Call for Local Informaticists

Seeking: NKU faculty members from Arts and Sciences, Business, Education, Health Professions, and Law whose teaching and scholarly interests connect to some aspect of informatics, and who are available to be bought out of one course during one semester between now and Fall 2012 to participate in a “transdisciplinary” project.

NKU has been awarded a $300K three-year grant from the National Science Foundation CPATH program. One goal of this NSF program is to revitalize and transform computing curricula to engage with computational thinking across all disciplines. Our grant project, entitled Informatics at Multiple Scales, uses the theme of scales (small-large, slow-fast, concrete-abstract, local-global, to name a few) to frame a transdisciplinary vision of information and translate it into curriculum. One particular focus is on a team-taught experimental course, INF 128, which is being piloted this fall with sixty students.

We have funding for six NKU faculty members –who must be outside the College of Informatics – to join us to work on this project. The first such “local informaticist in residence” is Rudy Garns, a philosopher from Arts and Sciences. With five more units of reassigned time available between now and Fall 2012, we are putting out a call across campus. These faculty members would (1) develop modules for the INF 128 course that arise from their discipline; (2) teach a few days of this course; (3) work with other project members on scholarly publications relating to this transdisciplinary vision of information; and (4) help integrate these work into a book and set of resources to be finalized in 2012.

If you are interested in participating in this project, please send a one-page statement of interest to Kevin Kirby, the Principal Investigator on this grant (kirby@nku.edu) by September 30. The project committee (PI and co-PIs) will review these statements to try and achieve a balance across many disciplines and then follow up with you promptly. Naturally, this will ultimately involve agreements between you and your chair on whether you would be available to accept this reassigned time.

For more information on the project, see scalinginformatics.nku.edu and feel free to contact PI Kevin Kirby (x6544, kirby@nku.edu), or Rudy Garns (garns@nku.edu).