How Far Is the English Building From the Visual Arts Building Ucf
New UCF Blueprint Course Brings Art, Applied science Students Together
By: Mike Candelaria | February 10, 2015
Robert Hoekstra has lived in ii worlds for many years — engineering and the arts. At present, he's officially bringing them together in unprecedented fashion at UCF.
Hoekstra, an associate professor in UCF's Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems, was recently named an associate professor of art and is co-teaching this bound with art professor Robert Reedy to bring both fields together in the class Avant-garde Design Lab. Hoekstra is the first at UCF to share a joint engagement between the art and engineering colleges.
The grade has 44 students, with about a third of them engineering students.
"What we're trying to practise is have engineering come up together with art," said Hoekstra, who has a available'southward in English, a main'due south in pattern and a doctorate in engineering.
"Engineering has marched and then far down the road, and art has too, that's it'due south not possible to have ane person be both. The solution is not to develop a new industrial design program. The solution is to respect what artists bring to the party. And we can practice that past literally getting them into a room and having them work together."
For centuries, engineers and artists were mostly the same people, but as technology emerged the disciplines began to separate.
Merely that'south changing at UCF.
"To the best of my knowledge, this isn't being washed anywhere else," Hoekstra said. "It'due south never been done within a traditional university construction."
In Avant-garde Design Lab, all is being done in the names of creativity and innovation. Reedy cites the need to "adjust, improvise and overcome" and warns the students to wait the unexpected from the client.
Hoekstra preaches artistic exploration. "Creativity is at the very core of engineering," he said. "I want students to explore 100 ideas before they arrive at one solution."
In the class, students are being asked to piece of work on projects in partnership with an Orlando theme park that will challenge them to create solutions for real-world scenarios.
"Fine art students who go into industry need to know how to work with engineers," Hoekstra said. "They might need to know how to speak some of the language; they take to take some basic engineering science and physics concepts. That's the communications link. The artist tin can have the discussion with the engineer. And that's what nosotros're trying to teach here."
UCF's new Maker Space Labs in the Engineering Two building and the Avant-garde Design Lab in the School of Visual Arts and Pattern illustrate the new approach. Each area is designed to foster collaboration across academic lines. "While many universities are looking at this, UCF is the start to make it happen in this way," he said about the labs.
Reedy said it is his goal to establish a place where these kinds of experiences can continue. "It'due south critical that artists understand the importance of science and math and what engineers do, and fifty-fifty business. And the reverse is true for engineers and businesspeople," he said.
Michael Shears, a senior in mechanical engineering, said he is looking forward to working with the art students.
"Their unlike backgrounds may give an alternative view on a trouble," he said. "They oft enquire questions on whether or not something technical can be done. And then far, many of the ideas in my group accept come up from ane of the artists asking the engineers if a process was possible, and subsequently discussion we institute new ways that it may exist accomplished that we hadn't entertained previously."
For Hoekstra, who came to UCF every bit an banana professor in 1993, the move is a natural. Aside from his multiple degrees in art and engineering science, and before he became an academician, he conducted advanced research at IBM in artificial intelligence, designed cars for Penske Racing, and ran an award-winning media production company that won an Emmy.
His quest at UCF is to foster the kind of synergy and exploration that ultimately pb to quantum creativity: "Information technology's getting engineers and artists to work together…It brings the artists out of their studio into industry."
Source: https://www.cecs.ucf.edu/new-ucf-design-class-brings-art-engineering-students-together/
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