[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC]
Genesee Country Village and Museum
is the largest living History Museum
in New York and is just a really interesting
cross-section of history, art, nature.
The museum has a partnership with RIT
that brings the resources of the two organizations
together to make us both better.
The partnership funds paid internships
and co-ops for students from all
colleges of the University, providing
an opportunity for any students
to think about the museum as a site
for their research and scholarship.
We have art and design students, liberal arts
students, engineering students,
computer science students.
All involved at the museum
and engaging with their mission.
In the course of my internship
and just the different very exciting people
I was able to meet,
it fostered and allowed me
to confirm that museums are my
main interest and passion,
but also that I could take it
in different directions.
I was able to return to RIT
and I'm now working on my MS in Accounting
and Analytics and going forward,
I hope to work in the museum setting,
whether it be the financial aspect
or the administrative side.
This partnership allows students to realize
what they can do now and it gives them
the opportunity to think of what
they can do in the future.
So many of our projects
are initiated by the museum,
based upon needs that the museum
has, and likewise, some of our projects
are forged by leading scientists, scholars,
and community members of RIT
who have an idea or a concept
that they would like to try
and site at the museum.
I think one of the best examples of that
is a project that crossed three
different colleges where there are a
number of historic buildings on the museum's
property and some of our faculty and students
got together and created avatars
of the actual individuals who lived
in those homes.
As a visitor passes through the building
and they place their phone up
to an item in the collections,
the digital docent appears in virtual form
and engages directly with the visitor.
I purchased this home in 1838.
So part of what we were able to do
is take some of the most cutting edge AR
and VR technology available at RIT
and use it to further the historical mission
of the museum.
The projects that we're doing
with this partnership are important to us
because it's a different sort of problem
than we would normally get, but it really
forces the students to think creatively
about how they're using their skills.
The museum was worried about the safety
of the glass in the houses
when they were doing
some historic demonstrations that involve
firing cannons.
So they actually brought our engineering
students out to do experiments.
And they set up some instrumentation
and they fired those cannons and they actually
measured the deflection on the windows
to study what was happening
and as it turns out, the cannon fire wasn't
damaging the windows.
GCV&M also opens doors for our faculty
to express our creative side.
We are giving them a real life laboratory where they
can come and test out some of the things
that they may be teaching in class
or they may be doing research on.
The online courses that I'm currently running
with GCV&M are a pickling class, a class
about creating jams and jellies, a class
about gifts from the heart for the holidays,
and a planning a garden class
that I run in the spring.
It's an opportunity to think about teaching
differently.
It's an opportunity to think about educating
in a different way.
And I think that benefits not only
the community at GCV&M,
but it benefits my students when
I come back in the classroom.
So as we move this partnership forward,
I think some of the most important things
in the next five years
are just start to dream a little bigger
in what we do
and that's going to require
additional foundation support,
additional philanthropic support,
but because of the incredible foundation
that we already have, we really do, I think,
have the opportunity
to do some very interesting things and perhaps
some bigger things in the years to come.