March 2008  |  Volume 3, Issue 1

From the Desk of Robyn Gittleman
Director of the Experimental College

The Experimental College has a new home. For close to 25 years we had a suite of rooms in Miner Hall, along with the Philosophy and Comparative Religion departments. Although our space in Miner was very "cozy," there was very little room to expand either programmatically or physically.

Our new home at 95 Talbot Avenue is a quaint, beautiful colonial house. Built in 1933, the building was formerly the home of Alumni Relations, and has since been transformed in small ways to fit the needs of the ExCollege.
More from Robyn Gittleman...

Experimenting with Philanthropy
by Rachel Barbarisi A'07

In 2007, Louise Sawyer, a lawyer and nonprofit grant writer, taught an ExCollege course called Experimenting with Philanthropy, in which her students learned the art of grant writing. Early in the semester, she happened to read an article in The New York Times about the Sunshine Lady Foundation, founded by Doris Buffet, sister of well known philanthropist Warren Buffet. After learning that the foundation provides undergraduates with funding to invest in local nonprofit organizations as part of their course curriculum, Sawyer wrote a grant proposal on behalf of the Experimental College. This grant, awarded in spring of 2007, provided her current and future students with $10,000 per year for five years.
More on Experimenting with Philanthropy...

Brawn, Baseball Bats, and Business
by Peter Bendix A'08

For sixteen years I had been a student. In Fall 2007, Tufts gave me my first opportunity to be a teacher.

Last semester I co-taught an Explorations course, "The Business of Baseball," with my friend and fellow baseball devotee, Steve LeBlanc. Although we are both huge fans (he of the Red Sox, I of the Indians), our interest in baseball extends well beyond rooting for our favorite teams. Baseball is a fascinating business and has become a multi-billion dollar industry over the course of its history in the U.S.
More from Peter Bendix about Teaching...

Hollywood Stories: Writing for Television and Film
by Corey Briskin A '10

Here at Tufts, the weekends are a time when students try to strike that delicate balance between leisure, coursework and extracurricular activities. There are some weekends, however, that prove exciting and memorable exceptions to the rule.
More from Corey Briskin about Hollywood Stories...

Lost and Found: An ExCollege Course Takes Local Media by Storm
by Rachel Barbarisi, A '07

In spring of 2007, one ExCollege course took Tufts, and the local media, by storm.

With the popular ABC TV show Lost about to enter its third season in the fall of 2006, senior Chadwick Matlin and '06 alum Edward Kalafarski decided to team up and teach a course on the recent cultural phenomenon. While Kalafarski was relatively new to ExCollege's peer-teaching program, Matlin had been, "looking for an opportunity to teach an ExCollege course" ever since his freshman year.
For more about the Lost course...

Tufts Alumni Return to Teach
The 2007-08 academic year brought eleven Tufts undergraduates back to teach in the Experimental College Visiting Lecturer program. Some previously taught with us before as Exploration or Perspectives leaders, while others were part of our undergraduate peer teaching program. However, each now has a special expertise they wanted to share with Tufts students.
Learn about more Tufts alums returning to teach...

The New Digital Imaging Center
Thanks to our recent move to 95 Talbot Avenue, TuftsFilmWorks, the ExCollege's digital filmmaking initiative, has a new space and new capabilities.

Once we found out last May about the impending move, we walked through what was to be our new home for the first time. While it took a little imagination, it wasn't that hard to see how we could use the rooms on the first and second floors: Robyn's office back there, Cindy's office over there, Susan's office upstairs and so on.
More from Howard about the Digital Imaging Center...

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Tell us what you think! E-mail us with your reactions to this newsletter, with memories of your time at the ExCollege, or with updates on what you are doing these days.

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