CI Implementation Committee

Shortly after the conclusion of our CI Days event in May, Jim Bottum began discussing how we might keep motivation high. He decided to establish a CI Implementation Committee with representation from teaching, research, and service. The committee began meeting in early August and elected Roy Pargas (School of Computing) as chair with Chris Peters (School of Education) as vice-chair and the understanding that he will take over as chair next year. Three projects emerged fairly quickly:

1. Design and development of a new web-based tool that will increase productivity and collaboration by allowing the following:

• Faculty, staff and students to enter information about a trip, presentation, publication or grant submission one time and have that information populate all underlying systems that require that information.
• Faculty, staff and students to share that information with others and, if desired, to make contact and collaboration easy among those interested in the same topics.

2. Design and install classrooms that are enhanced with technology not readily available in traditional "smart classrooms." The working name for these rooms is "grid-enhanced" because collaboration with other sites is a priority. The project has three phases. Phase I plans for three rooms (two on Clemson's main campus and one at the University Center in Greenville) are finished and we are now seeking funding.

3. Maintain excellence in education during this difficult economic time. As faculty develop new courses to implement revised curricula, we propose engaging students and faculty in a collaborative project to design courses that reflect current learning preferences and incorporate 21st century skills while addressing the current economic situation.

Other progress has been made on projects discussed in presentations at CI Days, such as Betty Baldwin's Open Parks Grid project. Another CI project now under way is led by the College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities. They are actively pursuing funding for several ideas that will make good use of cyberinfrastructure.

We awarded three CI Seed Grants:

1. Betty Baldwin - A spring 2009 workshop with representatives from Clemson and four national parks in the southeast region, as well as the director and representatives from the National Park Service (NPS) regional office, provided an opportunity to better define the Open Parks Grid and develop some next steps toward a pilot project with the NPS.

2. Lee Crandall - He plans to bring together members of the national public health community to explore the development of needed cyberinfrastructure that will facilitate greater collaboration and more successful public health projects. 

3. Dan Warner - An undergraduate creative inquiry team is creating math solutions as vodcasts available for the general public via iTunes U and struggling students in Clemson math classes are creating vodcasts that demonstrate correctly solving problems they have struggled to understand for students in math classes at Tri-County Technical College.

All three CI Seed Grant recipients will present their projects and progress at an expanded edition of our Spring 2009 Teaching with Technology Symposium, which is scheduled for Tuesday, May 5, 2009.