Catching our breath
Phew! We’re a bit behind the ball on posts, but it’s because we had a fantastic spring semester! Faculty presentations from A Taste of Tufts and student films from TuftsFilmWorks and great reviews of our spring courses … it’s all good. Now that things are quieting down a bit, I’ll try to post a bit in the next few weeks about what’s happening over the summer and what’s coming up for fall. Stay tuned!
The Big Day is Finally Here!
For the past two and a half months our staff here at the ExCollege has been eagerly anticipating today. Why, you might ask? Today is the deadline for visiting lecturer proposal applications! It’s the day when we get to see what exciting topics various people have come up with to teach to our Tufts undergrads. Here is a sampling of some course titles that I’ve seen so far today: “Protecting Your Rights with the Constitution and a Computer”, “Eros of the Impossible”, “Lady Gaga: The Art of Performance and Fame”, and “The Catholic Church in Nicaragua”. Needless to say we have quite a variety of topics to choose from! While we do a lot of interesting things here at the ExCollege, getting to see the different topics that are proposed each semester is definitely the highlight of working here. Read more…
An Inside Look at the Perspectives Program
For our first blog post about the Perspectives program we have a two for one special: insights from co-leaders Bill Cotter and Travis Grodkiewicz! As the deadline to apply to teach in this program quickly approaches check out their reflections on what it was like to be a part of Perspectives this year!
Bill’s Perspective:
Freshman year can be a serious roller coaster. My greatest goal in teaching a Perspectives class was to create an environment where our students felt at home, where they could escape the roller coaster of college for a bit, relax, have fun, and of course learn something in the process. Basically, I was trying to create something that I wish I had had during my own freshman year. Somehow (I guess through a combination of hard work and luck) we managed to succeed, and I think every one of our students would tell you that coming to class was a highlight of their week. At the very least, it was for me. Read more…
Our “Researcher in Chief”
Tufts President Anthony Monaco just presented the latest talk in the A Taste of Tufts series. He discussed two of his most important discoveries, the gene responsible for X-linked Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophies and a gene specifically involved in human speech and language. Though many in the crowded classroom were transported back to their biology days, it became clear why Dr. Monaco is a pre-eminent researcher in his field. See Monday’s issue of the Tufts Daily for an article about the presentation, and check our website soon for the video!
Exploring the Explorations Program
The Explorations program, run through the ExCollege, is one of the many exciting opportunities on the Tufts campus that allows you to share your interests and contribute to the active learning initiatives that are so strongly stressed in our greater educational goals. The program brings a pair of upperclassmen together to teach a classroom full of eager, excited, and intelligent Tufts first year students. As Explorations Leaders (the official title) you also serve as student advisers to the incoming freshman class. My co-leader Laney and I taught our class, titled Sustainability Redefined: Lessons from Uganda, to fourteen incredibly unique and engaging first year students. We began the semester welcoming them to Tufts and helping them navigate the crowded dinning halls, sleepless dorms, the stressful process of registering on SIS and the growing pile of readings and problem sets. We then dove into our teaching topic and continued to serve as advisers throughout the semester. We had students from California, Massachusetts, Nepal, Morocco, and India. Read more…
The View From Way Out Here
Part One in an Ongoing Series of Observations on the Current State of Filmmaking and the Film Industry.
The music industry figured it out, albeit kicking and screaming. But the movie studios refuse to see the handwriting on the wall. While they spend millions attempting to devise and disseminate protection schemes in their war against the internet, they’re fighting on the wrong front. The long-term threat to their hegemony — the highly centralized production and distribution system that we’ve known for nearly 100 years now as Hollywood — won’t be our ability to download studio films. Far more dangerous is the fact that Hollywood’s stranglehold on professional-level production and widespread distribution is withering away, bit by bit, inch by inch, day by day.
Read more…
TuftsFilmWorks Alum, Jason Moloney, is getting noticed and getting work in LA.
Since graduating last spring, filmmaker, graphic artist, and writer, Jason Moloney, has been, as he puts it: “really busy lately.” After doing a great deal of networking all last year, Jason made the move to LA over the summer, and he hit the ground running.
Jason landed his first gig as an Assistant Production Coordinator on Ex-Free, the indie feature produced, written, and directed by veteran African-American actress, Troy Beyer Bailey. He must have been doing something right, because once shooting wrapped, he was asked to stay on as Assistant Editor. After Ex-Free, Jason joined the team of the Fallout: Nuka Break web series as a Production Supervisor. And from there he served as a Production Superviser/Coordinator on Stuck, a new feature with Madeline Zima and Joel David Moore. As I write this, Jason has recently started work as a Production Coordinator on a new — and as yet unnamed — feature that’s in preproduction and will be shot in March. Read more…
Apply to Join the ExCollege Board!
I must be losing my mind. For the second year in a row, I sought and obtained an appointment to the ExCollege Board. I mean, everyone knows that “board meetings” always become “bored meetings.” Who could possibly want to sit through more meetings than they absolutely have to?
I could. In fact, I always look forward to my ExCollege board meetings.
They are one of the few times when I know I’m having a direct positive impact on the learning opportunities offered to my fellow students. In fact, the ExCollege Board is the only board I’ve encountered in which faculty and students to work together to guide an academic department, and student participation on the board is part of what makes the ExCollege special. Read more…
A Taste of Neutrinos
Just got back from Hugh Gallagher’s presentation about neutrinos, and my head is spinning (or oscillating, which would be more appropriate)! Thanks, Prof. Gallagher for enlightening the group of faculty, staff, and students about “the loner of the universe” and for awakening my inner physicist!
The Best Part of the Job
Every now and then, my friends ask me what I “do” at work at the ExCollege. As usual, it’s much easier to tell a short half-truth than to explain the whole story. So, I usually say something like, “I enter course proposal information into a database.” That sounds pretty dull, but of course, that’s not the whole story. Proposal processing is definitely the biggest part of being an ExCollege office assistant, but it’s far less dull than I have the ability to make it seem. Sure, it’s tedious typing up countless names and addresses and phone numbers, but all of that stuff gets me to the good part: the proposal itself. Every proposal is full of ideas from some extremely smart and creative thinkers. Summarizing all of those ideas into our database can be fascinating. It’s like learning a little bit about every ExCollege class offered each Read more…