Loretta C. Duckworth Scholars Studio Digital Showcase

Join us for a presentation of results from projects by faculty and students in the Loretta C. Duckworth Scholars Studio the 2021–2022 academic year.

Schedule

10:00–10:15 am: Welcome by Joe Lucia and Marcus Bingenheimer

10:15–10:35 am: Professor Lu Lu, “Gamification to Transform Hospitality Service Interactions”

10:35–10:55 am: Professor Christina Rosan, "ACT on Air: Accessible Community Technology in Philadelphia"

10:55–11:15 am: Dr. Synatra Smith, "Sacred Geographic Superimpositions"

11:15–11:30 am: Break

11:30–11:50 am: Tauheedah Shukriyyah Asad, "Diggin' Philly: The Black Philadelphia Project"

11:50 am–12:10 pm: Chau Nguyen, "Traces of Tomorrow: Decolonizing Vietnamese Commercial Paintings with 3D Scanning and CNC Machining"

12:10–12:30 pm: Victoria Sarmiento, "Mapping Wetlands Transformation"

Presenters

Lu Lu

LCDSS Faculty Fellow, STHM, Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management

“Gamification to Transform Hospitality Service Interactions”

This project aims to innovate guest interactions for hospitality businesses to improve customer experience by applying gamification strategies. Gamification guides behavior, which can be designed to improve consumer loyalty, word-of-mouth, and engagement. This research taps into the experiential value of gamification and explores design attributes (e.g., rewards type, size, game outcomes) of gamified interactions for hospitality services. The intention is to examine gamified interactions with self-service technologies to improve the dining experience, influence menu ordering, and gamified loyalty promotions with hotel customers. To achieve the research agendas, a series of experiments are carried out to simulate gamified service interactions.

Christina Rosan

LCDSS Faculty Fellow, CLA, Department of Geography and Urban Studies

"ACT on Air: Accessible Community Technology in Philadelphia"

How good is Philly’s air? Christina Rosan, associate professor of Geography and Urban Studies and LCDSS fellow and CLA Center for Sustainable Communities fellow, has been working with the Clean Air Council and other community, non-profit, government, and university partners to raise awareness about the need for more local pollution monitoring across the City of Philadelphia. The ACT (Accessible Community Technology) on Air initiative uses small, low-cost air quality sensors (Purple Air monitors) that can be installed on people’s homes, at schools, universities, libraries, and churches, etc. The aim is to build a network of low-cost, local air quality monitoring, education, and activism around air quality that can augment existing air quality monitoring and help city policy better reflect and address local conditions. In promoting accessible community technology through installation and education around the Purple Air monitoring system, ACT on Air aims to empower citizens and activate a larger dialogue about urban environmental health conditions, the need for more locally focused data, and community driven environmental justice policies.

Synatra Smith

CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow

"Sacred Geographic Superimpositions"

“Sacred Geographic Superimpositions” is a reimagining of monuments and murals for us, by us, as sacred spaces. Through photogrammetry, Smith has created three-dimensional models of public art by Black artists in Philadelphia organized into a map using ArcGIS software, Blender, and Agisoft Metashape. Additionally, Smith has created three-dimensional models of African instruments in the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection at Temple University Libraries and African sculptures in the Philadelphia Museum of Art collection. Each public art model has been enhanced with augmented reality using Unity to transform each of them into altars adorned with the African sculptures and other spiritual and metaphysical content related to the artwork and artists.

Tauheedah Shukriyyah Asad

LCDSS Graduate Extern, Klein School of Media and Communication

"Diggin' Philly: The Black Philadelphia Project"

“Diggin’ Philly” is a multimodal platform utilizing digital media and technologies to explore the possibilities of storytelling to document, preserve, and celebrate the rich experiences, institutions, spaces, and cultures of Black people in the city. This framework incorporates digital archives, interactive maps, immersive technology, and other digital tools for users to explore Black history and content specifically related to the city of Philadelphia. In the “Muslim Town” collection, Asad has created a dynamic and immersive exploration of Philadelphia—a city widely known for its strong Islamic presence, with the one of highest concentrations of Black Muslims in the United States.

Chau Nguyen 

LCDSS Graduate Extern, Tyler School of Art and Architecture

"Traces of Tomorrow: Decolonizing Vietnamese Commercial Paintings with 3D Scanning and CNC Machining"

"Traces of Tomorrow" is a transnational, research, and technology-based project with funding from the Duckworth Scholars Studio, Temple University Libraries, and Tyler School of Art and Architecture. It contemplates the decolonization of Vietnamese commercial oil paintings through the mass production of copies of Western masterpieces in Asia and the current state of Vietnamese oil paintings. For the project, Nguyen creates reproductions of Western masterpieces copies at a Vietnamese commercial painting store through the creation of a transnational network and the use of digital fabrication technologies. The pieces feature a red and black lacquer finish to parallel a lacquer painting tradition unique to Vietnam and some of Southeast Asia.

Victoria Sarmiento 

LCDSS Graduate Extern, College of Liberal Arts

"Mapping Wetlands Transformation"

Sarmiento’s research focuses on La Mojana in northern Colombia, a landscape composed of a network of wetlands, swamps, marshes, and forests, forming an interior delta. La Mojana is under a rapid transformation intertwined with land-use conflicts, such as land accumulation and the enclosure of common lands. These conflicts represent a high-risk situation for the livelihoods of the local communities that do not own enough land and depend on these seasonal territories. Sarmiento explores how those conflicts have contributed to the ecological degradation of the landscape of La Mojana, affecting its ability to regulate seasonal floods and jeopardizing the local communities' livelihoods. This digital project examines how the land cover of La Mojana has been changing over time, with specific emphasis on land covers related to agricultural activities. As part of the project, Sarmiento performed a remote sensing analysis using both active and optical satellite data to identify the land covers.

Our programs are geared toward a general audience and are open to all, including Temple students, faculty, staff, alumni, neighbors, and friends. Registration is encouraged.

Contact libraries@temple.edu with questions.