XCC Faculty talk about making good art and finding solutions in creativity

May 12, 2020
By Devyani Chhetri

Cross-College Challenge (XCC) is now pacing towards this semester’s homestretch and students are doing what they do best: creating and collaborating.

In XCC’s Spark! Innovation Fellowship program, students have been designing software that provide solutions to tackle roadblocks people from different walks of life face.

Ranging from solutions that foster a disabled-friendly environment to ideas that transform how students strategize their study time in a bid to decrease anxiety, Spark! Fellows are doing it all.

Guiding them through this are XCC faculty members Prof. James Grady and Ziba Cranmer, Director of BU SPARK!, who much like their students, have put together their strengths in design, innovation and computer programming to help materialize projects.

In how team-building and software development expert Richard Kasperowski, one of the instructors who is also teaching the program phrased it, Grady said it was like being on the music show, the Voice. “We’re trying to be like the student’s coaches and help them figure out obstacles.”

The students also have another layer of mentors from backgrounds of product development, software engineering and graphic design to work through the nitty-gritties of their ideas, he said.

When asked about how Cranmer and he were coping with the current changes, Grady emphasized the nature of the class. “It’s a technology based class and a lot of it happens online anyway,” he said.

Referring to his students as particularly “self-motivated”, Grady said that while there have been challenges in making connections owing to time differences, the faculty has tried establishing one on one interactions with students to troubleshoot any issues.

“I think the students miss getting together,” he said. “But they use Slack and Github to make software—so they’re working mostly with screens and have been adapting very well.”

One could sense how proud both Grady and Cranmer were of the work their students had been doing throughout their time as educators.
Cranmer, who has had an eclectic career and was recently awarded the “EXTRAordinary Women of Boston” award by the Mayor’s office, said that the students brought with them a sense of possibility.

“They’re not constrained by the boundaries that you become accustomed to as you get older,” she said. “They’d [students] be less willing to challenge their freedom and their sense of possibility and optimism.”

Grady, who has a background in creative design, had a similar thought. “I really enjoy the energy from the students,” he said. “I love sharing ideas with them. After working for so long, I know that there are political hierarchies that happen within industry,” he said.

But that changes with students, he said. “They’re just really energetic and excited to make something and talk to you about it and share,” he said.

In their classes, Grady and Cranmer have always emphasized the value of experiential learning and how it impacts their growth in a competitive industry. Then there’s also the love for art that started it all.

When asked about their “origin story” as Grady coined it, both had responses reflective of Neil Gaiman’s directive of ‘making good art ‘ against all odds.

With a career spanning over 20 years in the industry where he worked with Boston based branding firm, kor group, Fathom Information Design and now runs his own design consultancy, Grady was influenced by supportive parents and art teachers and knew that he wanted to be a graphic designer.

“I just really like drawing, coloring, building things and putting things together,” Grady said.
“That was the best I was at, that was the thing I could do and just who I am.”

Meanwhile, Cranmer has been a jack of all trades. “I’ve had a lot of different careers,” she said with a laugh. “I knew that for this current chapter I wanted to work on innovation and technology that had social impacts,” she said.

Describing herself as “connector of different fields”, Cranmer has worked historically in international development as well as at Nike where she held the reins of corporate responsibility and worked on sex trafficking nationally.

The next step now for the faculty is figuring out the final demo day.

“We’ve been working out the finer details of how to show presentations and working software with the XCC cohort from other courses,” said Grady.

The Spark! Innovation Fellowship Program will come back next fall revamped as HUB XC 475. Students can now go and apply if they meet the prerequisites.

This article was written by Devyani Chhetri, a graduate assistant with XCC.