Brett Boessen selected to attend national seminar on liberal arts, digital technology
Austin College Associate Professor of Media Studies/Communication Dr. Brett Boessen is spending the last week of June in Lexington, Kentucky, at Transylvania University’s inaugural Digital Liberal Arts Summer Institute to foster national dialogue about the role of the liberal arts in the digital age.
The goal of the Digital Liberal Arts Summer Institute is to advance a broader conversation about the role of technology in teaching at the college level, building on a mutual commitment to preparing students to face the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.
Boessen has been working or teaching in media fields for two decades, and currently serves as chair of Austin College’s Media & Theatre department. He is participating in the Institute with 16 other faculty members selected from schools across the country. The workshop seeks to contribute to a national conversation on the mission of liberal arts colleges in a digital age and the potential pitfalls created by technologies.
Attendees are discussing various topics including how technologies are shifting the ways that people participate in and perceive the world around them, and whether colleges can prepare students for the technological changes they will face in their lifetimes.
Guest speakers at the seminar include Dànielle DeVoss (digital fluencies) from Michigan State University, Paul Hanstedt (design thinking) from Washington & Lee University in Virginia, and Meredith Clark (human-technology interaction) from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Transylvania University was founded in 1780, and is Kentucky’s first college and the 16th oldest institution of higher learning in the country, with approximately 1,000 students. The initiative is sponsored by the school’s Bingham Fund for Excellence in Teaching.
Dr. Boessen’s primary focus at Austin College is helping students to learn to communicate and understand visual media: video, games, and digital networked media such as social media and the web. Recent courses include “New Media and Cultural Change” and “Games in American Culture.” His upcoming Fall 2023 courses include ”Persuasive Media,” which explores documentary and narrative cinema, television news, and advertising, and “Screenwriting” for motion pictures.