This fall Mount Holyoke College was awarded a $500,000 grant to support technology for the arts. As the Technical and Education Coordinator for the grant, I’ll be spending the next four years working on this. I’m so excited to be purchasing and deploying equipment, training students and developing protocols to maintain it, and helping faculty integrate the technology into their teaching. We’ll be building digital music labs, outfitting the new Makerspace, developing the Media Lab, and supporting the performing arts with projectors and interactive displays.
Our first project is already complete, the transformation of a seminar room in Pratt Music Hall into a digital music composition lab. Working closely with Thomas Ciufo, innovation hire in music and entrepreneurship, we transformed a seminar room into an accessible lab that triples the number of students who can take introductory courses in electronic music.
Completing this lab in time for fall term wouldn’t have been possible without the help of everyone in Facilities Management, Networking, Campus Technology Services, the Dean of Faculty’s office, and especially Ciufo, seen here on a ladder installing new speakers. Now that the lab is complete, we can turn to preparing a new sound mastering and recording lab for classes in the spring.