10 minute read
News & Notes
FALL 2021
Institute to illustrate immigrant resettlement in Harrisonburg
The Institute for Creative Inquiry in the College of Visual and Performing Arts received a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to capture the resettlement experiences of 10 immigrant families in Harrisonburg through a five-week collaboration with acclaimed photographer Wendy Ewald.
“The support of the NEA will enable us to connect this world-class artist with the Harrisonburg community at a scope and scale that would not have been possible otherwise,” said Daniel Robinson, associate director of ICI. “It shows a real commitment to the positively transformative power of art.”
For more than 50 years, Ewald, whose career has been focused on portraiture and social justice, has worked with children and marginalized communities worldwide, enabling them to illuminate their experiences to larger audiences. Ewald teaches her collaboratorsThe re-release of photographer to use cameras to record themselves, their families and their communities. She also takes photographs within these communities and asks collaborators to mark or write on her images, challenging the distinction between subject and creator.
ICI has partnered with Church World Service, a faith-based nonprofit resettlement organization, to develop the immigrant resettlement project and to identify and support participating families, who will be drawn from speakers of the city’s most prevalent foreign languages, including Spanish, Arabic, Kurdish, Tigrinya and Wendy Ewald’s Swahili. The families will range from well-established to recent arrivals in order to explore how different generations have experienced the challenges of resettlement. a self portrait of The co-created works will be the focus of a wide range of public Janet Stallard on programming beginning in Fall 2021.
— Jen Kulju (’04M)
Pact provides a head start on graduate school
A new program will enable undergraduate computer science students at JMU to apply early and earn graduate credits in master’s degree programs at the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus in Northern Virginia and the Blacksburg campus. The goal is to create a more robust graduate program with students equipped to become leaders in the field.
Participants will be on the path to secure graduate admission to Virginia Tech as soon as the spring of their junior year. For many, the opportunity could mean their graduate education coursework may only take up to one additional year.
A key goal of the partnership is to address the state’s Tech Talent Investment Program. JMU and other universities have committed to graduate approximately 31,000 new computer science graduates over 20 years to help fill a critical workforce need in Virginia.
— SHARON SIMMONS, computer science department head
“This new partnership is a wonderful opportunity for our JMU students,” said Sharon Simmons, head of the Department of Computer Science. “They can complete their CS Bachelor of Science degree at JMU and transfer up to 12 hours of upper-level courses to VT’s graduate program. Our students will be prepared to complete their fifth year at VT to earn a master’s degree.
“Establishing this partnership with VT has happened at an important time for the commonwealth,” Simmons added. “The need for more computer scientists in the state continues to grow, and with the universities working together, we can help fill in this gap.”
— Meghan Long
Thomas takes reins of The Graduate School
Strong teaching is a hallmark of undergraduate education at JMU, and graduate students should expect nothing less, says the new dean of The Graduate School.
Linda Thomas took the reins on June 1 after having directed JMU’s School of Integrated Sciences since 2018.
“I think graduate education is the future, and I see a lot of potential at JMU because we are a teaching university,” Thomas said. “Faculty cannot succeed here unless they are great teachers. I think we can add the JMU brand to graduate education and also expand our international student base.”
Not that great teaching is not already happening, Thomas said. The Graduate School is home to strong programs in business, education, the arts and sciences, including several programs that have to turn away applicants.
With engineering degrees from Georgia Tech and the University of Florida and a law degree from the University of Miami, Thomas wants to create a strong graduate community at JMU, and she will look to encourage more collaboration between undergraduate and graduate students. “My dream is to have teams of undergraduates and graduate students working together,” she said. “That’s what got me interested in graduate education.” Thomas came to JMU from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, where she served as interim chair of civil, environmental and ocean engineering, and head of the construction engineering program. She has also taught at Georgia Tech and was Thomas is the former director of the School in charge of constructing the athlete’s village of Integrated Sciences. for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. JMU Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Heather Coltman said, “Linda has an incredible breadth and depth of leadership experiences that will be invaluable to the continued success and growth of graduate studies at JMU. I’m looking forward to seeing her implement her vision for strengthening our graduate programs.”
— Eric Gorton (’86, ’09M)
Gilliam Center for Entrepreneurship hires new director
The Gilliam Center for Entrepreneurship has tapped Suzanne Bergmeister as its new executive director.
An entrepreneur with both a venture capital and a military background, Bergmeister has served as the fulltime entrepreneur-in-residence at the University of Louisville’s Forcht Center for Entrepreneurship for the past 15 years, and concurrently as assistant director for the past four years.
At Louisville, she taught courses at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, and mentored MBA teams that won more than $1 million in competition prize money and two global championships. Her track record at the university and within the broader entrepreneurial community earned her a graduate teaching award twice and Greater Louisville Inc.’s EnterpriseCorp Entrepreneurial Leadership Award.
“I am very excited to work with the amazing team at the Gilliam Center and the College of Business to build on the momentum and success they’ve already achieved,” Bergmeister said. “I’m really looking forward to leading the center to increase entrepreneurship across the JMU campus and throughout the region.”
College of Business Dean Mike Busing said her prior experience with securing grant funding and mentoring students, veterans and lower-income entrepreneurs will serve JMU well and support economic growth in the region. “Her deep understanding of both the entrepreneur and venture capitalist is critical as the center evolves and achieves national recognition for excellence.”
— Stephen Briggs
Rewriting Virginia’s Constitution
On April 8, JMU, in partnership with Norfolk State University, hosted “Looking Back, Looking Forward: The 50th Anniversary of the 1971 Rewriting of the Virginia Constitution.” The virtual Madison Vision Series event featured A.E. Dick Howard, the Warner-Booker Distinguished Professor of International Law at the University of Virginia, and retired Virginia Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth A. McClanahan, dean of the Appalachian School of Law.
The discussion centered on the 1971 Virginia Constitution and its impact, both at the time of the rewriting and in the five decades since.
In the wake of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the Virginia General Assembly created a commission to review the state’s
Constitution. Howard, then a 34-year-old law professor at U.Va., was appointed the commission’s executive director. “The previous Constitution had been adopted in 1902 … and was steeped in racism and white supremacy,” he said.
Decisions coming out of Washington, such as the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and the “one person, one vote” principle invoked by the Warren court throughout the 1960s further prompted the rewriting. The high court had also struck down Virginia’s poll tax—designed to disenfranchise Black voters in the commonwealth—and Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed discriminatory voting practices in many southern states.
In order to “refresh” Virginia’s Constitution, “they put education in the Bill of Rights, they drew from Thomas Jefferson’s Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge,” and they made education more accessible for school-aged children around the state, Howard said.
Howard fielded questions from McClanahan, then from JMU President Jonathan R. Alger and NSU President Javaune Adams-Gaston about the longevity of the 1971 revision, the relationship between Virginia’s Constitution and the U.S. Constitution, and how the 50th anniversary of the 1971 rewriting of the Virginia Constitution can be an opportunity for civic engagement and discussion.
JMU student Xaiver Williams and NSU student Maleik Watkins asked questions of Howard, including whether he would make changes to the state Constitution, what limits the Constitution presents and how the commission performed its work.
The event concluded with Adams-Gaston’s reminder about the significance of the anniversary.
Although we’ve seen much progress over the last 50 years, the fight for equality and justice rages on, both here in Virginia and across our country.”
— Jessica Nickels (’21)
CIS student team takes second place in national competition
A team of JMU computer information systems majors took second place in the HP Design Thinking Competition track at the Association for Information Systems 2021 Student Chapter Leadership Conference Competitions.
Sophomores Alonso Ralat and Evan Peek joined juniors Robbie Gomes and Megan Nguyen to design a cloud-based, customizable virtual meeting platform targeted at educators in K-12 and higher education using AWS infrastructure.
The students were tasked with designing an alternative to Zoom that would support a team working on a project where communication and document sharing are vital but also context-specific. The brief asked students to submit three items: wireframe mockups that show important aspects of their solution; a vision of the architecture of the design; and a perspective on how diversity and inclusion would be supported.
The JMU team began by doing research, sending out 50 surveys to students and fulltime workers as well as interviewing four industry professionals to help generate ideas for a unique solution. They decided to name their product “Kaigi,” a Japanese word for meeting, assembly or convention. Nguyen said their logo design “is inspired by wolves because they are animals known for their loyalty and teamwork, living in tough environments and are expert communicators.”
(L-R) Alonso Ralat, Evan Peek, Robbie Gomes and Megan Nguyen celebrate their win at the AIS 2021 Student Chapter Leadership Conference.
Armed with their research and concept, they quickly discovered the challenges they would face. “We had to be creative and show that we could indeed be better than Zoom and our competitors, and prove that to the judges,” Nguyen explained. “It was also difficult to come up with the technical infrastructure as we have limited knowledge about AWS and other concepts. We had to do additional research to make our solution plausible.”
Overall, the competition was “a great experience,” according to Nguyen. “We also had immense support from our AIS Chapter advisers, professors Carey Cole and Shawn Lough, who gave us feedback throughout the process. We learned a lot from watching the other finalists’ video presentations and made great connections.”
Lough and Cole are proud of the team’s accomplishment. “I was extremely impressed with creative and this team,” Cole said. “They spent the time necessary to create excellent deliverables and meet the be better than competition’s requirements. Their presentation skills were great as well, and I am thrilled that their hard work paid off and they were able to represent the CIS major and the College of Business at JMU in such a positive way.”
— Stephen Briggs
New school to elevate existing programming
The newly designated School of Professional and Continuing Education will build on JMU’s successful efforts to provide education, programming and experiences to students of all ages.
“I’m thrilled about the new opportunities this designation will provide to empower nontraditional learners, meet community needs and craft new workforce development partnerships,” said the school’s dean, Melissa Lubin.
The School of Professional and Continuing Education will serve as a strategic partner to local and regional businesses and government-supporting initiatives for economic and community development.
Certificate, credential, bachelor’s degree completion and professional development programs will form the core of the school’s offerings. The school will also focus its efforts along the continuum of learning to include youth programs, the Lifelong Learning Institute and testing support for those hoping to enroll in graduate school.
— Ginny Cramer
The Lifelong Learning Institute is part of the new school.
