Proposals

Abstract

A solid education experience in the arts and humanities is absolutely essential for engineering majors to be effective agents of change through the innovations they will operate or design in future.This proposal is about organizing a bi-annual (every 2 years) Student Film Contest for Engineering Majors in deep collaboration with Liberal Arts majors. The contest will be a catalyst for an education experience for engineering students to master public communication and story telling with empathy and passion through their unique lenses as only they can tell. Every engineering student on campus has had a unique life experience to choose his/her major at UW. There is a need to dispel a myth that engineers cannot tell stories about how engineering makes a difference to the fabric of our lives through personal experiences that matter. By organizing a film contest for the students every two years (the inaugural one has already taken place in March 2017), we plan bring the engineering students closer to liberal arts majors and appreciate the value of arts and humanities in engineering. This proposal asks from STF funding for one-time capital cost for mobile and on-site video footage storage and on-site video editing through portable platforms (macbooks) for student contestants. These macbooks will be kept in the CEE Computer Lab in More 1A. Other operating expenses are being secured through various sources of funding (seed, crowd, philanthropic). The lead of this proposal has been involved in running student film courses, contests and film making since 2007. His fourth documentary "Cotton Fields from the Ivory Tower" is a deep collaboration between engineering and the arts with Seattle Independent Film industry and is currently running in various film festivals around the world.