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School of Photographic Arts and Sciences ANNUAL FACULTY REPORT AND EVALUATION OF PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Name: ANDREW DAVIDHAZY
REVIEW of 2001-2002 PLAN of WORK and
Foreword: Hopefully the material below will be of some use to anyone who is interested in finding out whether I am still doing something productive in my professional life as opposed to simply taking up space. I hope the situation is not as bad as all that and that you will find this record of contributions worthwhile and a positive contribution to the overall life of the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences, the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences and RIT as a whole as well. But primarily, you should know that my heart belongs to SPAS and to the Imaging and Photographic Technology program. In that order. Without neglecting, of course, the fact that if it were not for RIT the rest of it would be a moot point. It is just that RIT is so big of an organization that my limited life experience associated with the world of photography and imaging could not do it justice. It is just that for me the "action" is where photography is at ... and this is in the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences! I want to still mention that in spite of these annual reports having become somewhat less troubling over time, they still are a source of puzzlement and produce high levels of anxiety in most faculty member's minds. And, it is too bad this happens during the holidays when we are supposed to be relaxing. What is still somewhat perplexing to me (I really can't speak for others) is that the possible "punitive" nature of these reports is hidden from reality. The idea is that these are self-improvement documents. But way in the dark corners of a paranoid mind it is obvious that if not properly filled out they can be used "against ourselves". Somehow it seems that a more impersonal, quantitative, open, frank, pain-free, method of going through this annual reporting process could be devised. As time goes by I keep wondering when will my level of activity/contribution, etc. fall below acceptable levels. Something to think about I guess but I also guess that worrying about it to much could lead to a headache! Anyway, I am again following the format presented to us by the College to the best of my ability. I must confess that categorizing certain activities has been difficult to do and I am sure that some items may appear in unexpected locations in the document below. Please forgive this or, if you find such errors, please bring them to my attention so I might fix the document. Also, if you happen to know of any items I omitted, incorrectly summarized, included (when I should not have), overly embellished, etc. I again would welcome your assistance in making this a more accurate and self-reflective document. Thank you. Now, let's go on to the forms: 1. Teaching/Advising a. List courses taught (including credit hours, enrollment and any
TA support)
1) I have never used a TA or GA in any of my classes except when I help out with the Materials and Processes of Photography course on an occasional basis. I am not sure this is a good thing or a bad thing. It is the facts. 2) Over the Summer I also look after the Coop program for the program which about 25 Imaging and Photographic Technology students enrolled in last Summer I help students register once they have left campus, follow up with the employer evaluations, and turn in grade reports. I must admit have not kept a detailed listing and accounting of all the advising meetings I have had with students over the past year. I think I provide individual and group advising to all students in the IPT program on an ongoing and regular basis. I do this through a variety of means. One of the most obvious is the extensive use I make of my departmental students distribution list. I think that the IPT department continues being a leader in establishing and maintaining connections to its students and disseminating information through the use of email. I have also undertaken the task of trying to help a few remaining Imaging Systems Management students complete the remaining portions of their program. These students have experienced significant turmoil during the last few months given the unfortunate illness of Bill Fisher whom we ultimately lost as a faculty member and program chair at the end of the Fall quarter. I wish Bill the best in his future endeavors and I hope the situation with the ISM program, a program leader, etc. will be resolved soon. b. Given your 2001-2002 plan of work, provide a thoughtful review of what you have achieved relative to what you planned to do in the area of teaching/advising. Be sure to include an analysis of student evaluations indicating areas of strength and weaknesses as well as actions taken to address concerns. Original documentation should not be submitted, but it should be available upon request. (Depending on what your plan of work called for, examples of such documentation could include one or more of the following: student performance data, student evaluations, curricula/syllabi for new or revised courses, advising logs/evaluations) Last year I stated: Well, I really tried but my organizational skills have really not improved. I think one reason for this is that I have to set up demonstrations and laboratories on a week by week basis. Prepare for a new lecture and lab combination, set up the lab and run a practical, hands-on experience with the students, hope all the experiments work as planned (they hardly ever do!), clean-up, reset lab to lecture mode and plan for next lab and start to set it up for the following week for a lecture/demo and lab session. With a second lab course that also needs to be accomodated in between the lab needs of the other. Although I had planned to again conduct a pre and post course evaluation I forgot to conduct an in class teaching evaluation. But I did conduct a post course evaluation much as last year but this year I did not have the pre-final evaluation to compare the responses to. In general the evaluations seem to be pretty much like they have been in the past although there was one form I received that seemed to me to be way out in left field. It referred to items that I totally disagree with,. Such as not handing out an outline or expectations at the beginning of the course, asking unreasonable questions in the final exam, etc. I pride myself in making sure at least that the "administrative" aspects of the course are properly handled and I take extensive effort and time to go over procedural matters. Although my exam is not the easiest I agree for students to deal with I think it is a fair exam if they paid any attention at all during the lectures and laboratory sessions. I feel this evaluation was totally unwarranted In summary, much like last year, I have taken steps to improve but in the final analysis, when it came time for the students to perform on a test and earn the course grade, not much has changed over time or with my improved organization or lack thereof. On a Teaching/Advising topic my advising and interdepartmental communications methods have remained at pretty much the same level as in past years. I provide general advice and counsel to not only my advisees when needed but also to all Imaging and Photographic Technology students. I have also become a de-facto advisor to all ISM students and especially to those that all of a sudden want to complete their degree requirements now that they see that the program does not have a designated McGhee Chair doing the advising. I am trying to accommodate the needs and desires of the remaining students in that program while still maintaining a modicum of respectability for the original program's goals and objectives yet without compromising the educational policies and procedures of the Institute. I have worked hard to try to maintain a cohesive and unified vision for the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences because I feel that doing otherwise would damage the influence of the Imaging and Photographic Technology program as well as other "technically" oriented activities within the School. I still believe that the technical photography programs such as Biomed and IPT will continue to be a small part of the overall SPAS operations but a very significant contributor to the image the school projects to the imaging world at large. I want to make sure we maintain some sense of technical expertise in the School. Course development in my area of "expertise" continues to be hampered by lack of state-of-the-art instrumentation. However, improvisations and work-around solutions have produced new lab experiments and resulted in the publication on the web of several articles. Notably these deal with stroboscopic digital imaging and sensitometric velocimetry. For next year my plan of work vis-a-vis teaching and advising is to:
2. Scholarship/Creative Activity Given your 2001-2002 plan of work, provide a thoughtful review of what you have achieved relative to what you planned to do in the area of scholarship/creative activity. Original documentation should not be submitted, but it should be available upon request. (Examples of such documentation could include summaries of one or more of the following: published articles, editor's response to unpublished material, exhibition reviews, reviewer's response to submitted grant proposals, consulting outcomes.) Although I stated that my level of professional/creative activity the year before was probably at an all time high, my proposed plan for this past year was: In general I think I pretty much met the stated goals as set forth last year. Salient activities are mentioned below and elaborated on further on. The Images from Science exhibition and catalogue occupied most of my waking hours during the six months preceeding the eventual opening of the exhibition on October 12, 2002. Evidence of what this work entailed can be found in a website created to bear testimony to this project. It can be found at: http://images.rit.edu I want to especially recognize the invaluable contributions to this collaborative effort to my fellow conspirators, Michael Peres and Amelia Hugill-Fontanel for making this exhibition and catalogue possible. Their dedication, enthusiasm, commitment, mutual support, professionalism and ultimately, friendship, made this a most memorable experience. Thank you both!! I was included in four group exhibitions over the past year although three of them were in Argentina! My traveling exhibition "Caritas" was exhibited in Brazil, and Argentina (where two articles related to the technology behind these photograph was published in an Argentinian photography magazine) and in several locations in the US detailed below as well. I did fail to be invited by any museum of photography to have my work included in their collection. I am persevering and hopeful that someday my work will be recognized as being worth something. It is discouraging because this effort is now more than 30 years old. But I will keep plugging at it. Someday things will change I am almost positive about this. Anyway, briefly here follow some records of activities that might fall under the above umbrella classification: Professional Presentations and Publications: I was the invited lecturer on April 25, 2002 at the University of Houston Mechanical Engineering Graduate Seminar series. The topic of my presentation was "Photo/Imaging Systems incorporating time as the 2nd dimension". I am the author of a cover photograph and a two part article on in the March and May, 2002, issues of Fotomundo magazine published in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The cover photograph for the March issue was a digital rollout portrait and this same issue carried part one of an article, "Scanning Digital Photography" on pp:16-19. Part two, under the title of "Applications of the strip digital camera" appeared in the May issue on pp: 4-6. (The titles actually were: 1. Fotografias digitales de escaneo and 2. Aplicaciones de la camara digital de barrido) I was an invited speaker at the International Panoramic Photographers Annual Conference that was held in Shepherdstown, WV from Oct, 8-12, 2002. I spoke on the topic of "Panoramic experiments with improvised digital scanning cameras". I was a guest lecturer at the Association of Texas Photography Instructors conference held in Austin, TX from Feb 17-17, 2002. I made two presentations. One on Special Effects Photography and the second on Applications of High Speed Photography in advertising. I also did some "recruiting" on the conference floor and this is documented below under "High School visitations". Several of my photographs and explanatory text are included in a book, "Panoramic Photography", by Nick Meers, nick@meersphoto.com, and published by RotoVision of the UK. I contributed free of charge (as a gesture of good will by our school)
19 scientific and high speed photographs that demonstrate principles of
physics, optics and mechanics for use in a book published in Mexico and
aimed at physics students at the high school level. I am told the book was
published but I have not seen a copy of it in spite of the fact the Mexican
publisher, Diagrama Casa Editorial, S.C., Mexico, told me I would get a copy.
Exhibitions of personal work and other related activities: A collection of my peripheral photographs was included in an exhibition simultaneously showing the work of six photographers from South and North America under the umbrella title of "Small Format". The exhibition opened on April 18 and closed on May 18th, 2002. It was installed at the Instituto Nacional de Cultura, Chiriqui, Panama. Photographs by Ruth Foote, Nancy Stuart and myself were included in the newly published 2nd Edition of Black and White Photography, by Rand and Litschel, published by Delmar Thomson Learning. Two of my Phoenix Process photographs were included in the "Expo Itinerante de Fotored" (a group exhibition) at the Museo Municipal Jose A. Mulazzi located in Tres Arroyos, Argentina. The exhibition ran from 1-28 June, 2002. Details about this traveling exhibition's stop in Tres Arroyos can be found at the following website: http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/fotored-expo-3arroyos/. This exhibition then traveled to Bahia Blanca, Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where it was on exhibit at the Sede Cultural de la Cooperativa Obrera from 8 to 19 July, 2002. Details about this exhibition can be found at: http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/fotored-expo-bahiablanca/. The exhibition then was reorganized (much of the remote supervision of this traveling show is provided by me from my computer in my office!) and was incorporated as an exhibition associated with the Festival of Light held in Buenos Aires. It was announced as follows: El Foto Club Argentino y la Fundación Luz Austral tienen el agrado de invitarlo a la exposición fotográfica internacional "Expo FotoRed". Muestra colectiva de 68 autores de Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Estados Unidos, España, México, Perú, Uruguay y Venezuela. La presente muestra forma parte de los XII Encuentros Abiertos - Festival de la Luz - Argentina / 2002 organizados por la Fundación Luz Austral. Inauguración: Viernes 9 de agosto a las 19,00hs. La muestra permanecerá abierta hasta el 3 de septiembre de 2002". Foto Club Argentino, e-mail: info@fcargentino.com.ar web: http://www.fcargentino.com.ar Complete details about this project can be seen at: http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/fotored-expo-buenosaires.html. Two of my photographs enlarged to mural proportions are being used to introduce an exhibition called "Playing with Time" at the Science Museum of Minnesota. The person who arranged for this was Katrina Hase, Exhibit Developer for the museum and her email is: khase@smm.org I contributed a photograph of two caique parrots to Zoogoer magazine, a publication of the National Zoological Park, and it was included in the Sept/Oct 2002 issue of the magazine in an article written by one of their editors. A self-portrait was included in an exhibition organized by Estudio El Espacio located in Avellaneda, Buenos Aires, Argentina. "Fotografos Autoretratados", an international exhibition featuring the work of 50 photographers, was on exhibit from June 15 through July 15, 2002. My "Little Faces" or "Caritas" traveling exhibition was exhibited at various locations over the course of the past year. It was shown at Clemson University, SC, USA and was installed by Sam Wang in the MFA Gallery from January 21-26, 2002. Then, Little Faces made a stop in Raleigh, North Carolina as guest of Martha Walton at Cardinal Gibbons High School in February 2002. She said: "Thanks for sending around the traveling show. The students really "tripped-out" on it.....that is using their exact words!!". The collection then went on to Stephen F. Austin State University as guest of Prof. Amy Holmes George <ageorge@sfasu.edu> in November 2002. A set also went to Prof. Belinda Peters at Clark Atlanta University who exhibited them there from November 5-25, 2002. She said in part:" .. I hung the show under the umbrella of "low maintenance" and will forward to you some digital pictures of the whole thing. I "hung" the images with pushpins (don't worry, not through the paper) and hung the iamges very closely together. It was/is amazing to see the totality of work together like that. ... It has been such a good response that you have given me ideas for my work. What a lovely end of the year "gift" from you." A similar exhibition of 61 of my ink-jet prints under the title of "Caritas" was inaugurated March 15, 2002 at the Pan American Christian Academy located in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It remained there until March 29, 2002 when the collection was moved to the Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing from April 1 through 12, 2002, also in Sao Paulo. The prints were at this time "lost". However, I made another set and under the same title "Caritas" opened at the Universidad de Panama, in Panama City, Panama on April 5, 2002 and was on exhibit there until April 21. At that time the set of 60 prints was divided in two parts and each half went to different locations in Panama. Due to shipping difficulties those prints were given to the organizer. I will make another set for future travel! A running history of this project is accessible on the web at the following address: http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/davidhazy.html. I participated in the Annual SPAS Faculty exhibition in January 11-25, 2002. I donated a Phoenix Process photographic portrait opportunity to the 2002 Rochester Annual WXXI Fine Art Auction . I also donated a print to the Palm Beach Photographic Workshops, "Picture my World" program to help at-risk children. I donated one print to Tony Toscano for a local Muscular Dystrophy silent auction. I donated one print to Bob Kayser's daughter who was collecting on behalf of the Delaware Humane Society for an auction in April, 2002 in Delaware. It raised $150 for the Society. I participated in several web-based or "virtual" galleries throughout the year. These include the (local) PhotoForum list's gallery and the Certamen de Fotored which operates out of Spain and a Haiku oriented gallery out of Japan. I also donated free-of-charge reproduction rights to several of my photographs to several charitable and non-profit organizations. My blue water splash photograph seems to attract particular attention on the Internet and I authorized reproduction rights free of charge (but asking for SPAS connected byline!) to individuals working in medicine, dance, sports, water purification, etc. The one time that a major corporation promised to pay a reasonable fee for the use of the photograph nothing came of it even though they did use it. They are a foreign company out a country east of Europe. Professional activities and consulting: On June 5, 2002 I was invited by Prof. Gale Spring of the Industrial & Scientific Photography Department, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, to become an International Liason (mentor) to the Bachelor of Applied Science Photography program along with Peter Lowie from the Academic Medical Centre, Holland; Wolfgang Stein, Fachhochschule - Koln, Germany and Halldor Valdimarsson, National University Hospital, Iceland. A paper about the Imaging and Photographic Technology program was accepted for presentation at the OPTO-Canada conference organized in Ottawa, Canada on May 9-10, 2002 by the International Society for Optical Engineering. Unfortunately I started out late to get to the meeting and experienced great delays at the border causing me to miss the scheduled presentation time so I notified SPIE of the situation, turned around and returned to Rochester. I will try again at another meeting of the group. Along with Marla Schweppe I gave a presentation to the Eastman House Council. (Date lost but have thank you note!) I gave a presentation to the Camera Rochester Club on January 21st at the Atonement Lutheran Church in Rochester, NY. On June 3, 2002 I served as a judge at a Camera Rochester monthly meeting. Over the summer months I completed what started out as personal consulting for NASA Glenn Research Center's Photo Lab on gold toning Tech Pan film that had been exposed under highly controlled conditions. Due to a miscommunication with NASA Purchasing, the funds generated by this project were ultimately paid but to RIT and not to me personally and so I deposited these funds in a restricted account to help support my high speed photography and photoinstrumentation projects and teaching. I also completed a consulting project for DesignWorks of the Netherlands related to schlieren imaging of a novelty item to show the interaction of the device with a stream of warm air rising from a candle. I did this for Joris Sparenberg, designworks@sparenberg.nl, www.sparenberg.nl. So what are my plans for next year? Well ...
3. Service Given your 2001-2002 plan of work, provide a thoughtful review of what you have achieved relative to what you planned to do in the area of service. Original documentation should not be submitted, but it should be available upon request.(Examples of such documentation could include summaries of one or more of the following: committee chair statements, recruitment calls made, high schools visited, alumni contacts, development efforts, portfolio days.) Well, my plans in this area last year simply stated the following: High Schools visited and related recruiting activities: At the invitation of Gerrie Baker and Julie Bishop I again participated for a full-day Career Day 2002 event at the Spencerport High School held on or about March 15, 2002. I gave a couple of lectures (mentioned under professional presentations above) at the Association of Texas Photography Instructors annual conference that was held in Austin, TX on February 23-25, 2002. This conference is attended by students and teachers enrolled in photography programs at various photo education programs throughout the state of Texas. For one full day of the conference I "manned" a booth representing (and promoting) the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences on the conference floor. I organized two virtual exhibitions of photographs by students in one of my web galleries devoted to student work. One group of photographs was from Pilgrim High School in Los Angeles, CA and the other Liverpool High School in Syracuse. In the same gallery I also installed an exhibition of work by students in the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences I represented the Imaging and Photographic Technology program and the Rochester
Chapter of IS&T at the 31th Annual Science Exploration Days conference
At the invitation of Gunther Cartwright I joined him as a judge of the 23rd New York State Public Relations Association photography contest In May, 2002 I again hosted about 50 students (over the two days, 3 hours each day) from Webster High School and gave them tours and demonstrations about high speed and special effects photography. The teacher who arranged this was Patty LaVea (Patty_LeVea@ccmail.monroe.edu) In November, 2002 I was asked to make a demonstration to about 40 students from Lewiston Porter and Lancaster High School. The teacher at LP who asked for my participation (and that of Prof. Glenn Miller) was Mike Townsend of LP High School. In October 2002 I participated in Brick City presenting a lecture/demonstration "Flashes, Splashes and Pops" in the Carlson Auditorium to an audience that was supposed to be over 100 but which turned out to be only about 30. It was fun in any case. I brought Nikon Small World exhibition back to the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences for the 11th year. This collection of photographs is generously sent to us by the Nikon Corporation and is available to us for a whole year and displayed on the walls of the Dr. Ron Francis Photographic Chemistry lab. I helped organize and contributed to the SPAS Photography Explorers Post of the Otetiana Council of the Boy Scouts of America in the Fall quarter if 2002. This year the group was much less cohesive than the previous year and I am surprised that lax attitude of the participants. While a productive program in terms of recruitment I think our relationship with the Otetiana Council needs to be rethought in order to make this a more fulfilling experience for the participating faculty. One night only one student came. I helped organize, schedule and contributed to a faculty recruitment initiative that has been very well received by our own photo faculty as well as visiting teachers and professors of photography from other schools, namely the Basic Photo/Imaging Workshop for Educators. It would not be possible without the generous contribution from colleagues here at the School but then, again, it might not happen at all if some of them did not talk me into trying it once more for the last 9 years or so. I made a "recruiting" presentation to Clayton Adams' Photo 2 class at 2 PM, on Tuesday, 11 Dec, in room 3105. Clayton said that one of the students who evaluated the presentation said: "Andy ROCKS!" Development efforts: Development efforts were again completely unsuccessful in terms of being able to acquire major gifts from corporations. The truth is that I don't know how to ask for items that have a significant price tag from companies that sell few of them and whose margin of profit is very small. For example, this include high speed digital cameras whose price tag is somewhere in the $50K range (or much higher) and which are generally destined for military use. Anyway, I again received a significant amount of expired motion picture film from NASA Glenn Research Center. We used some of this film in the High Speed/Time Lapse photography course this fall. We found that much of this film as well was prone to static marks and other than for rudimentary use it had little real value. I again acquired donations of older, but not useless, Pentium class computers by sending out a request for donations to the whole RIT community. I received two machines and installed them in Tech Alley for the benefit of all students who hang out in that area although these tend to mostly be Tech students. While a modest facility students are constantly using them. Thanks to one of our senior students this facility is now a "LINUX" facility and all the software in this area is licence free ... freeware. Committees: I am on the SPAS Chairs Committee, Bill DuBois is co-chair but in fact he is the chair that provides leadership and organization to this group. I am on the Institute Commission for Promoting Pluralism, Alfreda Brooks is the chair and this last year was my last year of eligible participation on this committee. I am also on the Institute Academic Grievance Committee but do not recall who the chair of this committee is. We had no meetings last year. I have no statements from any of these committee chairs. I am a member of the International Society for Optical Engineering's Edgerton Award Committee. I am the Internet liaison for The Photographic Historical Society. Alumni Contacts: I maintain regular contact with all graduates of the Imaging and Photographic Technology program. I have compiled a list of all their email addresses and have been keeping in touch with updates and news of job opportunities and so on over the years. I maintain a news page on the for them as well as current students. Check it out at: http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/ipt-news.html My plan of work for next year: 4. Other If your 2001-2002 plan of work, called for any special activity outside of the above three categories, please provide an appropriate review of the evidence that such plans have been achieved. Well, I am not sure if this falls under "other" or what ... these items are simply additional activities accomplished or in which I was significantly involved. Most of these activities contribute, I hope, to overall school recruitment and to keeping the image of the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences as a center for top-notch photographic education in the minds of the local and the larger photo/imaging community. (I used the preceeding paragraph verbatim form last year's report - FYI) I was instrumental in having Wired Magazine hire one of our Advertising Photo students, Justin Steele, to do some photography for the magazine in Buffalo on March 20, (I think that was the date) 2002. On May 6, 2002 Bill DuBois and I were "distinguished" guests aboard the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman on maneuvers underway in the Atlantic. While mostly a PR-type visit we made photographs of activities on board and Bill gave a lecture on architectural photography to the photo group on board. We left on may 6 and returned on May 9 in the morning. I participated in the PhotoExpo convention at the Javits Center in NYC and in addition to my usual routine of making visitors to our booth "happy" by making peripheral portraits. I arranged for a lecture by Stephen Applebaum on "Civil Evidence Photography - An overview of the field and a look at career opportunities in the future" as part of the activities of the joint chapters of the Technical Photography Student Association and the IPT Chapter if SPIE. This was held on Thursday, October 20, 2002 in the Carlson Auditorium. Arranged for an exhibition of landscape photographs by David Valvo, dvalvo1@rochester.rr.com, ex-Kodak paper manufacturing supervisor, in the 2nd floor hallway display cases during the month of November 2002. Arranged for and installed, with the help of several colleagues, an exhibition of SPAS Faculty photographs at the RIT Student Alumni Union during the month of April, 2002. In October 2002 I organized a field trip for Imaging and Photographic Technology students to Niagara Falls and took the group of students who participated on a tour aboard the Maid of the Mist. I have continued my long-term association with William Allen, Art Department, Arkansas State University, working with him on a collaborative project that is an INTERNATIONAL DIRECTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY HISTORIANS associated with the History of Photography Group. My contribution to his project is to help him collect people's names who are interested in being listed in his directory. I do this through the RITphoto account that I established many years ago. I also oversee, manage and forward requests for information about School of Photographic Arts and Sciences photography programs collected through a form installed on the SPAS and the IPT websites. This past year these forms generated over 2500 inquiries about our photography programs with the bulk of them, of course, being requests for information about the BFA degree programs. I am regular contributor to the Ilford Teacher's Lounge on the web and have offered advice and assistance to the photography teachers that frequent that website. Find it here: http://www.ilford.com/lounge/messageboard.html. In addition I am active on the NetNews in the rec.photo area and several of my articles have been used by other's websites as well as printed pieces produced by small camera clubs due to their useful and informative content. On a regular basis I make sure to add a link to the SPAS website, and the IPT website if appropriate, in any Internet venue where this possibility is offered. Essentially this contributes to making our presence as a significant photographic educational organization more visible on the Internet. Since as part of the PhotoForum project I maintain an extensive (currently more than 3000) list of links to photographers, corporations, schools, etc. I accept "link exchanges" to that list in exchange for a listing for our school. This also helps keep our profile on the Internet high. I have set-up a "question and answer" project on the Internet under the title of PhotoQuest, where anyone can pose a question related to photography and I then try answer the question myself or try to identify people who might have the answer to the question. I have personally answered more than 500 questions this past year on topics as varied as filtration for proper color reproduction schlieren photography, photography of cadavers, infrared and ultraviolet photography, flash synchronization, stereoscopic photography, the Nimslo camera and getting Nimslo film processed (this is a very popular question and I have made a "template" reply to deal with this topic!), Kennedy assassination, forensic photography, etc. I still manage the PhotoForum mail list on the Internet and besides dealing with day to day issues related to smooth operation of the list itself, I am "proud" to say that I have installed a brand new gallery of list member's images on the web every Saturday morning of the year. This gallery displays 12 member's photographs on the web and I update the gallery every Saturday morning. I also organized several "specialty" exhibitions, one on Self Portraits and another on Personal Style. PhotoForum serves about 650 members worldwide. I also look after the Fotored mail list. This one does not have a weekly gallery (its photographic "presence" is felt primarily thought the member's traveling exhibition) but is very active and the language used is Spanish. I also instituted a special member's greetings gallery and added a series gallery to the normal single-image members gallery. Fotored served about 400 individuals worldwide. Finally, I also manage a mail list called Photohist-L but this one is hardly "alive". I am planning to devote a little more effort to creating a spark under this list but so far I have not had the time to do so. I do provide, as a "public service" activity, support of The Photographic Historical Society of Rochester and give them webspace on my site (obviously identified with SPAS and RIT!) as well as web design services. This coming year they will host the PhotoHistory XII Symposium, an international photographic event, and I am their Internet "liaison" for promotion and online registration, etc. for this event as well. I helped carry out the SpecialtyArts web competition for the best photographic work done at the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences. I again organized two competitions last year. These were open to all students in SPAS and entries were solicited through a distribution list I set up that reaches all the students at RIT that have a JPH- designation excluding Film/Animation. About 20 entries were received for each competition and SPAS faculty selected the 4 winners. These, in turn, (along with the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences) received significant web exposure at the SpecialtyArts website and arranged to have their images sold through that outlet without a fee being charged for the service. The selected students all thought this was a worthwhile activity. I installed a Bulletin Board type of exhibition web or virtual space designed for students in the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences to submit photographs and participate in online discussions about them. While this has not been a great success in terms of participation and discussion at least it was an attempt at increasing web awareness in our photographic community. The board is still available and can be checked out here: http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/cgi-bin/wwwboard22/wwwboard.html. I again helped publicize many events that took place last year at the
School by redistributing news items of many kinds, from lectures, to scholarships
and contest, through various means. An initiative I established in 1995,
the RITphoto@rit.edu address, is becoming well known among the school's
students and possibly even the school's faculty!.
For next year: In summary, I again (how do you like that!) want to thank all my immediate colleagues in the Imaging and Photographic Technology department, as well as all its students, for making working in the department such a pleasure (most of the time!). Also I want to thank the faculty members in the Biomedical Photography program for their overall support and Michael Peres in particular for his collegiality. I believe the programs and departments flourish with buy in from the faculty that design the program and while I plan on consulting and providing advice I believe that the "ship is in their capable hands" and I trust they will make of that program whatever is most appropriate much as the faculty immediately associated with Imaging and Photographic technology will look after this program. As far as the Imaging Systems Management program hopefully this program will "find its feet" so to speak and again become a needed addition to the smorgasboard of photo programs offered in the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences. Finally, there are three items in particular that concern me (particularly with respect to the
Imaging and Photographic Technology program and department) and that I hopefully will make some
improvement on in the coming year. They are: 1. a less than comfortable number of upperclass students in the program
which leads to required classes having very low enrollment, 2. the lack of progress in developing and establishing
a significant presence within, and outside, the School in the areas of Photographic and Imaging
Chemistry, and 3. I also hope to overcome my past inability to get things done with respect to establishing a
more viable computing area for technical imaging applications and I plan to devote more effort
to this in the coming year.
This self evaluation and your proposed plan of work for December 1,
2001 to November 30, 2002 is due to your Administrative Chair on January
6, 2002.
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