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WVU Grads Win Best ETD Award
West Virginia University master's graduate Ana Torres and doctoral graduate Aaron Steele have been declared two of six winners of the "Innovative ETD Award" in an international competition presented by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), a consortium of over 200 Universities worldwide.
According to NDLTD Board member and WVU ETD & Institutional Repository Program Coordinator John H. Hagen,
"Electronic theses and dissertations submitted for this award represent student efforts to transform the genre of the print dissertation through the use of ETDs. This award recognizes innovative use of software to create "cutting edge" ETDs. Use of renderings, photos and other multimedia objects that are included in the document were considered as part of the innovation of the work. The award includes an $800 cash prize (sponsored by Adobe, Inc.) and an honorable mention at the ETD 2008 Symposium, to be held this year at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland, June 4th - 7th. We are very proud that WVU Alumni have again received this considerable recognition; during the past four years WVU graduates Hilary Attfield, Rachel Gurvitch, Tim Broadwater and Tomasz Kosalka have received this award."
Ana Torres, a graduate of the WVU College of College of Creative Arts, Division of Art, developed a multimedia thesis which includes film clips and photographic files to allow others to experience the essence of her dramatic art presentation, both forwards and backwards.
Her thesis titled The 3 Pigs: Interactive Performance is an interactive performance, a dramatic parody within the realm of conceptual art. Transplanting the moral from a traditional tale, "The Three Little Pigs," to a current world of politics and iconized and institutional ideas, "The 3 Pigs" questions definitions and ways of acting. The objective was to trigger the interactive process and bring awareness to alliances that attribute identities and provokes fear towards the other. The pigs-wolves situation and the gallery-artist situation are related to the U.S.-Mexico situation. Connected by the idea for the need for "walls" to 'protect' them from a specific interaction, fear converts society, represented by the pigs and audience members, into the terrorists, the wolves. The script treats fear as a major ingredient for failure and an instrument for political manipulation. The “other” becomes the wolf, and the "wall" becomes a symbol. Separating the good ones (pigs) and the bad ones (wolves), the symbol acquires mayor importance.
Access to Torres' electronic thesis is available online at:
https://eidr.wvu.edu/etd/documentdata.eTD?documentid=5231Aaron Steele, a graduate of the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Physics, developed a multimedia dissertation which includes animated simulation models and computer software code so other scholars may follow in his footsteps using the same software and methodology he developed.
His dissertation titled Collective Behavior in Chemical Systems explores experiments and simulations of the photosensitive Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction are used to study collective behavior of simple interacting elements. Two different types of interacting elements are examined. In a network of excitable elements, interactions change the timing of activity of the individual elements. Interacting chemical wave segments form rotational modes or dynamically align due to their mutual interaction. In both cases, interactions result in emergent group behavior.
Access to Steele's electronic dissertation is available online at:
https://eidr.wvu.edu/etd/documentdata.eTD?documentid=5386Other winners of the ETD 2008 Awards program are listed at http://www.ndltd.org/awards/awards2008.
WVU was the 2nd institution in the world to require ETD submission in 1998. WVU graduate research is now are accessed on the Web millions of times per year by academia, industry, government and the public from over 100 countries worldwide. ETDs are part of a growing trend of technological development that is transforming economies by providing access to research results to the world while bringing reciprocal investment back to the local level.
For more information contact John Hagen at (304) 293-4040, ext. 4025 or see www.wvu.edu/~thesis.
11 April 2008 / Morgantown, WV