What project will you be working on?

My goal for the fellowship is to redesign my programming assignments in my Data Structures (CSCI0201) course so that they teach students how to decompose complex programming problems into smaller tasks, collaborate effectively with gen-AI tools to solve these tasks, and critically evaluate the solutions those tools produce. My intention is not to replace foundational programming knowledge, but to reframe how students apply it.

What impact(s) do you hope your project will have on student learning?

The redesigned assignments will encourage students to engage more deeply with the problem-solving aspects of programming. I also expect the project to increase student engagement by making assignments feel more relevant to the AI tools that students are likely to encounter beyond the classroom. By explicitly incorporating AI into programming assignments, the course can provide students with opportunities to experiment with these technologies in a structured environment and reflect on their strengths, limitations, and appropriate uses. Ultimately, the project aims to help students become thoughtful and effective AI-assisted programmers.

What project will you be working on?

This project involves using Generative AI to visually reconstruct a variety of past settings using recent archaeological discoveries as well as a progression of increasingly refined prompts. Phase 1 involves using generative AI to create a series of digital reconstruction drawings for five archaeological sites associated with two major invasions in that course: 1) the (increasingly well-documented) conquest of the central Maya lowlands by Teotihuacan (Central Mexico) in 378 CE, which was a formative event in Mesoamerican prehistory; and 2) the march by Hernan Cortes from the Aztec capital (Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City) to Honduras from 1524 to 1526, following his conquest of the Aztecs in 1521.

Phase 2 involves the design of a two-part module for ANTH 0227. In the first part of the module, students will pick one site along the invasion route (either from 378 CE or the 1520s) and explore the interplay between material culture, visual culture, and AI with respect to the past. The second part of the module will involve students coming up with suggestions to improve the OER, either with further links to buildings/information or with revisions to the images themselves.

What impact(s) do you hope your project will have on student learning?

This project takes an old problem in archaeology (inaccurate views of the past) and reframes it for lessons in digital teaching and learning, creating new opportunities for students to exercise critical thinking skills with respect to knowledge production as well as visualization.

What project will you be working on?

I have begun developing a database of ~250 women artists who were active in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which will be used as the basis for lessons on how to translate humanities data for use with computational tools, how to visualize and analyze this data using digital methods, and how to craft public-facing narratives through a digital platform to help correct the historical record and promote awareness of women’s aggregate contributions to the history of art.

In Spring 2027, students in Digital Cartography: Mapping Art, Artists, and Patrons will begin by contributing to this database. They will then develop research questions and analyze the data for geographical and social phenomena. Students will learn to visualize the data in digital maps, network graphs, and other forms of visualizations.

As a group, we will design a public-facing digital resource and discuss ways to develop historical narratives for different audiences, the affordances of digital modalities, and sustainable planning. Students will also create individual StoryMaps which may be linked to the public-facing digital resource.

What impact(s) do you hope your project will have on student learning?

It is my hope that the digital nature of the course will attract students from a variety of disciplines and bring a diversity of perspectives into the classroom. I will help students think about how digital tools and methods have applications to their individual goals beyond the course. The collaborative element of the project will also have extensions beyond the course itself.

What project will you be working on?

I would like my independent study students to participate not only in the production of psychological research, but also in responsible public communication of that research. The short-term goal, by the end of the spring of 2027, would be to have an interactive website on trigger warnings with multiple possibilities for digital interaction. The project would function more as a collaborative research practicum in which I collaborate with students on content for the website including:

•  Writing research summaries translating peer-reviewed work into accessible language
• Creating myth-vs-fact pages on trigger warnings
• Designing short educational videos
• Producing high quality digital research talks on the projects students are working on
• Moderating public comments/discussion on trigger warnings
• Building a “best practices” guide for educators
• Producing podcast-style conversations about controversial topics
• Tracking media (mis)representations of trigger warning research
• Creating FAQ pages for students, instructors, and administrators

What impact(s) do you hope your project will have on student learning?

I believe this project has the potential to create unusually high levels of student engagement because students would be contributing to a meaningful resource rather than completing assignments intended only for me to see. …the project would position students as collaborators in the communication of psychological science, giving them opportunities to see how empirical research can play a role in shaping broader societal conversations. The following would be four of the key learning goals for my students:

• Learn to translate empirical psychological research for public audiences

• Develop digital communication and public scholarship skills including how to communicate effectively “in the public square”.

• Learn ethical moderation and online engagement practices

• Gain experience with collaborative digital publishing

What project will you be working on?

For this fellowship project, I will incorporate best practices for communication, reproducibility, and collaboration into student project work in my numerical courses during AY 26-27. Students will

1. Learn about version control and how to collaboratively write MATLAB code.
2. Learn how to design numerical experiments and/or interesting homework problems that effectively illustrate key properties of a numerical method and explore the role AI might play in this process.
3. Learn about validation, efficiency, and reproducibility as it applies to numerical methods. This is especially important as people start experimenting with using generative AI to write or augment codes.
4. Learn how to effectively communicate their work to a wider audience by creating a live website from a Github repository.

What impact(s) do you hope your project will have on student learning?

When early students view and can interact with advanced students’ work, it can inspire them to pursue additional studies and persist through challenges. For example, in Fall 2022 I had students in MATH 0328 design interactive codes for students in MATH 0200 to explore at the end of the semester. These codes showed students in MATH 0200 how they could use linear algebra to compress images, for facial recognition, and for image deblurring. It remains one of my students’ most favorite in-class activities. By creating Github pages of student projects, it makes it easier to share student work and let students inspire students.

– Students can choose to share their Github pages more widely as part of their portfolio, highlighting their experience in programming, collaboration, and communication as they apply for REUs, graduate school, or jobs.

– Knowing that they can leave to course with a shareable final product will motivate students to more deeply engage in these course material and take pride/ownership of their work.

What project will you be working on?

I want to design a project for my Masking and the Senses seminar that engages students’ sensing bodies and thinking minds. Multi-sensorial spectacles involving visual and performing arts, masquerades are among Africa’s oldest and most dynamic expressive forms, long used to negotiate power, heal, and entertain across the continent and Diaspora. In this seminar, I aim to place the sensing body at the heart of students’ exploration of masquerades, asking how sensory perception informs artistic creation and interpretation.

To do this, I would like my students to make a podcast. They could work individually or in small groups to create podcasts that focus on an African masking tradition in the Museum’s permanent collection. Ideally, they could link their projects to the Museum’s website and/or artworks on display in the Museum.

What impact(s) do you hope your project will have on student learning?

Podcasts are performance based and have such potential for research and knowledge production that centers the senses in innovative and creative ways, unifying students’ thinking minds and sensing bodies. They are a playful yet serious way to prompt students to speak and demonstrate their expertise about their chosen masking tradition while incorporating a range of non-visual sensory phenomena. I am confident that a project like this will help students fully embody– and therefore deeply understand and long remember– the course material. Further, they will become better writers and more confident public speakers, while gaining a lasting appreciation for museums, art history, and African history and expressive forms.