Within the past 2 months, Seidenberg has been all around the world. We’ve sent faculty members and even students to the far corners of the Earth to increase our global presence. So where have we been going and what are we doing there? And, more importantly, how can you get involved?Well, the first trip was exclusively for top members, meaning Jonathan Hill, the Associate Dean and Director of Special Programs and Projects here at Seidenberg. Dr. Hill attended conferences in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as well as in Singapore. These conferences focused on STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics – a topic that the Seidenberg school emphasizes in the classroom and study environments. Attending these conferences allowed Dr. Hill to experience what kinds of STEM initiatives are occurring around the globe in academia and commercially.
Soon after Dr. Hill’s return from KL and Singapore, six students set off for Helsinki, Finland, as part of Seidenberg’s annual participation in Product Development Project (PDP). This is a project we collaborate on with our good friends at Aalto University’s Design Factory. It’s an 8-month long project that allows students involved to travel to Finland twice: once during Fall to meet their Aalto team mates and to kickstart the project, and once again in May for the final presentations of said project. It’s a great way for students to gain real world experience in product development, which can often be programming heavy. This year, the six students from Pace have been put onto two different PDP teams. One team (Julie Gauthier, Olga Bogomolova, and Daniel Rings) has been joined with 11 other team mates in Finland and they will be working on a project funded by one of Finland’s largest casino companies to create new types of gambling machines that enhance the culture (of gambling and Finland) rather than detract from it. The other team (Shane Kirk, Nicole Semple, and Anya Rosentreter) has also joined with 11 others to design a test space for a children’s hospital that will be used in the plans for a new hospital to be built in 2016.
The day after the students returned, Jonathan Hill, Professor Richard Kline, and Wilfredo Peña, Seidenberg’s Community Manager, left for Shanghai. They visited the Aalto Tongji Design Factory, a portion of Aalto DF that has been around since 2010, for a “meeting [that] allowed for partners of the Global Design Factory Network to come together and share ideas about their respective Design Factories,” says Peña. Our Helsinki-based friends Peter Tapio and Andy Clutterbuck also joined up with Hill, Kline, and Peña to participate in the International Design Factory Week of 2013. This multifaceted partnership has grown strong enough that Pace University has now become one of only 6 international universities to be an official part of the Design Factory. This means big things for Seidenberg! More info, once the details are sorted, will be available in due time!
