Making Rules, Making Tools: How Can Shape Grammar Support Creative Making?

Design theory has previously studied the practices of architects, industrial designers and engineers. Designer-makers, designers who work independently, designing and making objects with close attention to tools and materials, have not been similarly studied. A renewed interest in craft and making, in part catalysed by new computational and digital fabrication tools at designer’s disposal, strengthens the case for studying successful design-through-making processes. An analogy between rules transforming shapes and tools transforming material provided the initial indication that concepts from shape grammar could be aligned with making processes, to potentially support creative making and deliver new theoretical and applied knowledge for both spheres. The first part of the thesis examines shape grammar theory as a method of modelling designer-maker creative episodes, to inform designer practice. Evidence was gathered from interviews with designer-makers, observations from a design process carried out by the author and other literature on designer-makers. This evidence was analysed in the context of shape grammar and established creativity literature in order to seek formal descriptions of creative episodes. It was found that designer-makers used tools to define personal and shared design worlds and focussed on and undertook specific activities relating to tools which have been classified; tool selection, tool combination and tool transformation, all of which have creative potential. Tool transformation was found to have further scope for definition and it was found that designers can perform parametric, functional and reformatting transformations on tools to produce new and useful design outcomes. Shape grammar schemas were found to provide useful descriptors for the operations performed by designer-makers on tools. The second part of the thesis inquires if shape grammar as a design method can support creative computational making, by specifically exploring the use of shape grammar weights, a way of modelling material properties alongside shape operations, as a tool for generating designs for multi-material 3D printing. A number of design reasoning and computational making experiments were carried out and the process and results reported and considered. The outcome is a range of specified weights systems and a general schema for defining and using weights as tool for managing material properties for multi-material 3D printing that can be used and transformed by computational makers. The general weights schema also extends previous theoretical definitions of shape grammar weights. This part of the thesis also demonstrated the importance of tool development and transformation as a basis for creative episodes in design-through-making processes

The ILR School at Fifty: Voices of the Faculty, Alumni & Friends (Full Text)

A collection of reflections on the first fifty years of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. Compiled by Robert B. McKersie, J. Gormly Miller, Robert L. Aronson, and Robert R. Julian. Edited by Elaine Gruenfeld Goldberg. It was the hope of the compilers that the reflections contained in this book would both kindle memories of the school and stimulate interest on the part of future generations of ILRies who have not yet shared in its special history. Dedicated to the Memory of J. Gormly Miller, 1914-1995. Copyright 1996 by Cornell University. All rights reserved

Faculty Senate Newsletter, April 2014

Message from President: If there were ever any doubt that the favorite virtue of higher education leadership is that of unanimity, skeptics would need to look no further than the apparent administrative lovefest that accompanied the announcement of the confidentlydenominated WISE plan (the “Workforce and Innovation for a Stronger Economy” blueprint), a loosely defined array of proposals and prophecies that center around the currently pending HB1033, sponsored by Lake Charles power broker Charles “Chuck” Kleckley. Wisdom might come at no charge other than that of study and experience,but the WISE plan strikes a hard bargain with academe: the ex nihilo delivery of $40,000,000.00 in exchange for measuring university merit by what HB1033 blithely calls “degree and certificate production” in “high demand fields” allegedly pertinent to the “state’s future workforce and innovation needs.” No “degree” or “certificate” is required to see that the WISE program aims, if nothing else, to change the tone and the missions of universities by prioritizing vocation­-specific preparation over wide­-ranging, altruistic teaching and research. What is perversely impressive about the WISE initiative and the happy­-puppy-­like response to it is that the stakes are so very, very low. Setting aside the question of where the$40M was found and overlooking the apparitional quality of a plan that emerged without any publicly accessible discussion, the economic impact on university budgets will barely push the indicator needle. $40M for three dozen Louisiana campuses, all of which will surely scramble for these dollars, will start little more than a stampede. At best, it will fund new careers for thirty or so “Associate Vice-­Chancellors for WISE.” Yet, despite realizing that a very small carrot had replaced the broken stick of a declining gubernatorial regime, higher education leadership rushed to the celebrations (and into group photographs with all the key players, including the Governor). Clever leaders, admittedly, found ways to tweak and finesse the lowbid buyout offer that is WISE. The buoyantly strategic leadership of the University of Louisiana System unfurled a scroll of pro­-WISE ovations from its nine campus Presidents, thus showing that the plan could be interpreted as applicable to nearly any initiative. ULS officialdom then began publicly affirming the value of the liberal arts. Southern University leadership opined that the WISE plan was fine and dandy but should be thoroughly revised so as to encourage smaller institutions. All of these carefully worded proclamations ingeniously endorsed the WISE plan while opening the possibility of its dilution and dissipation. Words questioning the fundamental premises of the WISE plan, however, remained innumerable, the count being zero. Faculty would do well to review and to speak out concerning the WISE plan and its attendant legislation. The proposed WISE management arrangements will inhibit faculty as well as public access to policy decision-making that will affect curricula. The WISE Board will operate as a select committee hidden within the Board of Regents. Anyone acquainted with the Regents’ approach to information distribution will understand that announcements concerning and access to WISE Board meetings will disappear behind a permanently outdated web page and a retracted public relations department. Comprised of system heads and three state economic and workforce development officials with no faculty, community, or student representation, the proposed WISE Board is at best exclusionary and at worst a machine by which a handful of state employees can quietly intimidate institutional leaders. The WISE bill anoints those curricula that produce workers in four­- or five-­star fields as determined by the Louisiana Workforce Commission, a gubernatorial prefecture which lacks any longterm record for predicting job prospects, let alone promoting workers’ rights. The four­- and five-­star ranking nomenclature, borrowed from investment ranking services such as S&P or Morningstar, fits awkwardly with discussions of human beings. Occupations that concern themselves with freedom of thought, basic research, or selfless service fall beneath this heaven of good fortune. Speaking of heaven, the calling of pastor doesn’t make it into the materialist galaxy of stellar jobs. What is most curious about the WISE phenomenon is that it may well increase faculty sympathy for university administrations. The highly talented but marginally neurotic way in which the top education managers tried and continue to try to massage the WISE bill—to say, in effect, “yes, we’ll take the money, but we’ll find some way to tie up the attached strings in the tangled rhetoric of the academic diversity so that the program will go nowhere except into the bank”—may help faculty to recognize that administrations are just as beatendown as are rank­-and-­file educators, although, perhaps, the top dogs are a bit better for taking the abuse

Medical Education for the 21st Century

Medical education has undergone a substantial transformation from the traditional models of the basic classroom, laboratory, and bedside that existed up to the late 20th century. The focus of this text is to review the spectrum of topics that are essential to the training of 21st-century healthcare providers. Modern medical education goes beyond learning physiology, pathophysiology, anatomy, pharmacology, and how they apply to patient care. Contemporary medical education models incorporate multiple dimensions, including digital information management, social media platforms, effective teamwork, emotional and coping intelligence, simulation, as well as advanced tools for teaching both hard and soft skills. Furthermore, this book also evaluates the evolving paradigm of how teachers can teach and how students can learn – and how the system evaluates success

The University of Michigan Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences: A History

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145451/1/2018_UM_Nuclear_Engineering_History.pd