Spotlight on ICSC Graduates: Hector and Suzanna Ramos

Hector and Suzanna come from diverse backgrounds (Spain and Singapore) but they share one passion – the study of creativity.

They both completed their MS in Creative Studies in 2005, while garnering several awards during the course of their study. Suzanna received the President’s Medal for “Outstanding Graduate Student” and “Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award” while Hector received the “ICSC Alumni Foundation Achievement Award”. Prior to their studies in Buffalo, Suzanna and Hector had accomplished careers in their respective fields. Suzanna had a career in education and served as a teacher, head of department, assistant principal and professional development officer facilitating teachers in action research in the classroom. Hector has a background in publishing and was also a trainer and facilitator in South East Asia and the Middle East.

They are currently doctoral students at Texas A&M University, pursuing a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology focused on Creativity, Cognition, and Giftedness. Suzanna is part of a research team investigating the gap between verbal and nonverbal intelligence of underperforming gifted students in various schools in Texas. She is also exploring creative strategies, like ‘MindSketching’, to address this problem. Her other research interests include implicit theories of creativity and intelligence, and cross-cultural creativity. Hector is currently investigating learning transfer as it relates to creative thinking training. His other areas of interest are creative and innovative climate and exploring elements that foster and hinder undergraduate research at Texas A&M University.

Besides presenting at the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented conferences, they are also involved in writing chapters for the Encyclopedia of Creativity, Invention, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship. This Encyclopedia is a 4-volume reference currently in development in Springer. It features contributions from economics, management, psychology, anthropology, technology, education, and the arts, to offer a “transdisciplinary” approach to creativity and innovation.

In addition to their academic pursuits, Hector and Suzanna have managed to incorporate the skills they have learnt from the master’s program. They ‘revived’ and headed the Creativity and Innovation Alliance (CIA), an undergraduate student organization at Texas A&M University. Hector is currently the President of the Educational Psychology Student Organization (EPSO) where he has numerous opportunities to apply his creativity skills. He is a graduate assistant at the Honors program and has facilitated staff retreats using CPS. Suzanna is also a graduate assistant where she conducts workshops on supervision and management. She has modified the sessions to incorporate CPS tools and techniques.

As a form of relaxation, Suzanna is passionate about making her own jewelry and is constantly perfecting her craft. Hector and Suzanna are also avid practitioners of the Turkish art of Paper Marbling called ‘Ebru’ and are exploring ways to apply this technique to greeting cards, tee shirts and jewelry.

As a celebration of their 15 years of marriage, they reaffirmed their wedding vows on June 1st 2011.

Spotlight on ICSC Graduate: Kai Wang

Kai Wang is a researcher in creativity and innovation management. He is a 2010 alumnus of the Master's program in Creative Studies. While he has heavy background in biotechnology, his major passion has been creativity since college. Following this passion, he found the program in ICSC by online search. Now he has facilitated many CPS sessions, in Chinese and English, for people from various disciplines. His Master's project was focused on the classification of idea generation techniques. Now he is in the PhD program in technology management in Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. One of his major research interests is about creative processes and techniques. The current research project is about developing ways to organize online crowds to generate creative ideas. Specifically, he is using Amazon Mechanical Turk, an online crowdsourcing marketplace, to solicit creative ideas from the crowd and to study ways to collect, improve, evaluate and select ideas. A second academic interest is about innovation management. He is involved in research about innovation diffusion and implementation, for example, what factors affect the implementation of new technology in an organization.

He is from mainland China and currently resides in New Jersey. Read more on his Linkedin Profile

Give for Greatness

http://www.giveforgreatness.org/organization/folkloric-dance

This video clip highlights work Cathy Skora is doing in the field of art education utilizing the creative process in teaching and learning. The clip shows portions of a rehearsal process for a 4th grad class involved in a school-wide project entitled Welcome to the Village conceived and developed by Cathy Skora.
 
In this project Cathy uses brainstorming and other action based teaching and learning methods to facilitate students in a script building process with a theme on global conservation.  Students also use their creativity as via dance brainstorms  in putting together a dance. The program culminates with school wide presentations of the work at venues outside of the school allowing students  a varied experience in presenting their work in different environments.
 
This program was recognized and funded in part  by the New York State Council on the Arts
 
from linked:
 
Dance Teacher - Arts Integration Facilitator Develop programming for grades K-6 focusing on cultural dance according to NYS art standards, develop lesson plans that align with core curriculum, using creativity training facilitate students in learning movement and script writing. Certified in Dance Content by NYSED.
 
<http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?trk=h-gnav-name-link-0#name>  Workshop Facilitator, Trainer Folkloric Productions Dance Co., Inc. Workshop Leader
My lifelong studies of dance and meditation have led me on an interesting journey. This journey has included developing techniques to assist others in enhancing their lives professionally and personally. Working in a variety of settings from education to special need populations has allowed me to tap into the creative process by identifying and connecting common denominators among different groups, such as movement and emotion , in order to assist others in moving past barriers in order to enhance their lives.

Workshops I have developed focus on techniques for personal development , discovery, and awareness of personal potential. My current studies as a graduate student in the Creative Studies Department at the State University College at Buffalo is a natural progression towards the development of layering and identifying further personal development workshops utilizing movement and meditation to access the creative process, 
My career path has been an incredible journey full of renovations, realizations, and reinventions. It is my pleasure to share my insights and assist others in connecting with their potential.
     

Highlight on Alicia Arnold

Alicia Arnold graduated in 2010 with an MSc in Creative Studies. In 2011 she will be starting a publishing company and offering three titles. The first, Creativity Unscripted, originated during Alicia's first summer session at Buffalo State when Blair Miller introduced the Lucky 7's to a problem finding exercise using the Jack and Jill nursery rhyme. The positive feedback about the approachability and simplicity of using nursery rhymes as a teaching tool led to the concept for the book. Creativity Unscripted uses a behind-the-scenes look into the Land of Nursery Rhyme and the characters Jack and Jill to teach CPS. The book blends the dryness of learning fact with the pleasure of reading fiction to create a business fable focused on teaching creativity. Her next two titles, geared towards children, are part of a series. With the Mack & Cally titles, Alicia introduces "The Letterman’s" – sibling crime solvers with a phonics bag of tricks. Readers can follow 8-year old Cally and 7-year old Mack through a series of adventures as they recover the Mona Lisa, search for the stolen Hope Diamond and return a Faberge egg to its rightful owner. The Letterman’s uses an engaging problem solving format to teach literacy. While solving crimes, Cally finds herself in precarious situations. Luckily, she has the Linking Letters to help her out. The letters come to life and form what they spell – that is, if Cally spells and pronounces them correctly. The Letterman’s stimulates imagination and promotes literacy by focusing on phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Each story will feature phonics blends, letter sounds, and other phonics relationships to reinforce concepts learned in school. If you would like to read the manuscripts and and provide a review, feel free to contact Alicia at alicarnold@yahoo.com. You can also follow her on Twitter @alicarnold.

Highlight on Anneliese Gryta

Anneliese Gryta is a 2005 alumna of the undergraduate minor program in Creative Studies at Buffalo State. She was recently featured as "Person of the day" by Huffington Post. Please read about the great work she is doing!


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/03/todays-huffpost-greatest-anneliese-grieta_n_803757.html

HIghlight on Nathan Schwagler, 2008 Graduate

Nathan Schwagler
Graduation year: 2008
Home: Tampa Bay, FL
Website: LinkedIn profile

Teaching: Deliberate Creativity in the B school.

Prior to completing the MS in Creative Studies, Nathan entered graduate business school in a Master of Science degree program titled: Entrepreneurship in Applied Technologies – a fancy degree title that basically means: how to launch a technology company. Essentially, it was a 10-course blend of tools and skills to assist the person who thinks they want to get involved in the creation and implementation of something new.

While reading the textbooks, he couldn’t help but notice all of the instances that the terms creativity and innovation were being used. Consequently, he started flagging page corners and realized this was something worthy of further investigation.

Since then, he’s come to believe that entrepreneurs – as well as the greater business community – know that they need to be creative; they just have limited understanding of what to do about it.

Simply doing the basics professed at the ICSC, such as: steadfastly using affirmative judgment when evaluating ideas (even when it hurts); applying facilitation best-practices during team-based exercises; and promoting the deliberate separation of divergence and convergence, professors began asking him to come in and speak to classes about how the students could re-connect with their own creative thinking skills to become more effective business professionals (read: better thinkers).

This recently turned into an opportunity to join the USF Saint Petersburg College of Business as an adjunct instructor of a course on Creativity in Entrepreneurship (imagine CRS 559 with an emphasis on business vocabulary).

What really makes the opportunity special is that the administrators of the Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Innovation Alliance believe that creativity is so important for successfully launching and sustaining a venture, that they’ve decided to make the creativity course foundational and mandatory – meaning everyone must take it!

This foresight has resulted in an opportunity for Nathan to also serve the program as “Creative-In-Residence”, tasked with providing curriculum consultation around integrating creative thinking tools/skills into the remaining courses.

Nathan is absolutely interested in any insights the creative studies community might offer to support the initiative(s); and he would like you to kindly consider sharing your unique wisdom and experience with him. Thank you!!

Highlight on Janice Francisco, 2007

Highlight on Janice Francisco, 2007 (Ottawa, Canada)


Creativity in government?
Yes, it's possible: innovation consulting isn't just for private business, it's also been put into play by the Canadian Federal Government to drive movement, change, and creativity and innovation internally. In recognition of her work to drive innovation within the Canadian Federal Government, Janice was invited to join the 2010 judging committee for the GTEC (Government Technology Exhibition and Conference) (GTEC) Distinction Awards Program.


The Distinction Awards recognizes innovation as a creative approach, using Information Management / Information Technology applications and/or technology, to advance government policy frameworks, service delivery, organizational transformation, use of customer-centered services, public consultation and participation, and competition in the global economy. Honorees are recognized for having outstanding achievements or actions that are clearly above and beyond what would normally be required or expected in government.


For the past 17 years, the Awards have been the pre-eminent public sector recognition program in Canada, for the use of information technology and information management in government service delivery. Each year, the Distinction Awards judging committees conduct an extensive nominations, evaluation and judging program for hundreds of projects submitted by federal, provincial and municipal government teams.

Janice must have made an impression on her fellow judges. They've asked her back for 2011 and to facilitate dialogue on how they could improve the criteria by which they judge innovation.

Find out more about GTEC Awards of Distinction at

http://www.gtec.ca/distinction-awards/general-information.php

For more information on Janice, check out her website at:
http://www.bridgepointeffect.com/about-us/associates/