Architecture Faculty Member Receives InSPIRE Academy Fellowship
October 12, 2005
UNIVERSITY PARK, PA — Darla Lindberg, associate professor of architecture, has been awarded an InSPIRE Academy Fellowship by the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence. The InSPIRE Academy is a competitive program for Penn State faculty members who seek to integrate their research into the curriculum of their undergraduate courses with the goal of encouraging students to explore and engage in research.
Lindberg is a registered architect with research interests in Cybernetics (deterministic) and Systems Theory (non-deterministic) approaches as Integration Architectures for collaborative and interdisciplinary work. At students' request, she has developed and is teaching two new courses (Arch 298H and then Arch 498H) to explore game theoretic principles of strategy, choice and consequence, collective action and the tragedy of the commons at work in games, game play and game design. Students draw, animate and build "game proofs" in Macromedia Flash and Unity (a game engine) to explore their understanding of game theory in this media. The generous support of Schreyer Honors College and the College of Arts & Architecture made these courses possible.
The InSPIRE Academy conducts workshops that lead the fellowship recipients through the course design and implementation phases, and allow them to work with faculty from other disciplines and learn about the "best practices" of faculty in similar fields. One of the games developed in Lindberg's Arch 298H is currently funded through a Social Science Research Initiative to explore the potential of game play to encourage self-efficacy in decision-making and nutrition.
Lindberg's recent work investigates building and land use ecologies for moderating disease spread, such as Avian Influenza in poultry production.
Contact: Flora W. Marynak, fwm1@psu.edu or 814.863.2104