News and Events
Cox Hall Hosts Photography Exhibit
"A picture is a poem without words." - Horace
The Computing Center at Cox Hall is proud to host the photography exhibit "The Mind's Eye" this semester in our Center art gallery. Over the past eight years, we have displayed artwork by students enrolled in various painting, drawing, and photography courses through the Visual Arts Department. This semester, the photos in the exhibit are by Emory staff member Myron McGhee, circulation specialist in the Pitt's Theology Library '95T, with the exhibit curated by his wife Juana McGhee, academic administrator in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies '95T.
"The Mind's Eye" exhibit documents the creation of the mandala sand painting during Emory's annual Tibet Week and includes a new technology component for exhibition in the Computing Center: QR tagging. The QR tags allows visitors with a smartphone and QR code reader an enhanced experience of audio commentary by the artist, Tibetan scholars, Emory staff, as well as sounds captured during the creation of the mandala.
Last Friday, visiting Tibetan monks, here as part of the larger Mandala exhibit currently on display in the Carlos Museum, were guests of the Computing Center and had a special audience with Myron, Juana, and Tsepak Rigzin from the Drepung Monastery. We toured them through the exhibit, demonstrating the QR coding and audio files (with Tsepak translating), then Myron talked with them about his work, showing them his full collection of photos on his website. It was an emotional and heartwarming tour, with the monks truly overwhelmed by Myron's artistry and his and Juana's commitment to telling their story. I am proud that UTS could be a part of this experience and host such a wonderful exhibit connected to the larger campus community.
Next time you find yourself near Cox Hall, stop by the Computing Center and take a moment to view this outstanding collection!
- Kim Braxton, Manager, Academic Technology Services
Greening IT
The "Green Swish" indicates stories or ideas emphasizing our Division's efforts to be sustainable.
How green are we? How green can we be? At the February IT Briefing, Steve Siegelman (Infrastructure) noted that there are now over 500 virtual machines...that's a big milestone in the 'green' category! Significant reduction of hardware and power needs alone are measurable and there's no stopping the trend to VM.
The Office of Sustainability Initiatives is installing energy monitors in a few locations: Goizueta Foundation Center (West), PAIS, School of Medicine, Math & Computer Science, Theology/Ethics Bldg, Oxford Road Bldg (Admissions and Bookstore), and the Claudia Nance Rollins Building. Stop by and see how these monitors report usage information for power, HVAC and water consumption. The folks at Goizueta are planning 'turn-offs' of specific areas during Spring Break for a controlled measure of savings that they can report on; for example, turning off all monitors in certain classrooms and taking readings from the monitor for immediate impact. We should have those results next month - along with the Water Wise Competition!
Green Dates coming up:
- Midtown Electronics Recycling, March 10 from 10 AM to 3 PM at 320 Irwin Street, Atlanta, 30312
- Earth Hour, March 31 @ 8:30 PM, 'lights out' for 60 minutes for climate change
- Earth Day, April 22, it's the 42nd Anniversay and the focus: "Mobilize the Earth"
If you have CDs and DVDs that can be recycled - please let me know...I keep a collection going all year round to maximize the reclamation and I'll be happy to help you with yours!
- Dawn Francis-Chewning, Business Analyst, Academic Technology Services
R&HS Rebranding
The newly hatched acronym...it lives!
Research and Health Sciences IT (R&HS IT) has renamed and rebranded the division to Research and Woodruff Health Sciences IT (R-WIT).
There were a lot of reasons for making the change. First off, it's impossible to pronounce R&HS IT so people started calling us the "Research IT division," which was fine, except we missed the coordination of the academic health sciences portion of our responsibilities. In addition, we wanted an acronym that was easier to remember and pronounce. Also, there was a dyslexia factor: one small letter juxtaposition of R&HS IT and we're in the potty talk realm.
After four years, we decided we needed a better acronym so we came up with R-WIT. Please help by using this acronym in all future communication.
- Marc Overcash, Deputy CIO, R-WIT
Scrum Master Training April 25-26
The OTHER kind of "scrum."
By request from various UTSers and others across campus, I've arranged for BrainTrust to come to campus again for two days of Certified ScrumMaster training. Some of you will remember Brian Rabon who was the instructor for the last couple of classes. We'll be using him and his company again.
The cost per person is about $700 as long as we have 12 persons signed up. Tentative dates are April 25-26.
More info: http://www.scrumalliance.org/pages/CSM
If you are interested, contact me at marisa@emory.edu.
- Marisa Benson, Director, Project Management Office
St. Patrick's Day parade in UTS
"If you're enough lucky to be Irish, you're lucky enough!" - Irish Saying
Everyone is invited to a Saint Patrick's Day Parade on Thursday, March 15 at 2:00 pm in the parking lot of the 1762 Building. Come and march in the parade to celebrate your affinity for this special day or come watch as we circle the building. For more information, contact Marv Peck.
And a word from Brett regarding the event:
Colleagues,
Awash in change, the easiest thing in the world would be to forget those elements of the past that had an important part in making us successful. Even as we change work habits, job descriptions, or office locations, I don't want to miss out on those cultural aspects of working in UTS that have made this a place where we can have fun and foster the feeling of being a family.
I heard recently that we canceled our Mardi Gras celebration some years ago and as often happens, there is little institutional memory about how that happened. Now I hear that we have put together a St. Patrick's Day celebration and I think that would be just great.
Game Day, the Chili Cook-off, the Holiday Party, the annual kickoff, and other get-togethers are part of weaving a tapestry of social experiences. I hope we will be able to keep this and many other fun events, both large and small, so I thank you in advance for your support and your efforts in putting together this celebration.
Thanks,
- Brett Coryell, Deputy CIO, UTS