Dear brilliant colleagues,
The end of the semester is just days away, and what a successful semester it was! I appreciate the work of all faculty and staff pushing Luddy forward in so many ways. We don’t have enough space to highlight every accomplishment, but know that your work is seen, understood, and appreciated.
Strategic plan
Drumroll, please! I’m ecstatic to finally share with you the Luddy School strategic plan. This document will guide our work for the next several years as we position the school as a force for socially responsible technical innovation. I challenge each of you to be ready to hit the ground running in the new year as we begin the hardest phase of this project: implementation.
Various members of the Luddy Cabinet will be taking on leadership roles to implement the four pillars of the plan (see below). Keep your eyes peeled for opportunities to participate. Of course, feel free to reach out to any of them if you have great ideas to implement.
Pillar 1: Student Success and Opportunity
- Stacey Arnold arnoldsk@iu.edu
- Amy Maidi amcwood@iupui.edu
Pillar 2: Transformative Research and Creativity
- Shiaofen Fang shfang@iupui.edu
- XiaoFeng Wang xw7@iu.edu
Pillar 3: Service to Our State and Beyond
- Davide Bolichini dbolchin@iupui.edu
Pillar 4: School Culture and Operations
- Mike Noth mnoth@iu.edu
- Rosiel Marasco rmarasco@iupui.edu
New IU marketing campaign and Luddy marketing change
You may have noticed that IU unveiled a new marketing campaign: Bring on
Tomorrow. And you may notice that Luddy is heavily featured in the AI section (special shout out to Selma, David, Bryce, and Shiaofen!). Perfect timing and perfect messaging for our own strategic plan! IU is trying to stake out areas that it can own, and one they have chosen is our humancentered approach to technology. You will likely continue to see Luddy heavily featured in ads and other material (like this week’s Written by Whitten).
To help with some of these larger IU efforts, and to ensure we are able to communicate a single Luddy brand message effectively, we are reorganizing the marketing team. The Indianapolis marketing team will begin reporting to Jacob Warner, director of marketing and communications, who will oversee marketing and communications across both locations. This will not change the way you work with the marketing team on your campus, but it will help us be more coordinated and cohesive in the story we tell.
Student highlights
Our core mission is to change lives through educational opportunity, and there are numerous examples of that happening throughout the semester.
HCI students from Indianapolis won a $25,000 prize to commercialize their solution that allows farmer’s market goods to be delivered in groups with others so individuals can share the cost of delivery with others in their community.
And in Bloomington, a team of intelligent systems engineering students took first place in a drone competition, Defend the Republic, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research. They beat teams from eight other universities in a game akin to a robotic version of quidditch.
These types of experiences don’t happen in a vacuum. They are driven by the transformational learning environments our faculty and staff create.
ALIGN update
The ALIGN team has been busy at work this semester! They have:
- Developed a handout to facilitate more effective engagement with industry partners
- Created an annual report highlighting Luddy’s experiential learning opportunities
- Provisioned standard project contracts to lessen the administrative burden for faculty
- Implemented an experiential learning project platform to ensure fulfillment of commitments made to all parties
- Consulted with faculty on service-learning and client-matching
Several faculty are already working with the ALIGN team to construct experiential learning projects for their courses and extracurricular programs. Please contact align@iu.edu to see how they can help you bring experiential learning to your course.
As I take stock of this year and all that you have accomplished, I am in awe. I encourage you to review the Luddy Bloomington and Indianapolis news sites to revisit some of these events, awards, and accomplishments.
Remember that the university is giving extra days off this year, December 26-29. I hope that you will be able to take some time to slow down and enjoy resting with friends and family as we celebrate the holidays—and for those of us crazy enough to try flying, may the odds be ever in our favor.
To a joyous season,
Joanna Millunchick
Dean Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering