Panhia Lee

Designing for the Toughest Audience of All: First Graders

First graders at Providence’s Vartan Gregorian Elementary School were treated to a very special delivery recently: Students from JWU’s School of Engineering & Design brought a set of fully functional chipboard playhouses for them to assemble and play with.

The collaboration was a team effort between Assistant Professor Jonathan Harris’ freshman CAD II and Assistant Professor Karyn Jimenez-Elliot’s sophomore Print Design classes.

CAD students were tasked with the design and construction of the chipboard playhouses, while the designers were responsible for the branding, package design, instructional brochures and physical packaging to house the oversize toys. (They also completed branded magazine ads.)

The whole process of conceptualizing, designing and fabricating took roughly a month. Given the amount of labor involved — from creating the CAD templates to creating a cohesive visual identity — teamwork was essential.

Harris and Jimenez-Elliot kicked off the project by giving their students a background in architectural styles prevalent in greater Providence, where Vartan Gregorian Elementary is located.

Students then divided into teams split evenly between engineers and designers. The groups worked together to choose an overall style and to pin down the core components of the design.

Designing such a large, labor-intensive and functional physical prototype was not without its challenges. Designer Frieda Rapp, who worked with DJ Yuanouich, Dominique Scott, Nasser Saleh and James Bruno on the “Kidzo” playhouse, found that the sheer size caused logistical issues: “The package was too large to laser-cut,” she noted. “When the time came, I had no choice but to hand-cut everything.”

Timothy Jones, who worked with Cory Fauteux, Cassandra Alaniz, Sabrina Alpino, and Alex Machinski on the “Hatchlings” playhouse, learned a lot about collaborating with others. After working through some inevitable communication issues, he noted that he’d “grown as a designer and as a team member.”

Knowing that the playhouses were going to be road-tested by first graders put a good kind of pressure on the final product, noted CAD designer Nasser Alharshan: “The satisfaction of being able to see the final product was amazing.”

Overall, students found the project tough but rewarding. “To me, it was more than just another portfolio piece,” noted Frieda. “The biggest [reward] … was being able to see photos of the kids playing with our house and enjoying every second of it.”

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Accountancy class project approach sharpens students’ real-world view

Once each academic semester, Dr. Sonia Gantman, assistant professor of accountancy, provides her accountancy students a valuable, real-world business experience through a hands-on term project. In her course, Accounting Information Systems, a required class for accountancy majors, students work in small teams with organizations on and off campus to study and analyze their business processes and help them to improve their methods.

“The goal of the project is to give the students an opportunity to work with real-world organizations and compare what they learned in class with what happens outside of class,” said Gantman, who said 30 to 40 students enroll in her class each semester.

She continued, “Finding a client organization on their own, interviewing people about their jobs, dealing with logistics contingencies, and handling interdependencies within the team are all invaluable experiences gained from the project that help students get a better grasp of the profession and prepare them to the job market.”

During the Fall 2016 semester, each student group studied the buying and other processes within one of four businesses: Peter Pan Bus Lines, the New England Patriots’ ProShop, PC’s Phillips Memorial Library, and the College’s Raymond Dining Hall. In studying the processes, the students aimed to identify problems with their client’s current methods and help them to become more efficient in their buying.

Therese Nessralla ’18 (Raynham, Mass.) explained that while working on the Raymond Dining Hall project, her group learned how the cafeteria operates its purchasing and inventory management by interviewing the unit controller, John LaBreche of Sodexho, the College’s food services provider.

In order to create a flow chart of purchasing activity, her group asked detailed questions concerning the recording process, the cafeterias vendors, and any delays that might impede purchasing.

Nessralla explained how learning about business methods, such as purchasing, in the context of a real business was not what she expected in her class.

“It is surprising to see why a process is done a certain way, whether it is for cost-efficiency, timeliness, and/or accuracy,” said Nessralla. “I also find it interesting to see how many risks we face in order to do business. The most challenging part is being extremely thorough and trying to detect risks that we normally do not think about.”

While working with the New England Patriots’ ProShop, Kathleen Cronin ’18 (York, Maine) explained that her team worked with a different type of inventory process called “complimentary item process.” Through this process, team members analyzed how the ProShop updated its inventory when items were given to visitors of the stadium as complimentary gifts.

From left, the team of Kellie Roach ’17, Lauryn Picknelly ’18, Brenna Williams ’18, and Jake Beaton ’18 studied processes at the Peter Pan bus company as part of the Accountancy Information Systems course.

Cronin discussed how working with the ProShop built off her classroom lessons and put them into the context of the business world.

“Throughout the interview, my group and I could envision ourselves taking on the inventory process and creating a detailed flowchart that would represent it,” said Cronin. “In the classroom we were able to see how the flowcharts and context diagrams worked, but by working with a business we were challenged to take what we knew and create our own narrative, context diagram, and flowchart.”

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Miami Dade partnership provides opportunities to pursue Salve programs

A partnership between Salve Regina and Miami Dade College in Florida has expanded opportunities for students and graduates from the college’s two-year programs to complete their bachelor’s degrees at Salve Regina, as well as enroll in the University’s online graduate programs and low-residency Ph.D. program in humanities.

Dr. Scott Zeman, provost/vice president for academic affairs, prioritized the partnership with Miami Dade when he arrived on campus in July 2014. Miami Dade is among the nation’s largest colleges, with several campuses and an enrollment of more than 165,000 students from highly diverse backgrounds. The institution, which proclaims itself as “Democracy’s College,” provides educational opportunities to many first-generation students.

“It has been an energizing experience to be working closely with the students and faculty of Miami Dade College,” said Tiffany McClanaghan, director of graduate studies and continuing education. “Their drive and enthusiasm for lifelong learning to benefit them both personally and professional has been invigorating. We look forward to welcoming and supporting more of their fellow alumni into our community.”

Presently, Miami Dade students are enrolled in all three degree programs, pursuing bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees at Salve Regina. Here are some of their stories:

Nathalie Bazile, B.A. in psychology

Born in Port au Prince, Haiti, Bazile moved to the U.S. at age 3 along with her mother and two siblings. At the time, her father was still in Haiti, so the family had to look after themselves. It wasn’t easy, as her mom worked two jobs away from home and only got to see her children a couple times a week. Education was not a family priority either – there simply weren’t enough resources to invest in it.

“The thought of my mom struggling, although she seldom admitted it, is what instilled the importance of education in me,” Bazile said. “I made it my priority to excel so my mother would not have to carry the burden of covering my educational expenses.”

Despite attending schools in the U.S. for more than 19 years, Bazile is not recognized as a citizen. The document she holds, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), allows her to live and work in the U.S., but prohibits her from receiving any type of federal aid. After graduating from the Honors College at Miami Dade in 2015, the process of transferring to a university was much harder for her because most schools were not familiar with her status.

“My status also disqualified me from most scholarships, forcing me to decline admission due to lack of financial assistance,” Bazile said. “I saw no way out, until I met with two representatives from Salve Regina [Dr. Scott Zeman and Dr. Khalil Habib].”

Bazile decided to attend Salve even before she was accepted. “I knew I had to do whatever it took to be admitted because I felt like I would be recognized for my hard work and achievements and not be discouraged because of my nationality,” she said. “Not only would the barrier that was blocking me from fulfilling my dream finally be eliminated, but I would now have the opportunity to flourish in a positive intellectual environment.”

While she stumbled over some obstacles during her first semester at Salve Regina, Bazile quickly learned that she could rely on the caring campus community. She adjusted quickly, thanks to numerous services and resources provided.

“The Salve community has proven to be astonishingly close and shows interest in everyone who attends,” Bazile said. “They genuinely want students to succeed. The faculty, staff and students have helped me come to the realization that I am not alone on this journey and are also a big part of me achieving my goal of getting above a 3.5 in my courses and also effectively managing my work schedule.”

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Fostering Global Futures

As the high-tech breakthroughs and entertainment emanating from Silicon Valley and Hollywood cross increasingly more international borders, so does a prevailingly western vision of progress – of how globalization will reshape our shared world. “We discount the fact that there are other visions of the future that come from different cultures,” notes Associate Professor of Industrial Design Paolo Cardini. In recognition of this, the Italian designer is spearheading a RISD-supported project called the Global Futures Lab, a series of international workshops aimed at articulating alternative versions of what’s to come – both utopian and dystopian – and that reflect local realities of non-western communities.

As the second recipient of RISD’s Global Faculty Fellowship (GFF), Cardini has already led workshops at the Art University of Isfahan in Iran and the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India, with others forthcoming at Pontifica Universidad Catolica del Peru in Lima and Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. In these four-day workshops the designer works with local students in developing “souvenirs from the futures” – artifacts inspired by student-written speculative fiction and then fabricated in cooperation with local artisans. Cardini plays the role of catalyst: he introduces a structure that allows participants to generate ideas and then encourages their realization in the form of tangible objects informed by students’ own cultural conditions and traditions.

“Projects like Paolo’s are taking RISD to places in the world where we have not typically worked in a sustained way,” says RISD Global Director Gwen Farrelly, who works with Academic Affairs to co-sponsor the GFF. Last year, as the program’s inaugural fellow, Assistant Professor of Literary Arts and Studies Avishek Ganguly conducted research into translation in global contexts and next year, as RISD’s 2017/18 fellow, Assistant Professor of Architecture Emanuel Admassu will launch a project titled Where is Africa? that engages architects, designers and artists across that continent in a series of dialogues.

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