Innovation Incubator

ASSETT Innovation Incubator Welcomes Three New Interdisciplinary Teams of Faculty, Staff, and Students

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:12:08 +0000

ASSETT Innovation Incubator Welcomes Three New Interdisciplinary Teams of Faculty, Staff, and Students Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/29/2023 - 07:12

Blair Young

This fall, three newly funded teams composed of faculty, staff and students kick-off a three-year cycle (2023-26) of the innovation incubator to iterate their novel ideas for improving the undergraduate experience through teaching and learning with technology. The new cohort joins the second cycle of the innovation incubator which was originally piloted in 2019-22 with such success that it was adopted as a permanent program of ASSETT.

The current teams participated in an open idea submission process prompted by the question, “How might we radically transform the undergraduate learning experience by engaging Arts & Sciences students in active learning with technology?” Among the eight teams that applied for funding, three were selected for incubator funding by a committee of faculty, undergraduate students, and staff from the College of Arts & Sciences and from the Office of Information Technology. Submitted ideas were evaluated based on criteria of being student centered, boundary breaking, actionable, and scalable.

Meet the 2023-26 ASSETT Innovation Incubator Teams!

Give Us the Camera: Improving Equity in the Media Arts

Team Members: Laura Conway, Michelle Ellsworth, Charlie McCain, Angelica Lawson, Emilie Upczak

Give Us the Camera or GUT-C is a mentoring initiative for underrepresented students in the media arts field that addresses inequality at the student level through community building, technical workshops, and professional development opportunities. The Me Too movement made clear how difficult working in the media industry is for women, LGBTQ individuals, and BIPOC folks. GUT-C directly addresses underrepresentation in technical positions such as a camera operator, lighting designer, lead editor, and director of photography — a systemic issue mirrored in higher education. Funding and human resource support from the Innovation Incubator will enable GUT-C to develop its technical training, mutual aid, and mentorship model.

Developing Virtual Labs to Train Undergraduate Researchers

Team Members: Kristin A. Moore and Jian Wei Tay

In partnership with student collaborators, this team will develop virtual laboratories that simulate scientific experiments. Virtual laboratories are interactive computer applications which will allow students to perform activities and actions that mimic working in a physical laboratory. New researchers require time to learn skills before they can contribute meaningfully. This is often compounded by the fact that students must maintain their academic standing, reducing their availability during the semester. Finding sufficient faculty mentors can also be challenging due to cost, resulting in many students initially participating in unpaid internships. However, this practice greatly disadvantages under-resourced students who may need to financially support themselves. Funding and human resource support from the Innovation Incubator will enable this team to develop curriculum while employing student developers and testers to design and build the virtual labs.

Womenexus

Team Members: Sage Dobby, Sydney Kowalchuk, Hannah Van Meveren, Jihye Park

The Womenexus team is creating a virtual community of women to help guide and support one another with their academic and career goals. In a challenging and rigorous college environment where, for example, women are more likely than men to leave a pre-med track, and 50% of women feel isolated, making meaningful connections can be difficult. Womenexus will provide a platform for women to build friendships and mentorships while navigating college, whether it be prior to arriving on campus or while in the middle of their studies. This may include guidance in pre-professional pathways, along with connection to shadowing and internship opportunities. Funding and human resource support from the Innovation Incubator will enable this team to compensate recent alumna and student project manager roles, as well as to employ the student-run, Blueprint Boulder to develop their proposed app.

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Funding to attend the Reacting Consortium Annual Institute

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 21:56:26 +0000

Funding to attend the Reacting Consortium Annual Institute Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/27/2023 - 14:56

Jacie Moriyama

We are excited to announce travel funding to attend the Reacting Consortium Annual Institute June 7-11, 2023, at Barnard College in New York City.

This is THE annual conference for faculty interested in Reacting to the Past pedagogy (RTTP). Last year, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder hosted a smaller version of the Annual Institute, but this year it will be back in its traditional home: Barnard College. Participants will have the opportunity to play two of nine games offered at the conference, and to attend numerous breakout sessions about RTTP pedagogy, with sessions designed for newcomers and others for veterans. This is the largest gathering of Reacting faculty anywhere, and it is an excellent opportunity for networking and learning from experienced Reactors.

Four lucky faculty will receive$1200 in funding to support travel to the Annual Institute. This can be used to cover conference travel expenses such as:

Registration - $550 (includes 4 breakfasts, 2 lunches, and 2 receptions, as well as coffee and snacks throughout the conference)

Housing - $300 (3 nights with a single in the dorms at Barnard at $100 a night; doubles are cheaper at $65 a night)

Additional Travel/Food - $350

We expect that the true cost of attending the conference for most people may exceed $1200, but a lot depends on how much you spend on meals beyond the conference, whether you are willing to book a double occupancy room, how much you spend on airfare, whether you have a place you can stay in New York City for free, etc. In any case, $1200 should cover most of the expense.

We will prioritize funding faculty who have demonstrated a commitment to adopting RTTP, and after that we will prioritize funding those who have been unable to attend another RTTP conference and/or who have no other sources of funding to help cover travel costs.

If you are interested in applying, please submit an application by filling out this Google Form. Applications will be reviewed beginning on February 6, but we will welcome applications submitted after that date until the funding is fully allocated. Successful applicants are encouraged to register for the conference as soon as possible in February so that they can benefit from the early bird registration rates and have their pick of which games to play at the conference.

Questions? Please email michaele.ferguson@colorado.edu.

Published on behalf of:

Professors Michaele Ferguson, Catherine Kunce, and David Paradis
The Student Success Team
ASSETT Innovation Incubator

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Do you see a need to address recent technological developments in higher ed? Here's your chance!

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 21:27:04 +0000

Do you see a need to address recent technological developments in higher ed? Here's your chance! Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/27/2023 - 14:27

Blair Young

Now, you have a chance to participate in the next three-year Innovation Incubator which provides awarded projects with funding and human support spanning a three-year period.

Over the spring semester, we’ll gather ideas from members of the College of Arts & Sciences on an online platform where the community can view and add generative comments to projects centered on teaching and learning with technology. And, that address the question:

How might we radically transform the undergraduate experience by engaging Arts & Sciences students in active learning with technology?

Learn more about the ASSETT Innovation Incubator and start drafting your idea submission today.

If you have questions about the Innovation Incubator or the idea submission process or would like to meet others interested in the program, join us for a luncheon from 12-1pm on Wednesday, February 15, 2023. Pizza and salad will be provided at the event, so registration is required.

We hope to see you there!
The ASSETT Innovation Incubator Team

Have you heard about the ASSETT Innovation Incubator? Maybe you know an A&S faculty member or undergraduate student who participated in the pilot which spanned 2019-22? Or, perhaps you’ve encountered one of the projects generated by a participating interdisciplinary team? Now, you have a chance to participate in the next three-year Innovation Incubator which
provides awarded projects with funding and human support spanning a three-year period. Learn more about how to submit an idea to the current cycle of the incubator on our new web pages. Or, join us at a community mixer and informational luncheon on February 15, 2023.

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Want to incorporate metacognition in your teaching? Here are some resources to help!

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 15:47:31 +0000

Want to incorporate metacognition in your teaching? Here are some resources to help! Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 12/06/2022 - 08:47

Karen Crouch , Blair Young

As sunlight wanes and we approach the Winter Solstice, colder temperatures and early snowfall signal that we are entering a season of reflection. Allowing our minds to wander without constraint or agenda can provide a restorative break with the busyness of the fall semester. Much like we need rest after intensive physical exertion, our bodies andour brains both benefit from periods of letting down. We at ASSETT hope that you will take time over break for aimless walks or simply doing nothing. This winter, give yourself a chance to decompress.

With the semester coming to a close, another type of reflection is on our minds too — one that is perhaps more intentional than “spacing out”. We’re referring to metacognition. Metacognition or “thinking about thinking” (coined by Flavell in 1976) is a critical skill that can be developed in the classroom to help reduce student anxiety and increase student success. We recommend reading “Close the Metacognitve Equity Gap: Teach All Students How to Learn”, a scholarly article by Saundra Y. McGuire, to reinvigorate your teaching while investigating strategies that support metacognitive practice in your classroom.

We’re excited to highlight a resource developed at ASSETT that can be imported into Canvas and implemented in your courses. The 2019-2022 ASSETT Innovation Incubator Metacognition & Wellbeing team focused on simple tactics for cultivating student metacognition that you can share with your students to help them develop their study habits after they have taken their first exam or major assessment. Click here to self-enroll and access the metacognitively focused Exam Reflection Canvas module.

Learn more now about how metacognition practices can support your students in a podcast interview with Innovation Incubator team members Becca Ciancanelli, the former Inclusive Pedagogy Lead for the Center for Teaching & Learning, and Shane Oshetski, the Humanities and Social Science Coordinator for the Student Academic Success Center, along with recently graduated students Eva Kent and Sarah Jane Alvarado.

Top practices from the podcast to share with your students include:

Write, write, write. If possible, pull out a pen and paper (rather than a digital device), and write about your learning process — whether while studying for an exam or working on a paper. Write before you start the process, and after, to deepen your understanding of which of your tactics work well for you and which of them don’t.
Use office hours. Visit your instructor with your writing reflections in hand. Use these reflections as talking points to discuss the best methods for preparing for class and assessments. Every course requires a different approach. So, be prepared to be flexible with your tactics for studying, researching, and writing.
Paraphrase readings. Don’t just read. Read and write. For example, after reading a book chapter or a major concept, pause. Then, in writing, summarize what you just read about in your own words. This practice can deepen your understanding of the content and enrich your contributions to group conversations.

Connect with an accountability partner. An accountability partner can be a fellow student in your course or discipline, a TA, or a tutor. Whomever it is for you, make an agreement with them to stay on track with your coursework. Set a regular time to meet to review course material and/or to prepare for quizzes and exams. A key to this tactic is prepping for those meetings by studying the material in advance and then reinforcing knowledge with your accountability partner.

Have we piqued your curiosity about metacognitive practice? Check out these resources focused on metacognition:

For faculty & students:

Exam Reflection Canvas module, (self-guided)
Developing Metacognitive Strategies for Student Success, podcast (29 minutes)

For students:

Metacognition: The Video Series that Gets You Thinking, videos (1-3 minutes each)

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Reacting to Reacting to the Past

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 18:48:49 +0000

Reacting to Reacting to the Past Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/21/2022 - 12:48

Z MacLean

“Games are fun, but they don’t really belong in higher education,” is something I, who would take any opportunity to make a task entertaining, would have said prior to participating in a Reacting to the Past conference. It has always been difficult in my mind to be comfortable intersecting the ideas of education and entertainment in a college classroom. The fact that I am paying good money to receive knowledge and skills that will provide more options in my future seems to imply that fun and games don’t belong in the classroom. After all, why would they? What can a game teach me that a long and in-depth lecture cannot?

In brief, Reacting to the Past is an active pedagogy that involves instructors and students playing elaborate games designed for higher education. Predominantly, these games are set in the past, and the students involved are assigned roles informed by primary texts assigned to them by the instructor who takes the role of the Game Master. There is no fixed script nor is there typically an outcome that must align with actual historical events. All that is required is for students to adhere to the philosophical and intellectual beliefs of the historical figures they are roleplaying. How the students act is completely up to them as they express their characters through speeches, papers, public presentations, newspaper articles, or in-character conversations with their peers. All of the aforementioned mediums are in pursuit of some in-game goal that, once accomplished, will cause their character to ‘win’ the game.

It was with this mindset that I volunteered to help fill in a slot for a game titled Memory and Monument Building: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1980-1982. All I was given at first was a document detailing the type of role I would be playing in the game, some information on the Vietnam Memorial, and an explicit set of guidelines and rules that would facilitate the game so that everyone would be safe while dealing with the complex and difficult issues the game would make its participants face. These guidelines and rules included a prohibition on accents, a banning of chronistic use of language such as slurs or slang, specific hand signs to make while speaking to inform your fellow players that you do not mean what you are saying and are strictly speaking in character. I was personally very relieved to see that the game designers had taken into consideration the challenging nature of playing a role and provided detailed and effective ways to manage the difficulties that may arise.

Showing up the very next day after doing a cursory reading of the material provided to me, I sat down with the professional historians, professors, and extremely well-learned individuals attending the Reacting to the Past Summer Conference. This was an event where, only a day before, I had been staffing and cleaning tables. To say I was nervous would be an understatement. Nevertheless, my first experience with “Reacting” began. The rules were laid out, some introductory thought exercises were done, and we began to play.

I will skip the details of play, its intricacies, or my strategy to have my character ‘win’ the game, and focus on the more important element I took away: games do have a place in a college classroom. It is entirely possible to design an experience such that students can learn about course content while simultaneously engaging the competitive parts of their brains via the gamification of education. Reacting accomplished this through tying the student’s success to an embodied understanding of the information the instructor wants their class to understand.

This goes beyond the preparation required for an exam or essay, as each student is recreating the journey of an individual character. This incentivizes them to read the materials they are presented more deeply, not only to give them a chance to “win,” but to inform the experience they are building. While I had a very busy schedule during the time I was participating in the game, I still fought to find time to brush up on the Vietnam Memorial and the newspaper articles the “Game Master” sent via email. I knew this would give the speeches I gave in character more grounding in the subject matter and would help the game feel more real by extension. To do well in the “Reacting” pedagogy—and to ‘win’—a student must fully commit to their class, the materials the instructor provides, outside textbooks, and online resources, all while immersing themselves in the historical context of the game. All of this combines into a pedagogy in which a game is being played, yet course information and knowledge is still being acquired, analyzed, processed, and implemented by the student. What more could an instructor want?

While this style of education may not fit in every type of classroom in the collegiate world, it has the potential to fit most. Where there is any analysis of a past event with more than roughly ten historical actors involved, a “Reacting” style pedagogy can be deployed to grant students a deeper understanding of the complex issues at play. And it is these classes that make my previous theory that “games are fun, but they don’t really belong in higher education” null and void. I am very happy to have been shown how wrong I was.

Student reflection piece of the RTTP conference.

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Interdisciplinary Cross-College Team Receives National Endowment for the Humanities Award

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 19:26:51 +0000

Interdisciplinary Cross-College Team Receives National Endowment for the Humanities Award Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/13/2022 - 13:26

The ASSETT (Arts & Sciences Support of Education Through Technology) Innovation Incubator is thrilled to announce that a team of Arts and Sciences faculty has won a $150,000 Humanities Connections Implementation grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This project, titled “Humanities Core Competencies as Data Acumen: Integrating Humanities and Data Science,” aims to develop a curricular initiative at the University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder that enhances both the humanities and data science by developing courses that are equally rooted in each discipline. The awarded team members are Project Director Jane Garrity (English), and Co-PIs Robin Burke (CMCI Lead), David Glimp (English), Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara (CRDDS), Vilja Hulden (History), Thea Lindquist (CRDDS), Henry Lovejoy (History), Brett Melbourne (Evolutionary Biology), Nathan Pieplow (Program for Writing & Rhetoric), Rachael Deagman Simonetta (English), and Eric Vance (Applied Math). In addition to the Innovation Incubator Inclusive Data Science team, this project will be supported by faculty from the College of Media, Communications & Information (CMCI) and the Center for Research Data & Digital Scholarship (CRDDS).

During the three-year period of the NEH award, team members will design eight courses, each of which will promote experiential learning and foster engagement with humanistic questions in the context of quantitative inquiry. Two additional key components of the project will be: a two-year course design and development workshop facilitated by ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder’s Center for Teaching and Learning; and an ambitious plan for disseminating key findings in order to cultivate local and national conversations about the most effective ways of teaching data science and the humanities. The project aims to provide a model of cutting-edge pedagogical collaboration and an example of how the humanities can help equip twenty-first century learners with the intellectual resources they will need responsibly to inhabit a world being remade by data.

Prior to winning the NEH, the ASSETT Inclusive Data Science team members Garrity, Glimp, Hulden, Melbourne, Pieplow, and Vance launched a new introductory course, Interdisciplinary Data Science for All (AHUM 1825), that was team taught for the first time by Professors Glimp and Vance in Fall 2021. In this class students learned to analyze not just numbers, but to communicate the findings of data analysis effectively by highlighting human contexts and consequences. The course provides STEM majors with qualitative reasoning skills that are traditionally taught in the humanities, provides future humanities majors with an on-ramp to further study of data science, and provides all students with critical, statistical and computational skills they can apply in future courses and in the workforce. The Inclusive Data Science ASSETT team has also co-written an article, “Integrating the Humanities into Data Science Education: Reimagining the Introductory Data Science Course” that is forthcoming in the Statistics Education Research Journal. In addition, in 2021 the team won a three-year $300,000 National Science Foundation grant for their proposal, “Integrating Content and Skills from the Humanities into Data Science Education.” The animating insight of this and the NEH project is that essential data science competencies complement—and benefit from being integrated with—core humanities competencies.

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Invigorate Your Teaching and Get Students Actively Learning Through Reacting to the Past!

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 20:54:45 +0000

Invigorate Your Teaching and Get Students Actively Learning Through Reacting to the Past! Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/09/2022 - 13:54

Jacie Moriyama , on behalf of the Student Success Innovation Incubator team

Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash

Imagine walking into a classroom where students are advocating for women's rights, staging a protest against the war in Vietnam, or negotiating a treaty to lower carbon emissions. Chances are, these students are engaging in one of many Reacting to the Past games. These are not just games, but a pedagogical approach designed to encourage students to think critically, negotiate with others, debate their position, and persuade others through speeches and writing to create political change and shape history.

Reacting to the Past (RTTP), as defined by the Reacting Consortium at Barnard College, is an active-learning pedagogy of role-playing games designed for higher education. In Reacting to the Past games, students are assigned character roles with specific goals and must communicate, collaborate, and compete effectively to advance their objectives. Reacting promotes engagement with big ideas, and improves intellectual and academic skills.

Through this pedagogical approach, students study a historical moment and react to a series of events based on their game-character’s perspective. Each role has specific goals that the student attempts to achieve. Unlike a play, these roles do not have specific lines or a script, but the student must react (to their opponents or opposition) through the historical figure’s beliefs and philosophical views as defined in a role sheet.

Reacting is deeply interdisciplinary, and teaches students valuable skills that they may not normally cultivate in traditional classrooms: such as public speaking, leadership, debate, and persuasion - but also compassion, empathy, and teamwork. During ‘game play’, students are in charge of the classroom. They stand up in front of class and give speeches, while audience members ask questions or heckle speakers. They're also learning about the art and power of persuasion. Student interactions manifest in various forms, from persuading others through speeches, to organizing a group of people to vote a particular way, to using moral suasion and appeals to human instincts. These types of peer-to-peer interaction inject more life into the college classroom, even as they teach students valuable lessons about how change happens (or why it doesn’t) in real life.

Learn more about the Reacting to the Past pedagogy by:

Listening to a podcast about Reacting to the Past (21:30) featuring our resident Reactors, Michaele Ferguson, Catherine Kunce, and David Paradis.
Reaching out to our resident Reactors! They are more than happy to share their experience and answer your most burning questions!
Signing up for FREE access to the Reacting Consortium library. The Student Success Innovation Incubator team has procured access for the entire ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ System to find instructor manuals, games, resources, and course materials for you to use!
Attending the in-person Reacting Summer Conference hosted at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ from June 13-16, 2022! There’s no better way to learn about what the Reacting to the Past pedagogy is than playing a game and learning from seasoned Reactors! Keep an eye out for more information about this event!

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Sign up for your Reacting Consortium Library Membership!

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 15:52:09 +0000

In spring 2021, ASSETT’s Student Success Innovation Incubator team purchased an Institutional membership to the Reacting Consortium. In spring 2022, the team negotiated a system-wide membership to include all four ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ campuses! With this membership, ALL ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ faculty and staff have full access to the Reacting Consortium Library, expanded Instructor materials for published games, student and Instructor materials for 30+ games in development, and resources on assessment, rhetoric, and grading. This membership also provides discounts on registration fees for certain conferences, editorial guidance and play-testing support for game authors, and special discounted rates for institutional members hosting Reacting workshops.

Reacting to the Past (RTTP), as defined by the Reacting Consortium at Barnard College, is an active learning pedagogy of role-playing games designed for higher education. In Reacting to the Past games, students are assigned character roles with specific goals and must communicate, collaborate, and compete effectively to advance their objectives. Reacting promotes engagement with big ideas, and improves intellectual and academic skills. (https://reacting.barnard.edu/)

Through this pedagogical approach, students study a historical moment and react to a series of events through a character or role, typically assigned by a faculty member. Each role has a specific goal that the character attempts to achieve. Unlike a play, these roles do not have specific lines or a script, but the student must react (to their opponents or opposition) through the historical figure’s beliefs and philosophical views as defined in a role sheet.

Access for the Reacting Consortium Library (RCL) is ONLY for faculty and staff at the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ campuses. Access will NOT be granted to students. Create an account by going to http://reactingconsortium.org/institutional/profjoin. Use your ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ email address to register for your account. If you need assistance with creating an account or more information about the Reacting to the Past pedagogy, please contact Michaele Ferguson at Michaele.Ferguson@colorado.edu.

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Meet the Creators of the Incarceration Transparency Database

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 19:26:10 +0000

Meet the Creators of the Incarceration Transparency Database Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/03/2022 - 12:26

Andrea Armstrong , Blair Young

On Wednesday, March 9, 2022 from 12-1pm MDT, Join the ASSETT Innovation Incubator Inclusive Data Science team and the Center for Research Data & Digital Scholarship (CRDDS) for a virtual panel discussion with Professor Andrea Armstrong, Professor Judson Mitchell and student collaborators from Loyola University New Orleans on their collaborative effort to create the Incarceration Transparency database.

The Incarceration Transparency project is a direct response to family members, advocates, and journalists seeking to understand the context in which a person died behind bars. With a mission to publicly share data and research to address significant harms from conditions of incarceration in Louisiana, the website hosts a database with an open data API that provides facility-level deaths behind bars — both who died and why they died.

“At this project’s core”, shares Meredith Booker who, as a student, helped launch the database project, “each point is a person, who came from a family and community. This has always been the grounding point for all who work on the project. Every individual who has died behind bars was first and foremost a person whose story deserves to be told and understood by the society who decided to send them to jail or prison”.

As Dr. Armstrong created a list for New Orleans and East Baton Rouge parish jails in partnership with the Promise of Justice Initiative she discovered that, without the broader context of deaths in other Louisiana jails, it was difficult to assess whether deaths in those two facilities were consistent with other jails or whether there were particular problems at those facilities that increased the risk of death. Concurrently, law school pedagogy was increasingly turning towards experiential education and the benefits of "learning by doing." Filing public records requests and negotiating with government officials are two core skills that many lawyers use in practice, but are difficult to teach in a doctrinal classroom. This project addressed these two gaps in knowledge — community knowledge on deaths and law student knowledge on public records/negotiation — by creating a seminar to obtain the records the community members needed.

The database development forced Dr. Armstrong’s collaborative team of faculty and students to specifically identify which pieces of information for each death was important — calling upon the diverse areas of expertise of each team member. Dr. Armstrong had little technical or coding expertise, yet she knew which data points would be most useful for identifying death trends and analysis. Conversely, Dr. Mitchell had the technical expertise to create the database, but did not have the subject-matter expertise on incarceration conditions. Student John Halfacre focused on making the data and information collected accessible to the general public. While student Meredith Booker contributed her prior experience as a class participant to developing standard protocols for students contributing to the project and streamlining data collection.

“The Incarceration Transparency is an incredible example of how we can leverage digital tools, open data, and data visualizations, to foster change where we know there is injustice”, comments Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara, Director of Digital Scholarship, CRDDS. “Further, the project rehumanizes the people who died behind bars in Louisiana, through pictures and short biographies — it’s powerful to see some of the faces and spirits behind the numbers.” .

Though the project is centered around death records and memorials for people who died behind bars, it also affirms the dignity of those who died by publicly acknowledging their deaths in society’s institutions. For some families, with whom the team worked to provide additional information and records, the project provided the first in-depth knowledge of their loved one’s death. An embodiment of using research, expertise, and learning for the greater good, the database itself is free, publicly available and contains all of the original underlying documents, in hope that it will be helpful to other academic researchers as well.

Meet the Panelists

Professor Andrea Armstrong joined the Loyola University New Orleans, College of Law faculty in 2010 where she is a Law Visiting Committee Distinguished Professor of Law. She is a leading national expert on prison and jail conditions and is certified by the U.S. Department of Justice as a Prison Rape Elimination Act auditor. Prof. Armstrong founded IncarcerationTransparency.org, a website that provides facility-level deaths behind bars data and analysis for Louisiana and memorializes lives lost behind bars. Her research has been profiled by New Yorker Magazine and quoted in the New York Times, the Atlantic, National Public Radio, and the Times-Picayune among others. Her scholarship focuses on the constitutional dimensions of prisons and jails, specifically prison labor practices, the intersection of race and conditions of incarceration, and public oversight of detention facilities. She teaches in the related fields of incarceration law and policy, constitutional law, criminal law and procedure, law and poverty, and race and the law. Professor Armstrong is a graduate of Yale Law School (JD), the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (MPA), and New York University (BA).

R. Judson Mitchell is a Clinical Professor at Loyola College of Law, New Orleans. His areas of expertise are Criminal Defense and Technological Innovation in Law. Prof. Mitchell is the creator of the legal case management software, Clinic Cases, and he also designed and now teaches a unique Technology and Legal Innovation Clinic. The students in this clinic were instrumental in creating the Incarceration Transparency website and database.

John Halfacre is a 2020 graduate of Loyola University New Orleans, College of Law. While in law school, he participated in the technology and legal innovation clinic with Professor Mitchell and Professor Armstrong. Alongside his classmates, John worked directly on the design and content of the Incarceration Transparency website. John is currently a practicing attorney specializing in criminal defense and personal injury in the New Orleans area. Before attending law school, John founded a marketing company that provided search engine optimization and website design services for clients worldwide. John received his B.A. in Criminal Justice from Loyola University New Orleans in 2010, graduating Cum Laude. Before attending college, John served in the United States Coast Guard, conducting search and rescue and law enforcement missions.

Meredith Booker (she/her) is a third year law student at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. Meredith has obtained a Master of Public Policy with a concentration in law, crime, and policy from Oregon State University and a B.S. in Criminal Justice and B.A. in Sociology from Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. Prior to law school, Meredith worked for U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley as a legislative aide on a variety of issues, including criminal justice, civil rights, and immigration. While in law school, Meredith has completed internships with Michigan Legal Services and the Detroit Justice Center, an externship with the Promise of Justice Initiative, has served on the board of the law school’s National Lawyers Guild chapter, and is now the Managing Editor, Online for the Loyola Law Review. Meredith took Professor Armstrong’s Incarceration Law course during the Fall of her 2L year and has continued to work with Professor Armstrong on the Incarceration Transparency project as her Research Assistant and Teaching Assistant for the course.

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Register for THE 2022 REACTING SUMMER CONFERENCE!

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 22:22:20 +0000

We are thrilled to announce the first in-person Reacting Conference in more than two years this summer! The conference will take place from June 13-16 at the University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, and include seven game options. Get more information about this event and register through the Reacting Consortium’s events page. We look forward to seeing you there!

This event is brought to you by the University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s ASSETT Student Success Innovation Incubator team, the Center for Teaching and Learning, and the Reacting Consortium.

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Innovation Incubator

ASSETT Innovation Incubator Welcomes Three New Interdisciplinary Teams of Faculty, Staff, and Students

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Funding to attend the Reacting Consortium Annual Institute

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Do you see a need to address recent technological developments in higher ed? Here's your chance!

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Want to incorporate metacognition in your teaching? Here are some resources to help!

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Reacting to Reacting to the Past

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Interdisciplinary Cross-College Team Receives National Endowment for the Humanities Award

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Invigorate Your Teaching and Get Students Actively Learning Through Reacting to the Past!

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Sign up for your Reacting Consortium Library Membership!

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Meet the Creators of the Incarceration Transparency Database

Meet the Panelists

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​Register for THE 2022 REACTING SUMMER CONFERENCE!

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Register for THE 2022 REACTING SUMMER CONFERENCE!