The Tufts Daily - Thursday, December 6, 2018

Page 1

Newly founded Tufts Architecture Society offers talks, skill workshops for all students see FEATURES / PAGE 3

SWIMMING AND DIVING

Jumbos turn in strong performance at MIT Invitational

Trio of lawyers, including Tufts alum, casts spotlight on wrongful convictions in ‘Mass Exoneration’ podcast see WEEKENDER / PAGE 5

SEE SPORTS / BACK PAGE

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VOLUME LXXVI, ISSUE 58

tuftsdaily.com

Thursday, December 6, 2018

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.

Tufts develops master’s degrees in diversity and inclusion leadership, data analytics by Bridget Wall Staff Writer

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) has been developing two new master’s programs: the Master of Arts in Diversity and Inclusion Leadership and the Master of Science in Data Analytics. According to Dean of the GSAS Robert Cook, both degrees emphasize an interdisciplinary approach, with many university departments participating in the development of the two programs. Cook said that the process of creating a master’s degree takes about 18 to 24 months from the idea of a degree to the first cohort of students starting. “There were six months where we were developing the ideas, recruiting faculty, having numerous discussions of what courses should be included and what the requirements should be,” Cook said. The Board of Trustees then evaluates the program, and once it is approved, the recruitment and application process begins, according to Cook. Cook noted that these degrees prepare students entering fields with high demand for workers at the moment. “[Data analytics and diversity] are places where there is a growing market,” Cook said. Noting that although many diversity officers have degrees in fields such as psychology, Cook said he hopes to train students for the position through the Master of

Arts in Diversity and Inclusion Leadership, launched this fall. The program included several students who had already been working at Tufts, according to Silas Pinto, a senior lecturer in the department of education and member of the steering committee. The program accepted part-time students last year, according to a Nov. 9 Tufts Now article. Ten students are currently enrolled in the program, according to its website. “It is the first year that we have the two cohorts coexisting, and we are trying to figure out ways of having them engage and having some opportunities for second years to mentor the first years.” Pinto said. Cook added there will be development and expansion to the program as the program goes on. Pinto believes that this program will help promoting diversity and inclusion at Tufts. “This is something that can be both beneficial to creating people who will take these skills out into the community and also be looking internally into the work that we will be doing here,” Pinto said. The Master of Science in Data Analytics, scheduled to launch in fall 2019, is still under development, according to Professor Jeffrey Zabel, co-director of the human development economics doctoral program at Tufts. Zabel added he and other professors are devising the coursework and introductory course. “[The introductory course] will be teamtaught and we’re going to have professors from different disciplines coming in to talk

COURTESY KELVIN MA

Robert Cook, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, poses for a portrait in Ballou Hall on May 21, 2014. about what they consider data and how they analyze it so students can understand how different disciplines approach data and working with data,” Zabel said. Zabel also hopes to bring in data science experts as advisers. “There is such a huge demand now for data scientists because the use and the availability of data has just increased amazingly so that there is now a real demand for people with these types of skill sets,” he said.

Cook added the GSAS is working on introducing more degree programs to draw more students to the school with more opportunities. “We are constantly thinking about which degrees will be successful,” Cook said. “We’ve also thought about new programs in art administration and nonprofit administration. That’s another area where we think that there is growth, and it appeals to some of the strengths that we have in arts and sciences.”

Art crime expert speaks on potential, ethical challenges of digital preservation by Jillian Rolnick Staff Writer

The same technology that has introduced innovative methods in the fight against art destruction has also introduced new ethical dilemmas, one of America’s preeminent art crime professors told Tufts community members at an event on Wednesday night. Erin Thompson, associate professor of art crime at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, noted her belief that this is a particularly timely matter given the rise of terrorist groups destroying centuries-old art in the Middle East. Thompson’s talk, titled “The Digital is Not Neutral: Thoughts on the Digitization of Threatened Cultural Heritage,” was

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cosponsored by the Department of Art and Art History, the Department of Classics and the Digital Humanities program. According to Thompson, the destruction of art has been a part of warfare for generations, but new technologies have highlighted the effort to save endangered art, with some prominent consequences. “We have let our excitement about the possibility of countering destruction with digital recreations hurry us past our necessity of asking ourselves the hard questions about what responsibilities we have with these projects and how we can do better jobs that would benefit more people, instead of just those that share our views on the monuments we choose,” Thompson said. “The public perception of digital recreation projects only very rarely

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acknowledges that such projects might have potential downsides.” Thompson explained that, in making digital representations of artwork, designers use photographs to develop mathematical representations of either the surfaces of cultural sites or of entire monuments. She said that these designers have a great deal of discretion in their work and can make substantial changes to the presentation of the original art. When this occurs, she said, the artists begin to project biases, consciously or otherwise, onto the work they create, potentially altering its true meaning. “Context matters. Where, how and by whom an art object is created, modified and displayed and destroyed changes the meanings its audiences are most likely to receive,” Thompson said.

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Thompson also noted that designers often disregard local perspectives when recreating the original artwork and may have different intentions in showcasing the pieces. “Most of the founders and prime movers of the visible digital projects [who] focus on archaeological sites in Syria and Iraq are from America or Western Europe, and these projects have not uniformly sought input on the control, creation or interpretation of images from either Syrian or Iraqi experts, academics or people who live near the site,” she said. “Digitization is not an automatic, objective or neutral process. It requires the intervention of humans, and these interventions are based on our bias, assumptions, hopes and fears.”

NEWS............................................1 FEATURES.................................3 WEEKENDER..........................5

see ART DIGITIZATION, page 2

FUN & GAMES......................... 7 OPINION.....................................8 SPORTS............................ BACK


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