A team of DU researchers was just awarded a National Science Foundation grant to pilot a new education model that teaches mathematics, computer science and art in a project-based inter- disciplinary approach by having high school freshmen and sophomore students CREATE their own computer games. Through the creation of games students are exposed to the need for mathematics, programming, and art. The integration with art and design allows for a new model of high school education. The project is composed of three parts: A residential summer game camp, a summer professional development course to train high school teachers, and working with high school teachers to deliver the curriculum in metro high schools. The summer game camp is a two week program where students live in the dorms and experience a daily curriculum of programming, drawing, and game design.
This three year grant provides scholarships for 45 women and underrepresented minority students per year, the training of 20 high school teachers per year, and funds to support three graduate research assistants who will help develop the curriculum and assist the high school teachers during the school year.
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Chris GauthierDickey has joined the Computer Science Department and will join the list of active Game Development professors. Chris's general research area is networking, with a focus on support for massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), such as World of Warcraft, and peer-to-peer computing. His past research has been in the design of cheat-proof protocols for multiplayer games and he is currently investigating scalable, peer-to- peer networking for MMOGs where he is examining issues such as cheating, process scheduling, long term data persistence, the measurement of MMOG properties, and the design of MMOG models for future research and simulation.
Squeezed competed in the Future Play conference (
http://www.futureplay.org/ ) game competition. The students won the “Best Future Game Talent” award. Congratulations Squeezed Team!
A paper describing the overall structure and goals of the DU Game Development Program was published in the June 2006 issue of IEEE Computer Magazine. A copy of the article can be obtained here:
Building a Game Development Program
Professor Leutenegger is serving as the program chair for the game and business simulation track for this years TieCon Denver conference (
http://www.tie-rockies.org/tiecon/). TieCon is the annual conference of Tie Rockies, a group of business entrepreneurs. Leutenegger will serve as moderator for a panel titled “Is a Gaming Degree a Ticket to a Bright Future or an Excuse to Play Games?”
In addition, the squeezed team will present a demo of a prototype of the game “Squeezed”.
