Month: May 2013

Lou Bloomfield is behind on his correspondence.

A teetering stack of letters and postcards sits on the desk of the UVA physics professor, creator of the much-loved undergraduate science-for-non-science-majors course “How Things Work.” They’re all from students, and full of praise and thanks. He’s met none of them.

“I really want to be able to devote some time to my replies,” he said.

Time is something Bloomfield doesn’t have a lot of since he took on the challenge of becoming the creator of one of UVA’s first Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, through the University’s partnership with online learning hub Coursera. He’s spent more than 1,000 hours creating short videos for his class, an online version of his popular lecture hall course, illustrating the basic principles of physics with ramps, rolling wagons, and bouncing balls.

UVA first announced it would become one of dozens of top-tier colleges and universities to partner with Coursera last summer, not long after the firing and eventual reinstatement of University President Teresa Sullivan. The attempted ouster thrust the issue of online learning into the spotlight after Rector Helen Dragas named the University’s lack of an organized approach to new learning technologies as one of the reasons she and the Board of Visitors were forcing a leadership change.

Nearly a year later, Sullivan is still at the helm, and it looks like the institution of online education is here to stay, too.

Coursera, one of the most popular MOOC hosts on the Web, currently offers nine free UVA lecture series running from four to 16 weeks in a range of topics: history, philosophy, education, and a whole slew of business courses out of Darden. Each of the five courses that launched earlier this year saw between 45,000 and 85,000 eager students sign up, and while the attrition rate is steep—usually, only about 5 to 10 percent of enrollees stick it out to the end—UVA’s courses are showing strong engagement. And even with a high dropout rate, participating in the Web platform has meant hundreds of thousands of learners are getting at least a sliver of a UVA education, and as Bloomfield found out from his influx of snail mail, a lot of those people have come away with a deep appreciation for what they’ve experienced.

But it’s having an effect on Grounds, too. One of the big arguments in favor of exploring online education nationwide, even if the courses aren’t widely disseminated, is that it gives instructors the ability to “flip the classroom”: Put the lectures online and make them homework in order to free up more time for discussion.

“That was one of the things we talked about when we were looking at this in the first place—creating more in-class time so students could have more direct interaction with the professor,” said Kristin Palmer, UVA’s program director for online learning environments. “Everyone said that. They nodded their heads. And then it actually happened.”

History professor and Associate Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences Philip Zelikow’s class was one example.

Zelikow was in on last summer’s early discussions about expanding online learning at UVA, and he started out a skeptic. As a reward, he joked, Dean of Arts and Sciences Meredith Woo put him in charge of following up on Coursera. The more he looked into it, the more intrigued he was. Could scrapping the stand-up-and-lecture approach to teaching change his own class for the better?

After a semester of trying the approach, he can say it has. All his UVA students have also been following the online Coursera videos. “They’re not just taped lectures,” he said—they’re elaborate multimedia video segments. “It’s a more interactive and flexible format for the students. It’s easier to take notes, freeze on maps, do close-ups. Then I broke the class up into two parts, and what used to be the discussion section with the grad student became discussion with the professor.” He’s felt the impact of spending more time with smaller groups, and so have the students.

“I think it’s a more powerful version of the class,” he said.

Bloomfield, too, has found that far from degrading the quality of instruction, Web-based lectures can improve it. His “How Things Work” class has always been interactive and full of live demonstrations. But in his elaborate videos, he can slow down a bouncing ball, zoom in on a seesaw fulcrum, and draw arrows to show the trajectory of a skateboard.

But there’s a catch, he said. A big one. The amount of work it takes to teach in a brand new medium is enormous, and nobody’s getting paid to do it—or recognized in any way.

“The MOOC is considered volunteer work,” he said. “It has no place in my life at the University, which is weird. It’s not teaching, and it’s not research.” And in academia, especially in science, research is the be-all and end-all. Bloomfield, meticulous and intensely focused on getting every detail of his MOOC videos just right, had to give up his on-Grounds lecture this semester, take accrued leave, and largely ignore his research just to keep his head above water. That hasn’t gone over well, he said, which he thinks indicates UVA wants online education both ways: All the gain, none of the pain.

“I don’t know that it’s sustainable at UVA,” he said. “Just expecting people to do this out of the goodness of their heart is unrealistic.”

Palmer said not every online course has to be as labor-intensive for professors as Bloomfield’s was for him. “You have to be able to work as a team,” she said. “You can’t go solo and do everything yourself.”

But she acknowledged that the academic community has to find ways to incentivize faculty for improving the way they teach. “We’re working on it, but there are no answers yet,” she said.

There, are, however, lots more questions. Zelikow offered one: Once you open the door to learning at UVA to hundreds of thousands of people, what’s your responsibility toward your newly expanded community?

“It’s a really interesting agenda for the University,” he said. “How do we change the way we think about undergraduate education? Or even who the audience is for our education? If we’re tapping potentially many thousands of nontraditional students whose lives we’re changing for the better, should the University reconfigure itself to serve them, too?”

One thing is certain, said Bloomfield, and that’s that change isn’t coming to academia. It’s already here, and it’s up to UVA to stay ahead of the curve and stay relevant. “Disruptive technologies are disruptive,” he said. “You either adapt or you die.”

“The MOOC is considered volunteer work,” said UVA physics professor Lou Bloomfield. “It has no place in my life at the University, which is weird. It’s not teaching, and it’s not research.”

Whenever I hear anyone make a snide remark about a “townie,” I glare and then I puff out my chest. Who do these students think they are? They are the ones here temporarily, taking advantage of our turf.

I moved to Charlottesville in seventh grade, and came to UVA as a first-year in 2009. My “townie” side often comes out—especially when people tell me there is “nothing to do” in the city off Grounds. But I am a student nonetheless, and I have loved my time here at Mr. Jefferson’s University, and recognizing that UVA is a part of Charlottesville as much as Charlottesville is a part of UVA, regardless of whether or not either side wants to embrace it.

Not all my takeaways from college have been positive. I leave with some concerns about UVA’s treatment of its workers and the perpetuation of negative social and cultural norms, including the University’s treatment of sexual assault.

But my time here has seen me through some of the most important learning and personal growth experiences of my life. This is where I met my best friend and where I lost her.

Move-in day was wet, and thankfully cool.

The trek was a brutal 15-minute drive from my house, and I remember wondering many times if I was ever going to see my family again. (I jest.)

Having corresponded with my new “roomie” all summer—we both liked dancing, books, the Spanish language, and long chats, as demonstrated by our novelesque e-mails back and forth—it was no surprise that we immediately clicked. She had gotten there during the early morning move-in rush at 7 and left a note on the door’s white board that she would be back soon.

Halfway through lugging my things up the stairs to the third floor of a now-demolished building, Webb, I opened the door to a British-twinged (she had lived in London for much of her life), “ALLLIIII     EEEEEEEE” as she flung her arms around me, enveloping me in one of her famous bear squeezes. We grinned at each other and became immediate friends.

You know those people you stay up with all night talking at a slumber party even after you’ve turned out the lights and said goodnight? She was that friend for me. She was what made UVA home.

I was the “practical” one (whatever that means), and she was the one who encouraged those around her to stop and recognize beauty. A dancer who truly expressed her joy for life every time she danced, she inspired me to dance while at UVA—another part of this University that has shaped who I have become.

Last summer, she suddenly passed away and with her passing, a part of UVA has been lost.

A few weeks ago, one of the earrings she gave me for my 20th birthday fell out of my ear during a perfect Virginia spring afternoon. Perhaps it marks that the time has come to move on from both Charlottesville and UVA.

As I get ready to leave for the Southwest, my experiences as a student have constructed a more complete picture of Charlottesville. I now know how many of the once-mysterious roads connect. People I knew as neighbors and friends’ parents became professors and mentors. I still relate to Charlottesville from the perspective of a “native,” but I have come to realize that despite my straddling two worlds, there are many more Charlottesville worlds of which I am not a part. I guess no matter where we are or where we go, we can never be part of every single component of anything. There are many different narratives. And some of them we lose along the way.—Allie Cooper

Allie Cooper, a Monticello High School graduate majoring in Spanish and Global Development Studies at UVA, spent part of her last two college semesters working for C-VILLE as a news intern. She’s leaving Charlottesville in the fall for the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Arizona State University. 

Ask some of the newest members of UVA’s International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition team why they plan to spend the summer in a lab on Grounds splicing DNA, and they have a tendency to talk over one another in their eagerness to explain.

“It’s undergraduate research, but we’re not treated like undergraduates,” said 19-year-old Josh Leehan, a second-year biology student.

“That’s one of the appeals for a lot of people,” said Elizabeth Kelly, 20, another second-year bio major. Plenty of undergrads at UVA get the chance to work in labs, she said. “But you’re not doing anything on your own. You’re doing someone else’s work.”

Not so with iGEM, a decade-old contest that challenges college students from different disciplines and from all over the world to solve real problems with synthetic biology—almost entirely on their own. UVA bio professor Keith Kozminski, one of several faculty members who mentor the group, describes the year-long program University undergrads have built around the competition in more sweeping terms.

“This is what college education should look like in the future,” he said. “Students tackling deep problems, deep questions—questions that are global and really drawing on many disciplines simultaneously.”

Synthetic biology concerns itself with building new biological systems and editing and tweaking existing ones in order to put them to use. It is, in essence, the marriage of engineering and life science, and in the last decade, the field has exploded. From bacteria-laced computer chips that can sniff out pollutants to manufactured microbes that assassinate tumor cells, the applications are myriad, and carry the potential for great human impact—and great profit.

The iGEM competition started as a synthetic bio course at MIT 10 years ago, and has grown into an international contest that last year drew nearly 200 undergraduate teams to five regional competitions and a world championship in Cambridge.

UVA’s teams have performed well regionally in the past, but in 2012, a group of seven undergrads took over a bench in a UVA biomedical engineering lab for the summer to figure out how to create a virus that could invade pertussis bacterium, forcing it to produce a human pregnancy hormone marker. Cough in a tube full of viruses, let it brew, add a home pregnancy test, and you would have a cheap, quick, easy test for whooping cough, a disease that currently takes a week and a lot of fuss to diagnose—and kills hundreds of thousands of children every year.

They took fourth out of 44 teams at last year’s East Regional iGEM competition, beating out MIT and many other innovation and biotech powerhouses, got a special nod for “Best Experimental Measurement Approach,” and were among 14 teams to go to the international championship in Cambridge. They didn’t place there, but when they got back to Charlottesville, they hit the ground running, and their diagnostic test took first place—and $20,000—at UVA’s annual Entrepreneurship Cup last November.

And then they got to work again.

If the Virginia iGEM team members’ competitive ingenuity is what got them attention on the road last year, it’s their work in the classroom that keeps them strong. The team dedicates the spring semester to recruitment, fundraising, a crash course in synthetic biology for new members, and the development of the project they’ll tackle over the summer and bring to the 2013 competition. It’s a long, hard slog—a full-credit course—and every part of the process is run by the team.

From lectures on a carefully selected syllabus of research articles led by senior members to the democratic selection of their project, “everything is student-driven,” said fifth-year biochemistry and physics double major Shaun Moshasha, who joined the team in 2012. Their ability to bring together multiple scientific fields, teach each other, and represent UVA’s strengths as a pioneer in the sciences is helping them make the case to deans and administrators for more funding, which will let them grow the team to a total of 13 members this year and fund a spinoff group focused on innovation.

The accolades and interest are exciting, but it’s clear what matters most to the team is the science, and the chance to put their fingerprints on something that could change lives.

“It’s exciting, because you get to see your ideas come to fruition,” Moshasha said. “I learned about these things in a textbook, and I finally get to implement them.”

“This is what college education should look like in the future,” said UVA biology professor Keith Kozminski. “Students tackling deep problems, deep questions—questions that are global and really drawing on many disciplines simultaneously.”

UVA accepted its first African-American student in 1950. Black enrollment increased gradually over the following 40 years, but since hitting 10 percent in 1990, the enrollment of African-American students has dropped steadily. According to 2012-2013 numbers, African-American students make up less than 7 percent of UVA’s undergraduate student body. Students, faculty, and alumni agree that the University is suffering, and one group is trying to preserve black history and culture through film.

African-American studies professor Claudrena Harold and film professor Kevin Everson are collaborating to produce Black Fire, a university-funded multimedia initiative documenting the life and challenges of black students at UVA, particularly during the 1970s.

“It critiques the myth about what people thought about the beginnings of when African-Americans came to campus,” Everson said of the project. “A lot of white people get self-centered, and have a false narrative about the beginning of African-American culture here at UVA.”

The first Black Fire short film, Sugar Coated Arsenic, centers around daily life on Grounds during the ’70s, with an emphasis on how black students created a community through academics, activities, and activism.

“Folks like the story of integration, and stories of the first black to do this or that,” Harold said. “I’m really interested in telling the story of first and second generation African-Americans here who wanted to transform the University intellectually, culturally, and politically.”

About 50 students participated in the making of the film, and they recreated pivotal scenes like Vietnam War protests, an equal rights march on Carr’s Hill, and a speech about racial equality and the importance of diversity in higher education delivered by Vivian Gordon, the director of UVA’s Black Studies program between 1975 and 1980.

Most students who participated in the making of the movie had taken African-American studies courses, so the material itself wasn’t new or surprising. What was new, Harold said, was an emotional connection between her students and their predecessors, and a better understanding of how it must have felt to be at UVA during that critical time.

“When they were marching and singing the songs, it was like they were embodying history in a different way,” Harold said. “It’s one thing to read about it, but there’s something about when you actually do it.”

Third year English and African-American studies major Corinthia Evans, who’s also vice president of the Black Leadership
Institute, said participating in the film gave her a different perspective on what she wants her role to be as a student at UVA.

“It just inspired me to pursue everything I want to do while I’m here and in my future endeavors,” she said.

Evans said she’s never experienced any blatant racism at school, but she often feels that she and her black peers are underestimated intellectually, which can put a strain on black-white relations on Grounds. The political changes in the ’70s created a tight-knit African-American community, she said, but “it’s not really like that anymore.” She hopes Black Fire can change that.

“I hope it gives people good perspective of the University, and they realize that they should be doing something,” she said. “There has been a lot of progress, but it’s kind of like it’s gone a couple of steps back, because of the amount of diversity now.”

Alumni Blake and Paulette Morant were surprised and disappointed to learn, nearly 40 years after graduating, that UVA’s black enrollment numbers have decreased significantly.

“It’s a little disheartening to hear that they’ve fallen back a bit,” Blake Morant said. “UVA has always had some of the best graduation rates for African-Americans in the country.”

According to Paulette Morant, 1970 was the last year all-black classes graduated from public schools in Virginia. So for many students, their first year at UVA was their first interracial experience, and a huge adjustment.

Now that African-American students have been making their way at the University for more than 60 years, she said she hopes the falling enrollment numbers are due to the disproportionate effect of the recession on middle-class black families, and not institutional racism.

“My gut feeling is that it’s because of finances rather than dislike,” she said.

Paulette and her husband were both members of the Black Student Alliance as undergrads—formerly called Black Students for Freedom—and return to Grounds whenever they can for the annual Black Alumni Weekend. They haven’t yet seen Sugar Coated Arsenic, but “Having a movie like that is inspiring. It’s inspiring to know that the University has a history that is intertwined with a variety of different people,” Blake Morant said. “I think it’s a wonderful thing to celebrate.”

“When they were marching and singing the songs, it was like they were embodying history in a different way,” Claudrena Harold said. “It’s one thing to read about it, but there’s something about when you actually do it.”