ACM Creativity and Cognition Graduate Symposium

University Of North Carolina At Charlotte, Charlotte NC

Investigators

Abstract

This is funding to support a Graduate Student Symposium (workshop) for about 12 promising graduate students, along with a panel of distinguished research faculty mentors, which will take place in conjunction with the 2009 ACM Creativity & Cognition Conference (CC 2009), to be held October 27-30, 2009, at the Berkeley Art Museum in Berkeley, California. ACM's Creativity & Cognition Conference series began in 1993, and has evolved into a lively multidisciplinary event combining research and practice. As computers become pervasive in all of society, there is a growing need to encourage interaction between the disciplines of computer and information technology and the disciplines of digital arts, design, and cognition. Many envision that interactions across these disciplinary boundaries are fundamental to research advances. Thanks in part to this conference series, rigorous research is expanding as theoretic foundations are emerging and goals become more well-defined. Successful practice manifests itself in a growing array of creativity support tools for discovery and composition by software and other engineers, diverse scientists, product and graphic designers, architects, new media artists, musicians, educators, students, and many others. Creativity & Cognition 2009 is focused on the theme of everyday creativity: shared languages and collective action. Involving young researchers during their graduate education is a key opportunity to seed and encourage the interactions the conference seeks to nurture. Thus, the primary goal of the Graduate Student Symposium is to expand the participation of young researchers pursuing graduate degrees in areas with an emphasis on creativity and cognition, by giving their work wider exposure in the community, by helping to foster a sense of community among them, and by providing them with an opportunity to obtain feedback and guidance from senior members of the research community in an interactive and supportive environment. Student participants will meet and discuss their ideas with each other and with a panel of experienced researchers and practitioners, the objective being to offer them fresh perspectives on their current work. The student participants will take part in all aspects of the conference; descriptions of their research projects will be published in the conference proceedings and posted on the conference web site. Broader Impacts: This workshop will substantially increase participation in the Creativity & Cognition 2009 conference by young researchers pursuing graduate degrees in fields contributing to understanding creativity and cognition. The event will increase the exposure and visibility of these young researchers' ideas within the community. PhD and MFA students from all disciplines concerned with creativity and cognition will be encouraged to apply. Thus, links will be created across these disciplines, and a sense of community will be established among the next generation of researchers. In selecting the student participants, the PI and the members of the organizing committee will consider factors of institutional balance (e.g., ensuring that there are not too many students from one institution, and that institutions not normally represented are included), as well as diversity across traditionally underrepresented groups.