Stagnancy and Acceptance

At UW Stout we are a teaching institution first and foremost, and during the semester teaching is our primary task. I am currently teaching 4 classes (two sections of Programming in Game Engines, one section of Advanced web Programming, and one section of the Game Design senior capstone). This is 13 credits. Every semester I am teaching either 11 or 13 (the ideal is 12, but it just needs to add up to 24 per year).

This means that very little progress can be made on PARSEC. I am running these classes, grading all the assignments in them, meeting with students during office hours, doing advisement with undergrads about what courses they should be taking and also helping to observe and mentor more junior faculty. In addition, I am doing service to the university by serving on the curriculum and instruction committee (I am the vice-chair), supporting the program by helping meet with interested high-school students, helping coordinate big events (like our game expo, SGX, that we run every semester), and attending many departmental, college level, and university level meetings.

PARSEC (and all my research) tends to stagnate for about 8 months out of the year. It is all I can do to find time for myself and my family outside all of these teaching and service commitments, let alone to find time for anything that doesn’t need immediate attention (and unfortunately, PARSEC is not a squeaky wheel right now).

It has taken years of stress and imposter syndrome to feel confident that this is OKAY. It is in fact how most things get done here at Stout. I’ve accepted that. And as a big blow to my own imposter syndrome I am pleased to announce the the NSF has accepted our final report! In addition, lingering questions about import duties have been resolved as our application to bring in the scanning equipment from ESPER under the Florence Agreement was also fully approved. While not much else has advanced, seeing these two very complicated tasks reach their positive conclusion is a moment worth celebrating!

You can read more about the project (and view the publicly available results) here.

I will continue to document the software and support students that wish to make use of PARSEC. We are already hatching plans to have the current Digital Humanities capstone students visit the lab and be scanned in a few weeks. This is thanks in large part to one of my colleagues, Mitch Ogden, who has been a supporter and champion of PARSEC from the beginning. I will be excited to report back on that experience and share the results with everyone once we have them.