Schenectady, NY (May 9, 2001) – Although Union
students Scott Dicks, Erin Fitzpatrick, and Chad Simon have yet to actually
meet Avinash Chandiramani, Salil Jayakar, and Ruhi Khan from Mumbai University
in India, they have gotten to know them “virtually” thanks to a new distance
learning program at Union. Since January, the six economics students have been
part of an international collaborative research project that uses Blackboard, a
distance learning package, to create a “virtual classroom,” complete with
message boards, email, and instant messaging capabilities.
The Indian students arrived this week in
Schenectady to meet their Union counterparts and take part in the College's
11th annual Charles P. Steinmetz Symposium, a showcase of student scholarly and
creative achievement. The group will present their joint research paper and
Powerpoint presentation — both developed completely on-line — titled
“Global Financial Crises: A
Comparative Study of East Asia and India” on Friday, May 11, from 2 to
3:20 in Social Sciences room 104. Union professors of economics Eshragh Motahar
and Fuat Sener were advisors to the project.
“The Blackboard package allows us to take
full advantage of the power of the Internet and apply it to our international
programs,” Prof. Motahar said. “This project is a model for how to use distance
learning technology on a liberal arts campus. We were able to maintain close
“virtual” contact with students thousands of miles away by creating a central
meeting place on the Web; the project would have been impossible without it.”
Blackboard enabled the
students to converse individually or in groups, post messages, and create a
list of suggested sources for further reading, complete with links to the
original sources. “We were able to go beyond simply compiling a list of
suggested readings, we were able provide the actual document or article,”
Motahar added. “The most challenging things to overcome were the different
levels of technology between the groups and the ten and a half hour time
difference between India and the United States. These factors made it very
difficult to communicate instantaneously.”
The two-day symposium
was created in honor of Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865-1923), “the most
widely known professor ever a member of the Union College faculty.”
Steinmetz served as the Chief Consulting Engineer of the General Electric
Company and was widely regarded as the leading electrical engineer in the
United States. He nonetheless took charge of Union's new electrical engineering
curriculum, serving as professor of electrical engineering and applied physics
from 1902 until his death in 1923. Steinmetz served actively as a lecturer in
both undergraduate and post-graduate courses, and he wished for his students
“the spirit of divine discontent, for without it the world would stand
still.”
The College's 2001 Steinmetz Symposium
takes place Friday, May 11 and Saturday, May 12, and includes a total of 326
students participants – an all-time high at Union.