Currently Browsing: Features
iThink Program Collaborates Showing with Sage of Albany’s Art Program
The logo for the "innovation Thinking" program, also known as "iThink."
iThink demo and student art reception held at Rathbone Hall.
Albany, NY- The Sage College of Albany has been working on an innovative general education course, called iThink, since 2005. This year’s freshman iThink class held its first demo along with the student art reception in Rathbone Hall on October 22nd.
The iThink demo contained student projects that use different disciplines of education to solve everyday problems. This required the freshman class to focus on the teamwork of classmates and the creativity to think “outside of the box.”
“It [iThink] is an exercise in teamwork that approaches projects with both the right side and the left side of the brain,” said Scott LeRoy, a mathematics and computer sciences instructor from the Sage College of Albany.
This mandatory iThink course requirement for freshman students is not taught to them, rather the advisor for the class acts as the student’s partners for their projects. The advisor selected for the course has no specific expertise in the particular field of their projects, but this is supposed to inspire students to use their creativity instead of following someone’s lead.
“iThink is linking creativity with problem solving,” said iThink coordinator, Michael Bienkowski. “At first, the students are a little scared when they know their teacher isn’t an expert in the field, but after a while they get excited that they are in charge of the project.”
Demo displays included a robot that operated without being touched, conceptual projects on the idea of the tipping point and design flaws, as well as various artistic projects.
The artistic element of the demo stretched into the Little Gallery across the hall which displayed student art work by Stanley Lehman, Jessica Bola Daniel Talmi, Valerie Gordon, Kim Schaller, Aimee Gordon, Ashley Feller, Lauren Van Slyke, and Kat DiCocco. Most of the media there were paintings and photographs and there was one complete set of marketing materials for an imaginary company.
When entering the room, the piece that was right in front of the viewer was a photograph titled “What Dress to Wear” by Jessica Bola. It featured a young woman in various poses and dresses along the top of a guard rail on the side of a road. It is almost as if clones of woman are passing different dresses down the line to try on. Due to the many different positions of the one person in the photograph, it must have taken the artist a large amount of time to collaborate this print into a freely flowing visual.
Another student art display that was particularly eye-catching was a set of five large paintings that portrayed different movie genres such as horror, science-fiction, mystery, adventure, and romance by Kim Schaller. The style is smooth and consistent throughout the collection. There is a sort of unreal cartoon feel to the paintings, but it appeared to be intentional to capture the drama of the movie industry.
Interestingly enough, many of the students who participate in the iThink program are art majors at the Sage College of Albany. There was a great deal of talent on display at Rathbone Hall and the creativity and ingenuity of the students will continue to drive these programs to success.
Email This Post
Print This Post
Leave a Reply