different rooms and if i am um if i know correctly remember quickly you this um rematching diversity has touched a lot of different programs so it would make a lot of sense to have different um design aesthetics so i think in a time where a lot of people feel isolated it would be really interesting to create a space where people can feel together is that also something that you want to cultivate in these spaces i hear you say a lot of motion and emotion what about movement and emotion is important to rematching diversity i i love the idea of having like sort of um exhibits along the walls kind of showcasing different like individual experiences that has already been connected to reimagining diversity so in my mind i'm seeing a large sort of welcome space and then from there possibly two corridors going to separate rooms that are branching out from the sides and then possibly along these corridors will have links to other aspects of rematching diversity commitment to diversity requires a space for critical thinking scholarly research and unimpended boundary pushing there are many diversity initiatives diversity interests and diversity intentions throughout our virginia tech family we propose a reimagining of those initiatives interests and intentions in a research center committed to diversity we invite you to reimagine with us hey zach give me a second reimagine diversity is envisioned as a collaborative space that exists in both physical and virtual reality where faculty staff and students graduate and undergraduate alike endeavor along a two-tiered continuum of research and practice to conduct culturally nuanced transdisciplinary research aimed at deepening understandings of inequalities across socially constructed demographics and to produce creative technological advances that proactively address these inequalities by rethinking and reimagining beyond the scope of inclusion and assimilation dr patrick i think the scene is ready well i should probably get back to teaching come check it out reimagining diversity is akin to a startup business a space to match up theories for social good to integrate technologies imagined through intersectional lenses to reimagine traditional boundaries of diversity into the next generation we believe in non-traditional collaboration between faculty staff admin graduate and undergraduate students alumni and the local community where the opportunities for experiential learning theoretical development and knowledge transfer are exponentially greater we believe that the future of academia and educational institutions in particular lies in the reimagining of diversity away from metrics and strategic decisions into a way of life that is more inclusive and less exclusive at all levels of the organization we believe in the concept of family as the building block for reimagining diversity the construct of reimagining diversity represents a two-pronged continuum one being that diversity is represented by v the intersection of technology and theoretical development and two being the t the progression of technology and theoretical development and the integration of knowledge transfer in support of all client based projects all in all reimagining is itself an action verb to suggest that our pursuit of knowledge transfer built from the intersection of technology and theoretical development is an ongoing if not eternal process [Music] and what is unique about our conceptual model what makes reimagining diversity unique is our approach to embracing our family through the lens of novel approaches to project management of experiential learning and scholarly research we introduced this two-prong continuum as a diversity model a foundational strategy for the proposed reimagining diversity research center the model begins with an introductory course in diversity followed by a decision point based on developing one's foundations in technology or theory as our students progress along their chosen continuum of either technology or theoretical development they become contributors who transfer knowledge to ongoing projects whether internal to the organization or external client based projects our approach is structured with a series of progressions that are both theoretical and technologically more challenging we are currently carrying out research to determine the feasibility of the reimagining diversity pathways minor there are any number of diversity initiatives at institutions of higher learning all across the country and this is what makes it even more imperative that reimagining diversity remains committed to the concept of entrepreneurial hustle you see i believe entrepreneurial hustle distinguishes us from other diversity efforts borrowing from fisher entrepreneurial hustle is an entrepreneur's urgent unorthodox actions that are intended to be useful in addressing immediate challenges and opportunities under conditions of uncertainty from my perspective a failure to embrace entrepreneurial hustle will only lead us to the obligatory box checking that has historically plagued and continues to undermine diversity efforts not only in academia but in industry and society as well reimagining diversity action excellent thank you so much for that amazing video what a wonderful um mind-blowing bunch of technology uh went into that that's actually the first question um that we have for you is how did you make i get i know that part of what you do part of the mission of what you're doing uh involves using that technology how did you make that space those spaces quentin you want to or todd you want to start us off [Music] sorry we'll talk over each other until we get it right uh and i mean that's kind of how we made the space i mean the idea wasn't you know it wasn't ours it wasn't original you know it's just an idea until you put it together with technology so i mean we we started out just thinking through what did you know what are the things that we wanted to say and what we wanted to communicate and because we we have access to all these technologies and all of these people that have interesting ideas we provide kind of the substantive content around diversity how it's seen and viewed and then you you throw that into a green screen recording and you know kind of shake it up a little bit uh and see what comes out on the other side and so i mean you know technologically speaking it was it was a really fun process because we had students involved and they you know we we sketched you know kind of what the narrative should look like and then we allow them to make adjustments to it hey this is what you're going to be saying make it your own and and we had worked uh with some of the other interns of creating the spaces so now you create the space you create the narrative you engage students do a green screen recording put in an immersive space and out comes the product anything more technical than that you'll have to speak to some of the behind the screen guys excellent um and so did you all use the icat studios for the the green screen no actually we went uh well unless they're they've taken over the media building oh yes we have oh okay well there you go then the answer is yes absolutely good um so here's a question uh from ben what kind of measures uh qualitative and quantitative are you going to use to understand the kind of interactions that can happen um in this in the spaces like what we saw just now did you say this has been yeah of course it is and i think he was targeting that question to raphael probably was i'll address that one oh we talked about the creation of space and quentin mentioned like why we created how we created but another aspect of it it allows us to collect data in the space right so one section of our data is uh dr baldwin about expression right so what happens when people express themselves in the space of the qualitative side of things right does it change emotion does it change kind of your presence in the environment or just your presence in as an individual um and it does it does it allow you to express yourself in the ways that you would like to express without the limitations of the real world the other aspect of what uh todd and i dr ogle and i look at are the interaction components so the user user center design kind of um human computer interaction aspects so what is happening behind the scenes allows people to actually accomplish their task all right so some of the things we're looking at one of our students zach that was in the video uh created a space that really examines navigation right so the human computer and interest human computer interaction aspects of things so how people are navigating from point a to point b how often they get lost why they get lost and then from that we're trying to mitigate it by interjecting the cues to then reduce some of those issues excellent thank you um can you talk about i'm just look can you talk about the students who are on your team i know you've got a number of students who are we saw some of them in the video what are their roles and and how did you find them that's probably another uh rafael question uh in that we well i mean i think we we found them or they were looking for something interesting and we happened to provide that i think that's generally uh as was quoted by uh you know one of the students in the video we create meaningful opportunities for for for our student interns and we're really lucky i mean we partnered with ares uh because of rafael's uh position in ise we you know they do interesting things and they just redirect them our way in part with our affiliation with the isc senior design team as well so word gets around when you start to provide opportunities for students to do creative things that are meaningful that are also research based and technology technologically grounded and we just found that students start to find us as much as we find them great todd can you talk about what the aries team is for those who don't know that already yeah of course the team is undergraduates primarily but a few graduate students as well from multiple disciplines anything from history math a few different branches of engineering computer science cinema the visual arts in a few different areas as well creative technologies and graphic design all working together on immersive experiences like this one from the design to the actual creation of some of the assets and um just the uh different elements of the experience that come together to build something like this excellent thank you and andrea and rafael i'm not sure who's the best but can you talk about that ise uh team um i'm sorry quentin you mentioned it and i've i don't have the name perfect oh yeah i see senior design team senior design team thank you it's it's in my department uh gradual department industrial system engineering we have a senior design requirement where the students will kind of bring together all the knowledge they have from all these years and do something with it so we were able to no typically as outside companies but we were able to position ourselves and allow reimagine diversity to stand as a team so we were able to get two so this is our second year so consecutive year of having uh groups of students about four or three to four depending on the year and they came in and they started off by really engaging and seeing what we can do with these spaces right so one of the things that uh ms baldwin couldn't mention was students gravitate to us and we gravitate to students then we kind of meet in the middle so the interesting part is we allow students to really take ownership in these spaces right so we don't really dictate to them build this space and this is how we want to build we kind of present an idea and what we think this idea is going to be useful for and the students will go out and really understand because this this these spaces that we're making are for them so they really go out and engage with their own uh colleagues to find out what these spaces can be like so our senior design team came in this year and is creating a space that's really looking at recruitment so they're looking outside facing uh so they're creating a space that allows to showcase what our department and what our university is like to other people that do not have the ability to get here right we were talking about this concept in the beginning of reimagine diversity but because of colby we know that everybody now before it was it was due to limitations now it's a forced limitation so we want to make sure it's accessible to everyone and we want to keep it as close as possible but we didn't want to have a replica of our university we want to have the reimagined version of it and that came from the eyes of our students great and andrea can you talk about you're you're coming to us from sociology can you talk about your role in the project and how with such a beautifully transdisciplinary team talk about uh your role there yeah um so i'm in sociology i'm not a sociologist i like to put that out there i'm an interdisciplinary scholar so my my field is africana studies and women's and gender studies which i think positions me perfectly for the team like this because i can bring the you know you uh that that um image of the v and the t i can bring the theoretical side to what we're doing and i think my my part in the team is to be the antagonist um i think the team would agree um that i'm the one who is constantly pushing back against some of uh what we're trying to do in terms of forcing us to to think to think deeper about what we're talking about when we're talking about diversity to think outside the box when we're when we're um thinking about who is going to who we're going to be including what identities we're going to be um looking at um and to think beyond just representation um because i think what happens with diversity is that we think a lot about representation as you know if we bring this amount of people of students who are black or this amount of women or this amount of queer students then we have we have done our job and my i think my job on the team is to to get us to think beyond that to think about how we're not just talking about accessibility we're talking about all of the other things that we we're talking from my perspective we're talking about thinking about everyone as human and so that is where i start and if we think about the humanity of everyone who we're we're looking to bring to campus or to be involved in this in our work then it means that um we're starting from the grown up and so anything is possible and so i think that is what i bring to the team excellent thank you so much uh we are out of time uh there were a few more questions and i apologize for those who did not uh uh we weren't able to to get to uh but i thank you all so much for being here today we will have another play date next week so see you same time same place and uh smash that subscribe button we'll uh we'll see you on youtube thank you thanks everybody thank you you

2021-03-02 04:33

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