The Hatchery: An Agile and Effective Curricular Innovation for Transforming Undergraduate Education

The Computer Science Professionals Hatchery utilizes strong partnerships with industry and a vertically integrated curriculum structure, embedding principles of ethics and social justice and diversity, to create a nurturing, software company environment for students that also provides tools to allow them to take on the challenges of real-life company environment. The goal is to produce graduates who are well-rounded, who have a shorter pathway to full productivity after graduation, who can be leaders, and who can operate as agents of positive change in the companies where they work

EMCA in Sociology of Science, Technology, and Engineering

Obviously enough, the work of a professional sociologist can happen anywhere and it is perhaps most common for such work to happen \u27out there,\u27 in society writ large. However, for the practitioner of EMCA and its derivatives the focus is – more often than not – in the small, mundane and oftentimes (for others) inconsequential bits of interaction that make up one\u27s (or their) day to day world. One can (and many have) make the case that society writ large is an assemblage (ad hoc, planned, semi-planned and so on) made up in and of these small bits. And that\u27s why we do what we do – to understand social action, and in turn society, from – as they say – the ground up

Arctic Sea Smoke (ANA20140908145633)

Dimensions: 42 H x 25 W Technique: This painting is a product of a computer program I am developing which approximates the intellectual and physical processes I go through when I am making a conventional drawing or painting with pens, crayons or brushes, pigment and canvas. The program is named ANA (which is an acronym for ANA is Not Aaron , which is in turn an homage to Harold Cohen and his own art-generating software named Aaron). ANA is not an example of artificial intelligence. Instead, it is a tool I am using to better understand the intellectual and physical processes I go through when drawing and painting. ANA, and my own development of it, are the focus of my phenomenological research in art, science, engineering and `becoming`. At present the program is in a phase where it attempts to produce skyscapes with evocative use of color, transparency and in some cases linework that abstractly echoes the format and other subject matter in the art. ANA uses algorithms that I have developed which approximate my own thought processes and aesthetics when choosing, mixing and applying color. At present, these skyscapes attempt to provide the viewer with enough information to recognize some aspects of the subject matter, but to limit information such that the viewer is pushed back on his or her own life experiences to insert and/or extract links from the art to his or her own experiences. As an artifact of the above-described project, this painting represents only one of the artifacts that have been produced in this project. Another part -- not presented here -- is computer programming code that encodes the abstract processes which enable paintings like this to be formed. The computer code is written in Common Lisp and is being developed by the artist using computers running the Linux (Ubuntu) operating system. This painting is generated by the software and saved as a PDF document which in turn is printed on a large-format plotter/printer operated and maintained by the BSU Art Department, Photography Lab.https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/anniversary_exhibition/1038/thumbnail.jp

A Sociologist in a College of Engineering: Stranger in a Strange Land?

In Robert Heinlein’s famous novel Stranger in a Strange Land, Valentine Michael Smith paid a heavy price for figuring out and influencing members of the culture that surrounded him. As a sociologist in the Boise State University, College of Engineering, one might call me a stranger in a strange land too

Accidental Participation in Control, in the Small of Society

This paper draws from a longitudinal ethnographic research project in telephone call centres (Winiecki Technology-Mediated ; Winiecki Discipline and Governmentality) to detail and describe how planned constraints and abstract potentials in the workplace are taken up and translated into other areas of life by actors such that they actually participate in the production of pieces of what might be called control society. In so doing, this paper attempts to approach an empirical bridge between the high level and abstract reports of control across and between social institutions and micro- and meso-sociological accounts of social action, where participation in control is as much an accidental doing by subjects in the small of society as it may be a characteristic, if abstract, feature of late modernity

Teaching Professional Morality & Ethics to Undergraduate Computer Science Students Through Cognitive Apprenticeships & Case Studies: Experiences in CS-HU 130 ‘Foundational Values’

This proposal describes and details experience in guiding undergraduate computer science students to identify and address issues related to inclusion, diversity and social justice as they occur in computer science education and computer science professions. Specific details reported here arise from experience teaching a one-credit undergraduate course at Boise State University (CS-HU 130, Foundational Values)

How Do People Decide Political News Credibility?

In this paper, we share preliminary results from our research work focused on understanding how people assess news items as fake or real and improve their ability to identify fake news. Using existing real/fake news samples and best practices in qualitative, inductive data analysis, we identify factors that appear to impede ability of individuals to identify fake news. Based on this work we suggest one approach to improve human ability to identify fake news, and sketch a process for systematic development of means for supporting people in identifying fake news

Assessing Community in an Undergraduate Computer Science Program Using Social Network Analysis

Sense of community and belonging represent key components of students’ success in undergraduate degree programs. As part of a curriculum effort designed to strengthen these components, we conducted a Social Network Analysis of students in an undergraduate computer science program to establish a baseline measurement of students’ connectedness in the program. Analysis of these data showed no significant differences in connectedness between male and female students or white and non-white students. The analysis did identify significant differences based on students’ class year, interest and participation in computer games, and being employed by the computer science department

Economic Calculation and the Limits of Organization

Economists have become increasingly frustrated with the textbook model of the firm. The "firm " of intermediate microeconomics is a production function, a mysterious "black box" whose insides are off-limits to respectable economic theory (relegated instead to the lesser disciplines of management, organization theory, industrial psychology, and the like). Though useful in certain contexts, the textbook model has proven unable to account for a variety of realworld business practices: vertical and lateral integration, geographic and product-line diversification, franchising, long-term commercial contracting, transfer pricing, research joint ventures, and many others. As an alternative to viewing the firm as a production function, economists are turning to a new body ofliterature that views the firm as anorganization, itself worthy of economic analysis. This emerging literature is the bestdeveloped part of what has come to be called the "new institutional economics."' The new perspective has deeply enhanced and enriched our understanding of firms and other organizations, such that we can no longer agree with Ronald Coase's 1988 statement that "[wlhy firms exist, what determines the number of firms, what determines what firms do... are not questions of interest to most economists " (Coase 1988a, p. 5).The new theory is not without its critics; Richard Nelson (1991), for example, objects that the new institutional economics tends to downplay discretionary differences among firms. Still, the new institutional economics-in particular, agency theory and transaction cost economics-has been *Peter G. Klein is assistant professor of economics at the University of Georgia. H