Resources for Week #12: Intersectionality and DH

Resources

• Lindsey’s Google Doc
• Lauren’s slides (link forthcoming)
• Flashcard Machine

Projects

• Presentation Skills Project (forthcoming)
• Intersectionality Flashcards (forthcoming)

NCUR wrap-up

The last day or so of our Kentucky sojourn has been “full of passionate intensity” (though not “the worst,” so my apologies to Yeats for mangling “The Second Coming”). Unfortunately, my photo of the twelve-person semi-drunken rendition of “Bohemian Rhapsody” which was performed during last night’s van ride from dinner to the hotel did not turn out, so I’ll leave the details to your imagination.

At the end of this trip, however, one of the things that has really struck me is what good colleagues our Macaulay students have been. They’ve actively listened and responded not only to one another, but to all of the other participants in their sessions, in ways that have proven very interesting to observe.

Listening to a paper on modern Italian literature.

All of our students created great supporting materials, for example, using PowerPoint, Prezi, or their posters to convey research information in an engaging manner. But this wasn’t always the case in their panels–a number of other presenters committed the “cardinal sin” of reading a paper aloud for fifteen minutes. And we all saw how much harder it was to follow an argument or realize a topic’s intellectual potential when presenting that way, for sure, but even in that context, I thought our team asked smart questions and engaged in a respectful way with the content shared by such presenters.

I think we are all (Drew and I especially) ready to get back to New York, as this has in many ways been a whirlwind trip for us. We’re a tired bunch. But it has been an unreservedly successful experience for all of our students, and we’ve done Macaulay proud in our time in Kentucky.

We’re ready to come home now.

NCUR Day 2

We spent the bulk of our day today at the University of Kentucky. Gorgeous campus, and they appear to be very happy to host all of the students coming in for this great event. The energy in the air was interesting to observe; mostly, I was reminded that ten years makes a difference. Yowza. There was a hyper edge to the morning, especially, that seemed to emanate from everyone under the age of twenty-five!

The bulk of the afternoon was spent going from presentation to presentation–Vartan’s, Nazana’s, Laura’s, then Emily’s. The Macaulay cohort presenting at this conference is fantastic. From Emily’s research into the role of implicit and explicit memory in the acquisition of typing skills, to Vartan’s look at the role of leptin in mitigating some of the effects of meth, to Nazana’s study of the relative risk of different types of NYC bicycle lanes, to Laura’s project for this class, on Hitchcock and Poe–it really was a stellar day.

One thing I saw in all the presentations I witnessed is how invested our students are not just in their own particular research projects, but in the process of research, generally speaking. I think that our students are invested not only in becoming content creators (something we often discuss as a team of ITFs), but in becoming creators of quality content. All that angst about the millennial generation seems misplaced, when you attend an event like this. That hyper energy is going to be put to good use. It’s cause for optimism.

Millennial enthusiasm!

I also got to try the Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale that some members of our crew ordered and raved about last night–that was well worth it. 🙂

Hello from NCUR!

Where apparently it is going to take me three tries to post this to the correct blog.

Well, we made it to Lexington safe and sound. Drew ended up reserving a party bus to take us from airport to hotel, which was a big hit, and we had a great Macaulay team dinner tonight, at Cortland’s Southern Kitchen–just a short walk over from the hotel.

We haven’t yet been over to UK to experience the conference proper, but it is already apparent how big and well-organized this event will be. There are NCUR info stations set up at the airport and in our hotel’s lobby, and even the key cards for our rooms come in an envelope with the NCUR logo pasted on it… I’m a big fan of quality informational signage!

Because we left NYC early, I’ve had a lot of time today to start to get to know all of the other Macaulay students on this trip. This is a wonderful group of students, researching diverse and cool topics–and as much as I like getting to know them better, I’m enjoying watching them get to know each other as well.

One of the ongoing topics of discussion at Macaulay is common events–how many should we have, what should they look like, how to get students to invest in the cross-campus experience. If we could find a way to send our students out into the world like this, though, I think we’d see some of the bonding we hope for when we organize common events. Down the table from me, a neuroscience student from Hunter and English and engineering students from CCNY are getting to know each other over a game of cards. Everyone took selfies in the party bus earlier–Laura brought a Polaroid camera of some sort (genius idea!).

I know that in a lot of ways an event like NCUR is a reward for our hard-working seniors. But it would definitely be nice to see more cross-campus mixing in a field trip/expeditionary direction, in smaller groups. Cost would be an issue (the students down the table are keenly aware of how much Macaulay has invested in bringing us to Kentucky, and we are all hugely appreciative), but it’s worth thinking about further.

All smiles over a card game