Academic computing bio
Dr. Judith Tabron is the Director of the departments of Student Computing Services and Faculty Computing Services at Hofstra University. SCS & FCS comprise about 20 people, responsible for instructional and learning technology support for the varied schools at a nationally recognized University. They support student learning with digital tools, support academic software, and provide instructional design services to provide the technical infrastructure for such things as Hofstra’s online degrees and courses, assessment efforts, and enhancements to Hofstra’s excellent classes in every field.
Dr. Tabron has 20 years’ progressively responsible experience in academic technology. dating from early days using BITNet, troubleshooting Windows 3.0 and Mac OS 7, and teaching classes in VMS (which remains her favorite operating system). She built the Center for Instructional Multimedia and Technology (CIMTech) at Brandeis University and administered its grants to deliver 18 faculty development projects over 3 years, on time and on budget. FCS is staffed by consultants focused on faculty needs. They understand the task of teaching in an academic environment and want to help Hofstra’s faculty adopt appropriate and useful technologies in their classes. Current initiatives include helping departments and individual faculty use podcasting, personal response systems (clickers) in the classroom, or blogs for teaching purposes. SCS provides infrastructure support for students such as wireless networking in the residence halls, a phone support line, labs, and a repair center, and we are adding a learning support division that will support academic software for students and co-curricular activities on digital citizenship.
FCS also supports research computing efforts, including Dr. John Bryant’s recent NEH award from the Digital Humanities Initiative to begin to create tools for an electronic Melville library (Hofstra’s largest humanities grant).
Dr. Tabron’s most recent presentation was on innovation using fast, lightweight tools with her fellow panelists at EDUCAUSE 2010. She presented on the success of her Catalyst Boot Camp faculty development program at Campus Technology’s December 2007 conference in San Francisco. She attended the Frye Leadership program in Atlanta in June 2008. She has organized biannual meetings of the instructional technology directors at colleges and universities throughout the Long Island/New York area; please contact her if you’d like to attend.
Academic bio
Dr. Judith Tabron taught “Myth 2.0: Global Storytelling and its Sales” as an adjunct instructor with the Global Studies and Geography department at Hofstra University in Spring 2009 and Spring 2010. This class, on the economics and interpretation of popular culture around the world, covered selected movies, novels, television shows, and comic books, and gave students a chance to understand how they are created, distributed and sold as well as how to understand popular material from different cultures. Dr. Tabron is currently working on a book on this topic.
Author bio
Judith Tabron works in academia, a place that lends itself to wild flights of fancy and brutal doses of reality. Since receiving her Ph.D. she has has written and published on the comparison of Nigerian, Australian, and American literature; Peter Carey; and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Her latest academic article, on the economics of television and the selling of “Stargate: SG-1″, appeared in the collection Reading Stargate SG-1. She has taught composition and literature classes; she has also had, at the same time, a long career in academic computing. Yes, she probably could fix your computer, but no, she won’t.
She is in constant pursuit of Middle Eastern dance classes, political idealism, and jewelry, all of which contributed to her story “Broken Stones” which appeared in Writers of the Future, vol. 22. Publishers Weekly called the story “Bradburyesque”, which Judith intends to get embroidered on a hat.
In 2003 she realized that there were no reasons not to write what she wanted to write. Her screenplay “Jailer” (previous title: “A Mess of Broken People”) was a semifinalist in the 2004 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Nicholl Fellowship competition. She has just finished her first novel, which she is also turning into a screenplay. “Broken Stones” is an unusual example of her work because it isn’t funny and nothing explodes.
CookCheap.org is a personal project to help teach people how to cook basic ingredients. We hope you visit!