Assignment 1: Documenting Campus Spots & Reading Response
Part 1: Reading Response
1. Complete the assigned readings for week 01 and RESPOND to this prompt in a few paragraphs: Why is the idea of Land Grant important to President Henry and Paul Schroeder and the comments they make in their 1968 speeches to the campus? According to Geiger, what was innovative about the idea of "Land Grant" - and how did it change the idea of higher education in its day? In what ways does a Illinois' Land Grant campus today fit the model of infrastructure that Susan Leigh Star defines? Use at least one reference from each of the assigned readings.- Preface (pages ix-xii) and Pages 281-314 only: Roger Geiger, The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to World War II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015)
- Pages 73-76 only: "Congressional Record: University of Illinois Centennial," in Report of the Centennial Year of the University of Illinois, February 28, 1967 to March 11, 1968
- Paul Schroeder, "Why?", The Daily Illini (March 15, 1968)
- Pages 377-382 only: Star, Susan Leigh. The Ethnography of Infrastructure, American Behavioral Scientist 1999 43: 377.
Part 2: Documenting Campus Spots - Thursday Lab
2. Select a favorite spot in your own College and spend 20-30 minutes simply being there. Now select a favorite campus spot OUTSIDE of your college. For each visit/selection:
- Make note of the time/day of your visit. Take note of how you tend to use the space, its design and features, and reflect on what's unique about the space to you. Make note of how others use the space. Who are those other users? (Students? Faculty? Other community members in or outside your department?) Who is not using it?
- Take photos (a phone camera is fine), and document at least one object or element of your selected sites that represent it for you.
- Write a few paragraphs to document your observations (not more than one page), and to explain the photos you took. Bring the photos and your written assignment with you to the next class.