On the one hand, this should be a ‘feel good’ story: this is
a good result for that university, and it is good for the government to channel
substantial funds back into the postsecondary system. Accordingly,
the government press release is filled with positive quotes.
On the
other hand, Twitter exploded with many negative reactions (see figure below). People were outraged that the government
promise to U of C was nearly identical to the funding that it cut from
postsecondary institutions in its spring budget. There was a general outcry about favoritism:
Calgary versus the other institutions in the province, engineering versus arts,
and so on. After all, the University of
Alberta had just announced a mass departure of 121 employees, including 77
professors, due to a voluntary severance program that was instigated as a
result of budget trouble. Perhaps the optics
of the announcement could have been better!
This is not
to say that there was not a great deal of work creating positive photo
opportunities at the announcement. Pictures
of dignitaries interacting with engineering students and their gadgets quickly
appeared on social media. I enjoyed
the ‘thank you’ photograph that appeared on the Flickr feed of the Premier’s
office, which is reproduced below. Unless
it is typical for school children to be milling about the U of C grounds
wearing colorful ‘Future Engineer’ T-shirts, this photo was definitely …
engineered!
I was particularly
interested in the photograph of the Deputy Premier looking at some LEGO NXT
robots displayed by engineering students.
It seems that the skills required to design such machines are
appropriate in our current context of enterprise and advanced education.
Why did I
pay particular attention to this photograph?
Because the evening before it was taken, students in my PSYCO457 “Embodied
Cognitive Science” course built their own robot, a Braitenberg Vehicle
2. After constructing the robot, they observed
its behavior and manipulated its design.
Next week they will alter the robot’s program to further their
explorations. Of course, I took
advantage of all the activity to generate my own publicity shots. The three photos below depict this year’s
batch of students in the process of building,
the machine
that they built (three were constructed),
and students
experimenting with their creations.
Students in
this course are typically psychology majors, some in the Faculty of Science and
some in Arts. (This year one is an
English major, last year one was a Philosophy major). The course’s current structure was developed a
few years ago when I had the opportunity to meld my research with my teaching
thanks to a McCalla Professorship that I was lucky enough to be awarded – from the
Faculty of Arts. A hint of why
psychology students, arts majors, or philosophers can learn something from
building robots is provided in a video that I made and posted on YouTube. (Yes,
I know – a flagrant video-op!) The last
segment of that
video is available here, and is most relevant to my point; other segments
from that web page illustrate many robots designed by students for that course.
Photograph Sources
Source for ‘Thank
You’ photo: Flickr feed, PremierOf Alberta’s photostream, http://www.flickr.com/photos/premierofalberta/10189141513/
Source for U
of C LEGO robot photo: Twitter feed, Alberta Ministry of Enterprise and Advanced
Education
My own
photo-ops are occasionally posted on my Instagram feed drmrwdawson
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