Thursday, March 17, 2005

Wilmington, N.C. - Eight innovative UNCW faculty, student and staff projects that incorporate technology to advance teaching and learning were highlighted March 10 at the sixth annual Information Technology Innovations Awards. Funding for this year’s projects totaled $34,435, bringing the overall total investment in technology grants to $380,000 supporting a total of 42 projects that have involved 61 faculty, eight staff and 45 students.

The IT Innovations grants, which this year range from $1,600 to $5,000, are frequently used as seed funding for larger grants. For instance, past winner Ron Vetter, computer science, leveraged his award into a National Science Foundation grant to study the use of Personal Digital Assistant systems in the classroom. Another was chemistry’s Ned Martin’s award for NMR Spectra which was leveraged into a redevelopment of a popular chemistry software program. This discovery revolutionized NMR Spectra theory and was subsequently incorporated into the software.

“Through these grants, our faculty and staff have used the $380,000 in seed funds to bring $3.4 million in research funds to UNCW,” said Robert E. Tyndall, vice chancellor for information technology. “Our purpose is to stimulate proposals and fund really creative projects focused on the improvement in teaching that can get the grant process moving.”

At the ceremony recognizing the recipients, Chancellor Rosemary DePaolo commented on the cutting-edge “boundary-crossing” research that UNCW faculty are doing with their students, calling this the most powerful form of learning. She also noted that 70 percent of these technology awards involved faculty and students, and the other 30 percent involved faculty, students and staff.

“Our students come to us hard-wired already, so we must incorporate technology into every facet of 21st century learning,” she said.

Winners for 2004-05 and their proposals are:

Gene Tagliarini and Sridhar Narayan, computer science; Jeffery Hill and Robert Buerger, environmental studies; James Herstine, health & applied human sciences; James Blum, mathematics and statistics - Investigating the Development of an Adaptive Visual Pattern Recognition System for Application in the Environmental Sciences

Ruthanne Kuiper, nursing - The Impact of PDA Technology on Clinical Performance Outcomes of Undergraduate Baccalaureate Nursing Students

Lawrence Cahoon, biology and marine biology; Robert Cutting, environmental studies - Technology to Support Forensic Environmental Science

Theodore Burgh, philosophy and religion; Karl Ricanek and Robert Harrison, graduate student, computer science; Shane Baptista, Center for Teaching Excellence - Virtual Studies of the Past

Lynn Leonard, earth sciences; Jeff Marshall and Jennifer Dorton, staff, Coastal Ocean Research and Monitoring Program, Center for Marine Science - Coastal Ocean Research and Monitoring Program

Steven Dworkin, psychology - Development of a Student Response System to Enhance Technology Use in the Classroom

Frederick Bingham, physics and physical oceanography - Physics 105 Laboratory Technology Enhancement

Diana Ashe and Michelle Manning, English - Preventing Plagiarism and Strengthening Student Performance

The Information Technology Innovations proposals are submitted and reviewed through a “request for proposal” process conducted by the Committee on IT Innovations, co-chaired for the past two years by Rich Huber, professor of curricular studies in the Watson School of Education, and Kim Kelly, program development coordinator in ITSD.