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Sessions

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Sessions at the 2016 a2ru conference will encompass topics incorprating the Arts in four primary areas: Humanities, Entrepreneurship, Health, and S.E.A.D. 

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Denotes a Rocky Mountain Spotlight featuring local Colorado participants and organizations!

ARTS & HUMANITIES SESSIONS

    Artist Residencies in Research Institutions: This workshop presents different models of residencies and case studies to investigate how artists mine the unique intellectual and creative resources of a research institution to expand their own practice, produce new work, enhance student learning, and instigate interdisciplinary conversations and public dialogue. The session is aimed at museum professinoals, artists, students, faculty, and administrators.

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The Future of Publishing: Leonardo Education Art Forum (LEAF) Birds of a Feather Gathering Place: Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST) will present examples of publishing models past, present, and predictions toward the future.

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    North/East Denver Change: The Power of Critical Public Humanities in the 21st Century Academy: Critical Public Humanities (CPH) is the next stage of community engagement in academia. In this panel, an interdisciplinary research team from the University of Colorado Denver will discuss the creation of "North/East Denver Change", a CPH organization that critically analyzes the human impacts and consequences of local political and economic agendas.

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PLENARY PANEL: Making the Future - Foresight Thinking to Motivate and Innovate: Have we lost the ability to dream big? How do we prepare to answer questions that we haven't even thought of yet? What is the role of cross-disciplinary work in imagining the future? This plenary panel of experts will challenge us to think about the future of education and how we prepare our students and our institutions to face 21st century challenges. The session will use a 'futures lens' to consider our practices as artists, scholars, interdisciplinarians, and academic leaders.

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The Creative Edge: Where Liberal Arts and Business Education Meet: Project leaders from the Wisconsin School of Business share the story of parallel experiments in educational innovation. Teaching across disciplines makes apparent the meaningful ways in which arts and business can mix and contribute to an enhanced understanding of both. SEssion attendees hear and contribute details of integrative learning experiences and discuss specific teaching strategies.

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Catalysts for Creative Collaboration: Incorporating Libraries and Librarians into Transdisciplinary Scholarship: Academic librarians present arts-integrated projects which exemplify information and visual literacy standards designed to promote transformative scholarship. Through directed discussion, attendees explore ways that emerging librarian roles and "neutral" library spaces can actively benefit transdisciplinary projects and curricular goals on their own campuses.

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Student Success with Arts-Integrated General Education Courses/Preparing Future Faculty for New Roles in Arts and Humanities: This presentation analyzes the successes of two General Education courses at The Ohio State University - Dance History and Writing for Dance - as specific examples of curricular arts integration. In a talk intended for faculty, students, and academic administrators, the methodology and assessment of GE courses will be addressed / A panel of music doctoral students describes how they are preparing for new faculty roles that require them to teach interdisciplinarily. Discussion focuses on how to equip doctoral students for teaching and learning at the undergraduate level, beyond Colleges of Fine and Performing Arts, and imagining broader possibilities for teaching assistantships.

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Beyond the Professional Degree: New Models for Integrated Design and Humanities Degrees: Changing demographics, resource constraints, and new models of practice are challenging design colleges to create alternative paths into design fields to complement traditional professional degree programs. This panel will present innovative curriculum responses to these conditions at Iowa State University of Illinois at Chicago.

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Humanities

ARTS & ENTREPRENEURSHIP SESSIONS

Entrepreneurship in the Arts: Essence, Exemplars, and Creating a University-Based Initiative: For those interested in a deep dive into the topic of Arts Entrepreneurship, this workshop highlights the essence of entrepreneurship and its many flavors in the arts and design context, while describing the operations of a few leading arts entrepreneurship programs, and providing suggestions for creating a program at the university level.

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     The Time for the Arts and Entrepreneurial Endeavors Is Now! Or Is It?: What are the economic, political, and academic challenges and opportunities of creating a new research center whose mission is leverage the creative capacities of the arts to advancing profound, awareness based , systemic change in the areas of Education, Health Care, and Poverty?

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What 30,000 Arts Graduates Say About Their Entrepreneurial Training / Same or Different? The Development of "Arts Entrepreneurship" Constructs in the US as Compared to "Cultural Entrepreneurship" in Europe: Findings from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) 2015 survey about the educational experiences and careers of nearly 30,000 arts graduates reveal complex information about the need for entrepreneurial training, both during their formal education and afterward. / This paper looks at the conceptual development of "arts entrepreneurship" in the US as differentiated from "cultural entrepreneurship" in Europe and elsewhere in order to uncover where the two strands of education (and research) are the same and where they are different. In addition to a review of existing literature, US data will be drawn from a new survey of US arts entrepreneurship educators gathered for the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru).

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Collaborating Across Campus Boundaries and Prison Walls: The Arts at Play at Boston University: The panelists describe the pioneering, interdisciplinary (music, theatre, and visual arts) collaboration between Boston University (BU) faculty from these three areas, students from across the campus, and the program in the Norfolk men's prison, where prison students are taking arts courses toward a liberal arts degree while incarcerated. 

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Vertical Courses: Collaborative Teaching In an Interdisciplinary Context / Integrating the Arts, Design, and Engineering Through a Social Entrepreneurship Course: This session presents details of collaborative teaching model being engaged at San Diego State University that fosters interdisciplinary teaching and learning across arts and non-arts disciplines. Includes the nuts and bolts of how program works as well as a description of the visual discourse analysis (VDA) process being developed to assess impact of these courses. / In this workshop, participants will learn practical educational tools and methods for integrating the arts, design, and engineering disciplines through social entrepreneurial, cross-disciplinary courses.

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    KEYNOTE: "Glocal" Rocky Mountain Entrepreneurship: The term "glocal" reflects how both local and global considerations need to be leveraged in today's global society. Denver finds itself in the Top 10 of recent national metropolitan population growth, with the state of Colorado being No. 2. In Denver, many of the people who are moving are connected with start-ups, other entrepreneurial endeavors and the creative industries. With a rich R&D community, a very progressive and open business culture, experimentation is welcomed and risk is accepted as something to drive up innovation. When discussing innovation, the openness of Coloradans is a major part of any conversation. Perhaps the secret to success in Denver and in Colorado is the acceptance of public and private partnerships.

Entrepreneurship

ARTS & HEALTH SESSIONS

KEYNOTE: Risk, Purpose, and Love: Artists have been researching forever. Maybe we called this research by different names, maybe we didn't talk about it, and perhaps we didn't even notice it. Certainly, with all the emphasis on the final outcome, there was no reason to make our research process available to others. However, with the cultural changes all around us, including a new emphasis on process, creativity, and cross- or trans-disciplinary practices, we are now finding that our various approaches to research have begun to matter not just to us within artistic circles but to those beyond. This convergence is an incredible opportunity. 

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Measuring the Impact of the Arts on Wellbeing: The arts constitute a domain long neglected by wellbeing indicator systems. Investigating how to measure the arts' impact on human wellbeing integrates the arts into broader, holistic discussions about individual and societal health. This panel will discuss current research and practice exploring the arts' contributions to wellbeing.

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Art, Creativity + Medicine: This panel explores art, creative storytelling and medicine, with a focus first on The Art of Medicine: Stories + Structures, a new team-taught, cross-school course funded by the Provost's Interdisciplinary Grant Program at Washington University; next on "Story Studio", a project of the University of Michigan Health System Gifts of Art program, which offers opportunities for creative self-expression by inviting patients to participate in audio-recording of personal narratives at the bedside. The Panel examines how art brings to light issues related to contemporary medical practices, including medicine as a social practice, how creative storytelling relates to personal identity and the experience of illness, and how art extends the discourses of medicine.

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Boston University's Program On Global Health Storytelling: Where Public Health Meets Narrative Journalism: This session will facilitate conversation between those working in health, journalism, and the arts about ways we can and should collaborate. We will explore promising models, pitfalls, and the role of interdisciplinary university initiatives. It is intended for a multi-disciplinary audience interested in promoting health and wellbeing through rigorous research and vibrant storytelling.

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Engineering to Art to Medicine to Theater: Creativity and Neuroscience: The College of the Arts at the University o f Houston present a collaboration between engineering and art faculty integrating (EEG) devices and the creating and experience of art with students visiting local hospitals' research and treatment facilities as well as reading literature and philosophy exploring the creation of art and the science of neuroaesthetics.

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Student Self-Beliefs and Growing Pains in a Redesigned Learner-Centered Art and Society Course: This presentation focuses on the role of social and emotional capacities with impact on motivation and overall achievement fostered through the arts. It reports on an IRB study of an 'Art and Societies' humanities course in an urban research university, redesigned to be more learner-centered (integrated, self-directed, and inquiry-based) and survey of student's self-perceptions as learners in the class.

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Bringing the Art of Theatre to Nursing Simulation: Simulations surrounding challenging healthcare situations have been an effective learning experience for both the nursing and theatre students. This collaboration and partnership bridges the arts and sciences in higher education allowing nursing students to benefit from improving therapeutic communication as theatre students improve improvisation skills.

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The Medical Arts at the University of Michigan: How a Major Medical School and Performing Arts Presenter Are Working Together to Make Better Doctors: Since 2009, the Medical Arts Program (MAP) of the University of Michigan Medical School and the University Musical Society (UMS) have partnered to create high-impact experiences for medical learners with visiting performing artists from around the world. These interactions are designed to enhance  medical students' and house officers' ability to provide high-quality, humanistic clinical care through experiences and analysis of the musical, theatrical, literary, and visual arts that focus on essential but often overlooked skills such as empathy, awareness of social context, and comfort with the ambiguity and uncertainty that are a pervasive element of clinical care. In this session, the program partners make the case for the arts as an essential component to medical education, share their process for working together across two very different organizational cultures, and explore strategies for developing and sustaining a program like this on your campus.

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Developing Arts in Medicine Research and Practice Initiatives: Opportunities and Challenges: Panelists describe achievements, opportunities, and challenges encountered during implementation of an Arts initiative in Medicine at Texas Tech University. A moderator responds to participants' narrative presentations and frames open discussion among panelists and an audience comprising faculty, administrators, professional staff, and students.

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Public Engagement In/and Arts + Health Research: The Case of Face.Age: Face.Age is an award-winning multi-media installation created from guided cross-generational encounters. The installation situates audience members within a synchronized, three-screen surround where younger (18-22) and older (70+) participants can be seen studying, describing, and touching one another's faces, and sharing experiences and perceptions about aging. This sensory-rich immersive space uses the imagination, memory, and empathy in ways that can shift a viewer's embodied experience of aging. This panel focuses on the ways in which Face.Age offers a timely case study for examining and exploring the innovative ways in which transdisciplinary arts + health research can be extended into the sphere of public engagement, with measurable outcomes and impacts.

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The New Theater of Medicine: Workshop and Performance of "The Autopsy of Dr. Melinda J. Smith": The New Theater of Medicine's (NTM) mission is to advance and improve healthcare through professional theater, inspired by the real world of medicine. In this session, attendees will have an opportunity to learn about and experience NTM's approach including live samples of original work developed for health organizations (CDC, AAMC), national and international medical schools//hospitals (UNC, Yale, Universidad de la República) and healthcare events (AARP Dementia Care and Innovation Forum).

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Placing Art Where Life Is: Is there a place for art in healthcare? What purposes can it serve? Can effectiveness be measured? Three leading initiatives join in dialogue to examine productive relationships between arts and health, creativity and wellbeing. A meaningful encounter between these disciplines points to a new educational and research paradigm for artists and health care providers.

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Ponzio Creative Art Therapy Program at the Children's Hospital of Colorado: The Ponzio Creative Arts Therapy Program at the Pediatric Mental Health Institute of Children's Hospital Colorado currently offers art, music, and yoga therapies. The program helps children to identify, explore and transform emotional and psychological difficulties. By working directly with the child's clinical team and giving kids an outlet for creative expression, creative arts therapy can tailor interventions to the child's specific needs. Creative arts therapists customize treatment designed to improve psychological, physical, cognitive and social functioning in every level of care. This presentation will introduce the philosophies and approaches that guide the innovative work of the Ponzaio Creative Arts Therapy Program.

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Design for the Senses: Creating a More Human Hospital Experience (sign-up ahead of time by clicking HERE​)What might hospital care feel like if fundamentally human considerations - like the senses of smell, sight, taste, hearing, and touch-guided the decision-making of care practices and spatial design? Inworks new Anschutz Campus innovation lab hosts a 90-minute workshop led by designers from Stanford Medicine X (and their newly launched MedXStudio initiative). Participants will exercise the core principles of an Everyone Included™ design process by creating a culture where everyone is trusted and respected for the expertise they bring to the future of health care. As such, the workshop seeks to draw a range of participants--patients, caregivers, providers, designers & technologists to the same table. Through inpatient experience sharing and hands-on prototyping, groups will explore radical possibilities for human-centered innovation in the hospital setting.

 

PLENARY PANEL: Creative Interventions in Wellness

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The Arts and Health Communication: This session will demonstrate how artists and public health professionals can partner in health communication initiatives by presenting findings of a study of the arts and health communication in Uganda, and the 2015 Ebola outbreak as a case example of how the arts can be used for rapid dissemination of health information in epidemic response.

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Teaching the Emerging Importance of Arts to Health Policy & Practice: A Case Study from Meharry Medical College: This contribution shares research on a new curriculum for a health policy graduate seminar exploring the relationship between arts and health, tested with Meharry Medical College and Vanderbilt students in 2016. Developed and delivered by the Cultural Engagements in Nutrition Arts and Sciences (CENAS) research team at Arizona State, the seminar treated this relationship as a matter for health policy in general and for addressing historically-produced health disparities in particular. It was aimed at opening up the imaginative capacities of the participants. This presentation explores the challenges and obstacles perceived from the students' side of the art/health spectrum in integrating arts and health. It will be of interest to a2ru attendees interested in changing the policy landscape for such arts-integrative practices.

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Tactile Graphics: Digital Fabrication and Assistive Technologies for the Blind: This research presentation and discussion reviews the development of tactile graphics using 3D printing to assist blind learners with multimodal comprehension of visual content in an online and museum learning context. Discussion will explore issues such as multimodal learning in disability studies, assistive technologies, and digital fabrication in curriculum.

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Art, Design, and Health: Strategies for Creating Comprehensive Visualizations of Future Alternatives: This workshop combines case studies with small group sessions exploring guidelines for strategic success in conceiving, nurturing, and sustaining creative ventures in arts and health. The sessions will leverage the collective experience of attendees and will examine both successes and challenges. Emphasis is placed on improvisation and innovation.

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Health

ARTS & S.E.A.D. SESSIONS

     Thinking Through Making: Curiosity + Collaboration + Iteration in Design (sign-up ahead of time by clicking HERE): Engage in hands-on exercises giving new meaning to rapid prototyping. Have you ever wondered how giving your ideas physical form earlier in your process may ultimately shape your project trajectory? Gain an overview of Inworks digital fabrication tools while discussing the following topic areas: seeing possibilities over problems, strategic decision-making, design-across-scales, creative conflicts, learning from failure, lateral-thinking and collaborative co-creation.

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MIT's Chibitronics: Chibitronics aims to combine art making with circuit building to engage a broader and more diverse audience through learning and creating their own technologies. The circuit sticker toolkit enables artists, educators, and makers to build circuits using arts and crafts techniques - learning circuit theory while engaging in a new medium for self-expression. By introducing engineering through arts and crafts, circuit building becomes magical, friendly, and fun.

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Ecological Reflections: Integrating the Arts and Humanities with Science at Long-Term Ecological Research Sites: Over the past decade, field stations associated with the Long Term Ecological Research program have actively worked to link their place-based science with the Arts and Humanities. This panel presents successful examples of integrating science with creative writing, visual and performing arts, environmental ethics and philosophy, design and installation, education, and outreach.

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A Sense of Place: A Collaboration Between a Place-Based Marine Scientist, a Creative Writer, and an Environmental Historian: A Sense of Place is a course designed for engineering students that represents collaboration between place-based science, creative writing, and the humanities. For the past three years, professors from the University of Virginia Department of Environmental Sciences and the Engineering School's Department of Science Technology and Society (with specialties in creative writing and history) have collaborated to create field-based, experiential learning short courses for undergraduate students to produce creative, analytical, and science communication writing. This breakout session will share best practices derived from these course experiences.

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ArtSci Lab at UT Dallas: The ArtSciLab at UT Dallas, headed by Dr. Roger Malina, is a trans-disciplinary research lab that carries out national and international investigations on experimental publishing, data visualization, the hybridization of art and science, and more. In this panel, faculty and students from the lab will discuss two projects: (1) ARTECA, a digital scholarly aggregator under development from the MIT Press and Leonardo/ISAST, will allow creative communities to connect internationally; and (2) Creative Disturbance is a platform developed in response to the need for a rupture in the arcane networks that currently connect creative people.

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     Mobile Device Ensemble Performance & Workshop: The CU Denver Mobile Device Ensemble is a group of six students using only laptops iPads, and iPhones to perform as an ensemble. The music ranges from modern EDM grooves to more experimental ambient stylings and all things in between. Led by local musician and CU Denver faculty member, Todd Reid, this ensemble will perform solo, duo, and group pieces that feature original music and remixes of popular songs.

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a2ru's New Thirdspace Peer Review Platform: a2ru's "Ground Works" platform rethinks peer review and collaborative sensemaking around the future of interdisciplinary projects that have the arts at their core. This session will introduce a2ru's "Ground Works" platform, its mission, and editorial process with opportunities for discussion around its current any future development.

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KEYNOTE: How A.R.T. (All Representations of Thought) Provides All Purpose Tools for Cultivating Creativity, Innovation, Communication, and Wellness: Aims to connect the four categories of the 2016 National Conference, highlighting some inspiring projects and possibilities in Arts & Health; Creative Venture and Entrepreneurship; Science, Engineering, Arts & Design (S.E.A.D.), and New Directions in the Humanities.

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Cultural Computing: Transdisciplinary Research for the Human Experience: Cultural Computing is a major interdisciplinary research group at LSU that brings together multiple programs in the arts, humanities, science, and technology. This session will discuss the programs of origins, its major achievements, and future research objectives with the hope that other such programs would be created elsewhere.

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     Inside the Greenhouse: Interdisciplinary Initiative for Creative Climate Communication: The three co-founders of Inside the Greenhouse, Associate Professors of Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies and Theatre, will share how they formed an initiative at the University of Colorado to inspire creative climate communication. They will share what sparked this collaboration, challenges along the road, and the successes with students that sustain them in this commitment.

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Making for the Masses: An Undergraduate Course Combining Art and Engineering: This panel will review the development of an undergraduate course bringing together Art and Engineering faculty to design and co-teach a course that deals with creativity design, and making, tentatively titled "Making for the Masses" scheduled for spring 2017.

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OPEN FORUM: Integrating Arts, Humanities, and STEM in Undergraduate and Graduate Education: How, Who, and Why?: The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has launched a new initiative aimed at examining the value of better integrating STEM, the humanities and the arts in the undergraduate and graduate curricula, instruction, labs and other experiences of our nation's college and university students. This workshop will highlight the key elements of the study and invite audience input (including data, ideas, experiences) on this topic.

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STEM to STEAM: The NEXUS of Engineering and the Arts at the University of Iowa: A verbal description of the NEXUS program at the University of Iowa accompanied by a slideshow and followed by a practical and philosophical how and why Q & A session - of interest to institutions and individuals that either have or are planning similar programs.

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Keystone Guide Workshop: The "Keystone Guide" is produced by a2ru to support best practices in interdisciplinary teaching, research, and collaboration. Its purpose is to support arts and non-arts practitioners to better develop and deliver collaborative excellence in arts integrated experiences. This workshop will provide an overview of the guide, introducing participants to its key features, use-cases, and future development.

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