Author Archive
We began the long awaited Spring symposium “Liberal Arts Learning in the Digital Age” yesterday. Mala Radhakrishnan (Chemistry), Orit Shaer (Computer Science), Brian Tjaden (Computer Science), and Michelle Ferreirae ’13 talked about Interdisciplinary Science to a packed crowd in the Science Center 278 y’day evening. We had another 40 who viewed the webcast. The recorded version of the presentation will be made available on Wellesley’s YouTube later today. It was yet another display of the high quality teaching, learning and research taking place at the College. The presentations clearly demonstrated how the most interesting scientific research today requires knowledge that extends far beyond just the core subject. It was clear that the computational science is a core competency that would be required of all researchers and quite obviously, this is one of the areas of relevance to LTS as we move forward – how do we collaborate and engage with the faculty and students in helping with this competency.
The presenters talked about genomic data analysis , computational chemistry of protein-protein interactions and drug development and human computer interaction. In the first case, Brian, a CS faculty, is carrying out research that requires a deeper understanding of biology, biochemistry and chemistry amongst a few other disciplines. Similarly, in the second case, Mala needed to learn cell biology, physics, and applied math. BTW, she is also a poet who has written poems about atoms and molecules. Both Orit and Michelle shared their work in developing intuitive, gesture based software frameworks that helps biologists in their collaborative lab work. In each case, the presenter highlighted the importance of the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of their work and how the liberal arts education paradigm fits nicely with this model.
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The most hyped event of the year is over and the result was disappointing for the Patriots fans. However, it was a good game with a couple of unfortunate calls by the referee and a lot of dropped passes. Well, we had a great time at our home watching the game with a lot of friends. I just realized that I have not written for a couple of weeks because I have been extremely busy with a few software projects that I am working on. I am on Acela express right now, heading to NY City to participate in a Google Apps user group meeting at Google NY. Hope to not run into the ticker tape parade for the Giants and get delayed going to the meeting.
We have been marching along in terms of software development with a slight twist – web applications for the portal which rely on authoritative data stored in Banner and other systems (such as 25Live) that look and act with a level of consistency that the users expect in software. As I have written many times over, I favor this approach to “Let us wait for Banner to deliver these services” because we will be waiting for a loooong time! Also, because this framework is under our control, the interface can be manipulated in ways that are otherwise not possible. Also, if the users are happy with the navigational approach and display of data we provide, we can leave that alone for however long the users desire. This is obviously not the case with software vendors. They seem to know what is good for us when! We all know that they rarely do a good job and choose the most inopportune moments to make changes.
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One more weekend of Football is out of the way. I thought Patriots played a sloppy game and thanks to their defense and a missed field goal by the Ravens, they will be playing in Superbowl. The hype of the Patriots/Giants Superbowl rematch is on full swing and the whole Tom Coughlin/Bill Belichick relationship while they were both assistant coaches with the Giants is back in the limelight. Bill Belichick is a Wesleyan Alum, class of ’75, and has explained how he applies what he learned in College in NFL. I am really looking forward to an exciting Superbowl a couple of weeks from now. We have a big party planned in our house and the Giants fans amongst our visitors have back row seats with heat turned down and will be served warm beer while we in the front row seat will enjoy the warmth, better food and nice cold beer. For that one day, I don’t mind being called a bad host by a few!
As we begin the Spring semester, I am happy to talk about something that has been in the works for quite some time. It is a fact that technologies are coming at us at a rapid pace and they are changing the landscape in Higher Ed in ways that no one every anticipated. On the one hand, Higher Ed institutions have been the most influential in terms of research and development and through those, have affected tremendous changes in the world. On the other hand, they have also been very resistent to changes when it comes to teaching, learning and research, all for good reasons. As Larry Summers wrote in his NY Times piece recently “My predecessor as Harvard president, Derek Bok, famously compared the difficulty of reforming a curriculum with the difficulty of moving a cemetery.” I believe that we need a strategy and an ongoing plan that prepares the College for the changes in technologies and how it affects the Library and the College’s core academic mission. And we want to do develop this plan not in isolation, but in collaboration with the faculty, students, staff and the alumnae.
We have planned a symposium series for the Spring titled “Liberal Arts Learning in the Digital Age” to facilitate these conversations.
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It was a fabulous weekend of football and I was glad to see the Patriots crush the Broncos. The other games were also good, especially the upset by the Giants. My wife reminded me of past life as an ardent Giants fan – a leftover from when I was a grad student going through years of agony of supporting a substandard team until Bill Parcells and Phil Simms turned things around. Somewhere along the line I switched my allegiance, primarily because of children. Anyways, this Sunday will be another terrific day and though I hope that the Pats go all the way and win it all, it is one game at a time at this point!
We also had an adventurous and long night last night, trying to get my Prius up the hill in snow onto Weston Terrace. Somehow survived all of that. It is not the morning after that adventure that I wanted to write about, rather one of our other major transition – Project Goodbye MM!.
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New Year arrived roughly the same way that it always does. The usual gatherings on New Year’s eve, watching Dick Clark and the Ball drop, toasting etc. etc. We had a rather quite party this year and settled down in the basement. A group of friends who wanted to surprise us came home to find no lights and wanted to head back. But just to make sure, they called and of course, we were home in the basement. They joined and the party was on with a fine bottle of Champagne.
One of the resolutions I made was not to send emails to my staff during the holiday break unless it was absolutely essential. I believe I kept that up! Yay!
Yes, like many out there, I made a few resolutions. Of course, they are personal ones and I am not going to discuss them here. These resolutions also have a very predictable path – you do what you resolved to do in January and then it goes downhill. I actually keep data on all of these and this path is evident. So, why even bother? Well, at least for a short period of time you are more disciplined about something.
What I want to talk about here is less of resolutions than some of the plans for the upcoming year at the College. (more…)
This week so far has been a difficult one – too many late nights. A couple of holiday parties, meeting a good friend in Boston and then the headache caused by the OS upgrade to my machine, which I discuss in detail later. I am looking forward to the trip to Jupiter, FL next week with my family. my sons and I plan to play golf and hopefully get some time to relax too.
I was all excited by the prospect of upgrading to Lion sometime in October when I got the DVD. Here we are in mid-December and finally it happened. My frustration with the upgrade is caused by unique circumstances surrounding my own computer, however, there have been more than the usual complaints about a Mac OS upgrade like the one discussed here.
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I have been extremely busy (with meetings, some coding and a retreat) for the past several days that I have not had time to write a post. I was supposed to take this week off, but an important meeting today required my attendance, so I am working today and most of tomorrow. This will have an effect on what we serve for our Thanksgiving guests (just kidding). I love Thanksgiving and this year, in addition to the usual group of friends, another who has not been able to come will join us. For us, the celebrations extend into Friday and Saturday when groups of friends and extended family who each celebrate Thanksgiving with their own families gather in our house for more celebrations.
Many of us are deeply concerned and frustrated by the bickering taking place in Washington, the most recent one is the lack of compromise on deficit reduction. Rather than concentrating on trying to solve the economic issues which are crippling us, it appears that our esteemed lawmakers seemed to have found time to draft SOPA on the back of PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) passed earlier. The reason for urgency is partly related to fixing the stealing of intellectual property which is indirectly affecting the economy, however, it is so far reaching that we will all be affected severely if passed.
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We have reached a major milestone in our conversion to Google. With a few exceptions, all of our current students, faculty and staff have been moved to Google Apps for Education. Kudos to the hard work of the Google Team. They did a terrific job of planning, training, executing, responding to emergencies and most importantly providing the TLC where needed. We are working towards moving the Meeting Maker calendar over to Google Calendar. I hear that many departments are not waiting – they have already moved.
This transition, like all others, has brought changes in the way we use technology for communication. FirstClass, which was self-contained, was the single point of communication for the campus. We are trying to do the same with tools that Google Apps provides, but it is not the same and raising concerns.
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Things got a little bit out of hand this past week. On Friday night we went back to CT. I came back to Boston on Sunday to go see the Patriots. An exciting game that Patriots managed to win. That night, I went back home very late. Since I was unable to find a reasonable flight from CT to Philly (where EDUCAUSE conference was held), I decided to take the Acela express. This required me to get up very early and go to New Haven, only to find that the train was 45 minutes late. However, it was a comfortable ride and the difference between flying and riding the Acela in terms of the time spent was roughly the same.
The free WiFi on Acela was unreliable. So I used my Verizon 4G MiFi which also was not reliable. I bet I had far better luck with my 3G when I used to ride Metro North. Could this be because of WiFi interference? Could it be because Acela was going fast? Who knows? We need more reliable connectivity. I was pleasantly surprised to see Acela full both ways!
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After many days of great weather, today is a dreary day. It was pretty bad last night that I had to watch Texas vs Detroit play in ALCS. I recognized very few players and besides I didn’t care about the outcome. While watching that and this morning, I heard about the dismantling of the administrative structure of Red Sox (as well as players feeling unhappy) after several successful seasons.
I also noticed that a Google Engineer “accidentally” shared a communication written primarily about the bad management practices at Amazon and then about Google. I have “accidentally” in quotes because I am always suspicious when smart people claim to do things like this or lose a “to be released” iPhone in a bar accidentally, so I think it was intentional. On the other hand, what do I know?
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