Hip and Digital
In classrooms, dorm rooms, labs, and offices all over campus, University of Minnesota students and faculty are imagining new ways to apply digital technologies to their fields of study. They are emerging digerati—a twist on the term emerging literati, which describes writers at the cutting edge of literature. Emerging digerati are at the frontier of all things digital.

During the first week of April, the University’s Institute for New Media Studies in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication sponsored Emerging Digerati Week, a showcase of the ways that U scholars are applying digital technology to artistic and scientific work. Included were public tours of state-of-the-art simulation labs in anthropology, architecture, surgery, and traffic engineering, as well as presentations by emerging digerati of their current projects. For example, one lab for training health-care students features SimMan, a mannequin that breathes, gags, and goes into cardiac arrest.

One of the goals of the week was to connect emerging digerati on campus with people from outside the U. But presenters also got the opportunity to review each other’s. “In a large university, people get silo-ed into their discipline areas and often don’t get a chance to see or hear about the cool things happening in other departments,” says Nora Paul, director of the Institute for New Media Studies. “This is an attempt at cross-fertilization and a way to invite the public to see the great stuff happening at the U.”

Olin recently spoke with Minnesota about the role of the Arboretum in people’s lives.

Of the innovations that occurred during your tenure, which do you feel most passionate about?

The first thing to come to mind is our horticultural therapy program that connects people with disabilities to nature. It reaches about 5,000 people each year through workshops, lectures, and visits to nursing homes and other places. I’m also really proud of our Urban Garden Outreach Program, which gets kids involved in gardening and landscaping by connecting them with caring adults and mentors. I like the idea of using plants as a way of addressing not only environmental problems but social problems. Because they’re a way of offering people opportunities they might otherwise not have.

How does the arboretum help needy gardens overseas?

When people go on garden tours through the arboretum, a part of what they pay goes into a fund that we use to help gardens in need. The director of Kew Gardens in London told me about his work in developing countries, particularly in the Amazon, where he was training people to plant trees of economic value to earn a living rather than sell off the rain forest. He told me that, with our climate, I should be helping out northern gardens in need. I talked with one of my colleagues who was working with the Tallinn Botanic Garden in Estonia. They needed a greenhouse for research. We wound up sending $6,000 to help get the greenhouse built and a portable heater put in. That’s just one of the things we’ve done and I’m glad we can help some of these gardens that really struggle. They have such a commitment to provide beautiful gardens for people to visit and they’re trying to save their own endemic flora.

Why is the arboretum’s role in helping to connect people, particularly children, to nature so important to you?

I recently read a book by Richard Louv called The Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. He talks about how kids have lost contact with nature. During the era when Louv and I were growing up we went out in the woods and built forts. Kids don’t do that today. Computers are such a big draw. That’s a little scary because you can’t experience nature just looking at pictures on a screen.

Think of how the future will be when those kids grow up and have no problem with legislation getting rid of parks and gardens to make way for more buildings. They won’t see the need for nature. —Meleah Maynard (B.A. ’91)

Green Light for Ecotourism
University of Minnesota students who aspire to a career in the tourism business now have the option to become certified in ecotourism, the fastest growing market in the industry. The U is one of a handful of schools nationwide and the first Midwestern university authorized to offer the International Ecotourism Society’s University Consortium Field Certificate, a course of study that helps prepare students for careers in sustainable tourism.