7 minute read
WITH A DOSE OF CREATIVITY
Assistant Professor Tracey Moore
Landing an internship in your chosen field while still in college is often a crucial experience for a university student.
But your selected major and the location of the institution you attend can both have an impact on whether or not you get an internship before graduating.
For design students at Prairie View A&M University, securing internships can be particularly challenging given that the nearest design firms are located well outside the city of Prairie View and many design students lack the time and transportation needed to commute.
Fortunately, PVAMU added its own creative spin to the old adage that “necessity is the mother of invention.” Adversity often fuels creative thinking, and that’s exactly what led to the opening of PVAMU’s DesignView Media Center in February 2018.
The student-run center functions as an on-campus design shop and has completed projects for various entities and events on the PVAMU campus. The center is located in the newly renovated room 226 of the Nathelyne Archie-Kennedy Architecture Building. Assistant Professor Tracey Moore, who is also the digital media arts coordinator in the School of Architecture, serves as advisor to the center’s all-student staff.
In 2015, a supervisor told Moore about Title III grant funding opportunities that could benefit the design program. Along with a graduate assistant and various students, Moore began informal research and learned several other universities already had on-campus design shops. Next, while attending an art competition called the Creative Summit at Texas State University, Moore and her team reviewed the resume of one of the competition’s top winners — and noticed she had worked at an on-campus design center. Clearly, the Creative Summit winner’s on-campus work experience had enhanced her skills against many of her competitors. At times, the most revealing research comes from simple observation — Moore and her team had gained a first-hand look at how PVAMU stacked up against other Texas universities already equipped with on-campus design shops. “Most of the universities that had these student-run design studios were in smaller college towns,” Moore says. “You have all these small businesses and schools who have design needs.
“Also, what kept coming up was that Prairie View is so far away from most of the design firms in Houston,” Moore noted, “that it’s very difficult for students to do internships throughout the year, fall and spring, to be able to commute to Houston and come back to class.”
Moore and her team became convinced that PVAMU’s design students needed to know the intensity of doing jobs on short notice while facing fast-approaching deadlines. Moore’s team won the Title III grant, and part of the funding was used to buy equipment to enhance the computer lab with 19 MacPro computers, a large format scanner, another printer, camera equipment, and other studio essentials. The team also bought several mobile white drawing boards — seemingly minor and uncomplicated purchases — which are actually quite popular and which constantly provide students with the ability to write out and sketch design concepts.
Moore, who is a PVAMU alumnus, has told her students to make the most of the considerable advantages they now have compared to other schools — and also compared to previous PVAMU design classes. “The idea was to give students more real-world experience in terms of dealing with clients, meeting deadlines and so forth,” Moore says. “So, that if students didn’t have a car and were unable to commute, they would still have some experience on a resume.”
Another one of the center’s advantages, Moore added, is that students not only learn technical expertise but also how to form business relationships and build rapport with clients.
“They’re learning that if you leave people out, and don’t follow through with work, you create bad relationships,” she says. “That’s a lesson you can only pick up on a job.”
The typical classroom design project may last anywhere between four and six weeks, Moore noted. But in the DesignView Media Center, a project request may arrive on a Monday and require completion by Wednesday. “The quick turnaround is probably the biggest eye-opener for students,” Moore says. “They have to think quickly to come up with something creative that still has quality.”
The center has four designers with one student acting as creative director tasked with bringing in the work and assigning projects to the others. The student creative director’s decisions are reviewed by Moore. If a job arrives and is too complicated, Moore either handles it herself or rejects the project if it is beyond the capabilities of the students and the center.
The very first job for the design center staff proved challenging but ultimately was accomplished, Moore observed. That job was for the PVAMU Black History Month Lecture and Culture Series, and required the full design job to be completed within a week.
“They needed that experience,” she adds. “They had to set up a studio, take photos and generate ideas. What they came up with was quite nice, but they were sweating bullets.”
The DesignView team has also completed projects for the new School of Architecture-Fabrication Center and the Office of Residential Life. DesignView staff members also designed invitations and marketing materials for the 2018 Digital Media Arts Senior Class Exhibition.
Moore says a longer term goal is to eventually turn the DesignView Media Center into an interdisciplinary facility, where students in other fields — marketing, for example — will be able to interact with customers on real projects. During her time as a PVAMU design student, Moore recalls very limited workspace and how students regularly taught each other how to use various software. “I’m telling students, ‘In my experience, we didn’t have any of this. Now, you have everything at your fingertips. Through the grace of this grant, you have more than some of your competitors.”
“My goal this year, is to complete a proposal for sufficient funding to serve PVAMU faculty, students and staff, but go outside the university and pursue funds to become more self-sustaining.” o
STUDENT SPOTLIGHT
Anjan Karki
GRAD STUDENT'S project shines spotlight on dirty apps
With the growth of the smart device industry, a threat to information security has steadily emerged through increasingly subtle attacks on personal data.
Fortunately, every new tech threat inspires a few talented problem-solvers — such as Anjan Karki. A graduate student in Prairie View A&M University’s Department of Computer Science, Karki recently developed a research project to create awareness among smartphone users about the very real threat of applications being utilized to steal personal information.
Karki grew up in the small town of Namche Bazaar in Nepal. He earned a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Pokhara University.
He chose to pursue his graduate studies at PVAMU because the school “didn’t carry the useless bravado,” Karki notes, “and stuck to the meat and potatoes of its core principles. PVAMU taught me that in the middle of chaos, cross your ‘t’s’ and dot your ‘i’s,’ and be patient.” Zulfa Eisa
UNDERGRAD Making Waves with Irrigation Water Research
Zulfa Eisa is a dynamic undergraduate student researcher who has worked on several projects under the supervision of Ripendra Awal, a research scientist in Prairie View A&M University’s Cooperative Agricultural Research Center (CARC).
Eisa analyzed the effects of soil types on irrigation water requirements of major crops at the university using the Irrigation Management System (IManSys) model.
Eisa is a senior agriculture student in the College of Agriculture and Human Sciences. She joined 29 students from major land-grant institutions for training in irrigation water management issues at a conference in Long Beach, California.
Eisa’s commitment to excellence embodies the characteristics of PVAMU students. The study of water and irrigation systems addresses one of the grand challenges we face around the globe.
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VOL 3 NO 1 SPRING 2019
RESEARCH EXCELLENCE AT THE VIEW
