On Friday, May 7, the Taylor family, along with Chancellor Jo Ann Gora, Connie Chan, interim dean of the College of Public and Community Service (CPCS), and the faculty, staff, students, and alumni of CPCS, celebrated the grand opening of the Clark Taylor Center for Media, Arts, and Technology.
Named after professor Clark Taylor, who joined CPCS in July of 1972 and retired in 2001, the Taylor Center includes two new computerized classrooms.
The center was founded with a $100,000 gift from Taylor’s son Jeff, CEO of Monster.com, to honor his father’s distinguished career, in addition to $50,000 from TMP Worldwide, the parent company of Monster.com.
During his tenure at CPCS, Taylor served as faculty member, department chairman, governance committee chairman, associate dean, acting dean, and chairman of the UMass Boston Human Rights Working Group.
The Taylor Center’s mission is to facilitate the development and production of multimedia projects and applications that promote social justice, community development, international understanding, and equal access to computer-enhanced learning.
The center was designed as both a teaching facility and a multimedia production center. In addition to serving individual students and whole classes, the CPCS community outreach plan includes opening the facility to community groups and using the high-speed network to allow interaction between groups from the Boston area, and from Cape Cod to Puerto Rico.
Planned with the teacher in mind, each room, located on the third floor of Wheatley near the Wit’s End café, is arranged with an open teaching area in the middle and thirteen computers on the outside so that the class has clearly delineated areas for teaching and computer work.
The PC classroom has the standard Microsoft Office suite as well as data analysis and high-end mapping (GIS) software. The Mac classroom has Apple’s easy-to-use iMovie video-editing software for student use, as well as Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia’s web production software. A 60-inch SmartBoard doubles as an electronic whiteboard and a projection TV for video presentations.
The classrooms will also assist students and faculty by serving as a training facility for students in CPCS’s new Community Media and Technology Program. “It is a dynamic communications center with the potential to change some important parts of the world,” said Taylor. The center’s hours are scheduled around classes, from 8am to 7pm, with priority use given to CPCS students.
Over the summer, the Taylor Center will add full remote log in capabilities and roaming profiles so that students will be able to access their files from anywhere, share files, publish to the web, and collaborate online with other students.
“Professor Clark Taylor has given so much of himself in his many years here that he made CPCS his home. He gave us his wonderful dedication, … his wisdom, his caring, and…his wonderful laugh. And most of all, he gave us his lasting friendship for the college and for our students,” said Chan.