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| UF Digital Worlds Institute Wins Top Award for Innovative University Program November 11, 2008 From out of the nearly 700 Digital Media programs recognized in its third annual survey of North American colleges and universities, the International Digital Media and Arts Association (iDMAa) bestowed its 2008 Innovative Program Award to the University of Florida’s Digital Worlds Institute. The award was given at iDMAa’s sixth annual conference in Savannah, GA on November 7. According to iDMAa Executive Director Dr. Ray L. Steele, “The iDMAa Innovative Program Award was intended to acknowledge the unusual, the creative, and the outstanding program where innovation is an easily recognized and ever present element of its operation. The selection of the Digital Worlds Institute for the 2008 Award was easy and unanimous for this year’s national panel of judges. Innovation is obviously in the DNA of both the Institute and its Director, and its results bear this out. iDMAa is pleased to make the Digital Worlds Institute the second recipient of its Innovative Program Award.” Digital Worlds (DW) was founded in 2001 as a partnership between the UF College of Fine Arts and the College of Engineering, and since that time has grown its interdisciplinary initiatives across half a dozen additional Colleges at the University. International collaborative projects have been successfully undertaken with partners including the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), the Red Universitaria Nacional (REUNA) of Santiago, Chile, the Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Interaction Design (ACID) at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, the Digital Knowledge Exchange (DKE) of Doncaster, England, the New World School of the Arts (NWSA) in Miami. Previous recognition for UF Digital Worlds includes the global SuperComputing Conference’s Award for the “Most Creative and Courageous” Use of the High-speed Network for “Dancing Beyond Boundaries” (2001), the commission to create “In Common: TIME” for ACM SIGGRAPH at the Los Angeles Convention Center (2005) and the Inaugural Peoria Prize for Creativity in the Arts and Sciences for “Hands Across the Ocean” (2005). DW Director James Oliverio states, “We are honored by this recognition from iDMAa, an organization which has grown to become recognized as the voice of interdisciplinary digital media in higher education. It is gratifying to see that this emergent field of study now has over 80,000 students in programs across the country, a figure that actually exceeds enrollment in a number of traditional academic areas. Digital Worlds will continue to advocate for the 21st century skillsets and collaborative mindsets that will best serve our students as they build their careers in our increasingly globalized economy.” |
