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Women's History Month 2004
Mar. 29th, 2004 12:54 amEmma Brunskill
The 'future' of Women's History
Emma Patricia Brunskill is an MIT Presidential Scholar and a graduate student in computer science at MIT. As an undergraduate at the University of Washington 1, which she entered at the age of fifteen 2, she was named a Goldwater Scholar (1997), a Mary Gates Scholar (1999), and an Anderson Scholar. She graduated in June 2000 with a double degree in physics and computer engineering 5. Emma was also a runner-up for the Computing Research Association award for outstanding undergraduate female in 2000.
For her senior project in computer science at UW, she created a prototype of a system that could recognize images -- in this case, the gloved hand signs of someone communicating via American Sign Language -- and translate it into characters. 2 Brunskill is interested in studying artificial intelligence and wants her research to have "a social bent." 1
On December 9, 2000, it was announced that Emma had been chosen as a Rhodes Scholar, chosen from 950 applicants for that cycle and the first from UW in two decades. Rhodes scholarships, created in 1902 by the will of British philanthropist Cecil Rhodes, provide two or three years of study at Oxford University in England. Winners are named based on academic achievement, personal integrity, leadership and athletic ability. 2 Her chosen field at Oxford was neuroscience.
Emma's Oxford webpage
Her research experience includes summer work at CERN (European Center for Particle Physics) in 1999. That same summer she visited Paris for the first time and "adored it so much that the following summer I choose to take a French language course at the Sorbonne. There I spent a lot of time wandering the streets of Paris and having long conversations in small cafés." 1
Emma served as the University of Washington coordinator for Amnesty International. An avid rower at the University of Washington and at MIT, Emma looked forward to joining a boat again in Oxford. In her spare moments, she enjoys "reading fiction, dancing, and making sushi," 1 and enjoys listening to Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos and U2. 2 She returned to MIT to complete her Ph.D. after her two years at Oxford. 1 She also received a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship.
As part of her graduate career, she has co-written Building Peer-to-Peer Systems With Chord, a Distributed Lookup Service. Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS-VIII), 2001. -- Frank Dabek, Emma Brunskill, M. Frans Kaashoek, David Karger, Robert Morris, Ion Stoica, Hari Balakrishnan.
She's kept up her athletics as well, participating in the 2002-03 Reebok Cross [Country] Challenge, November 2, 2002, coming in with a 28:13, coming in number 50 of 66 in the Senior ['senior'?? - c.] Women class, listed as 'Emma Brunskill Oxford University'; 3 and in the 'Harpoon Brewery Oktoberfest Blues Run & BBQ Bash', in Somerville, Massachusettes, October 30, 2003, 137 of 500 mixed-gender participants listed, with a time of 24:41 4.
She attended the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, November 7-12, 2003 and enjoyed New Orleans when she wasn't in conferences. Emma is also currently a member of MIT's Committee on Foreign Scholarships conducts interviews September through November with applicants for the major international scholarships: Marshall, Rhodes, Fulbright, Fulbright-Hayes, Gates, Churchill, and DAAD awards.
Her sister, Amelia, is following right behind her, also having been made a Mary Gates Scholar and having entered the University of Washington in the same Early Entrance Program. Amelia is majoring in Psychology, but is also being quite the theatre maven.
"We gave them a lot of space. Both are very organized with their time. We never had to say, 'Do your homework,'" said their mother, Clare Brunskill, a first-grade teacher in the Edmonds School District.
Their father, Andrew Brunskill, a medical director for the Washington State Health Care Authority, also downplayed his role. "We're delighted and amazed by what they did," he said. "We try to support them and stay out of the way."1
Posted by: Emma Brunskill at February 19, 2004 03:49 PM:
1 http://www.americanrhodes.org/newsletter2001/brunskill.html
2 http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/rhod11.shtml, rhod28.shtml
3 http://www.ukathletics.net/vsite/vcontent/page/custom/0,8510,
4854-133222-134530-21747-81581-custom-item,00.html
4 http://www.coolrunning.com/results/03/ma/Oct30_Harpoo_set1.shtml
5 http://www.artsci.washington.edu/newsletter/WinterSpring01/awards.htm
http://www.funjournal.org/
http://people.csail.mit.edu/emma/
The 'future' of Women's History
Emma Patricia Brunskill is an MIT Presidential Scholar and a graduate student in computer science at MIT. As an undergraduate at the University of Washington 1, which she entered at the age of fifteen 2, she was named a Goldwater Scholar (1997), a Mary Gates Scholar (1999), and an Anderson Scholar. She graduated in June 2000 with a double degree in physics and computer engineering 5. Emma was also a runner-up for the Computing Research Association award for outstanding undergraduate female in 2000.
For her senior project in computer science at UW, she created a prototype of a system that could recognize images -- in this case, the gloved hand signs of someone communicating via American Sign Language -- and translate it into characters. 2 Brunskill is interested in studying artificial intelligence and wants her research to have "a social bent." 1
On December 9, 2000, it was announced that Emma had been chosen as a Rhodes Scholar, chosen from 950 applicants for that cycle and the first from UW in two decades. Rhodes scholarships, created in 1902 by the will of British philanthropist Cecil Rhodes, provide two or three years of study at Oxford University in England. Winners are named based on academic achievement, personal integrity, leadership and athletic ability. 2 Her chosen field at Oxford was neuroscience.
Her research experience includes summer work at CERN (European Center for Particle Physics) in 1999. That same summer she visited Paris for the first time and "adored it so much that the following summer I choose to take a French language course at the Sorbonne. There I spent a lot of time wandering the streets of Paris and having long conversations in small cafés." 1
Emma served as the University of Washington coordinator for Amnesty International. An avid rower at the University of Washington and at MIT, Emma looked forward to joining a boat again in Oxford. In her spare moments, she enjoys "reading fiction, dancing, and making sushi," 1 and enjoys listening to Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos and U2. 2 She returned to MIT to complete her Ph.D. after her two years at Oxford. 1 She also received a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship.
As part of her graduate career, she has co-written Building Peer-to-Peer Systems With Chord, a Distributed Lookup Service. Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS-VIII), 2001. -- Frank Dabek, Emma Brunskill, M. Frans Kaashoek, David Karger, Robert Morris, Ion Stoica, Hari Balakrishnan.
She's kept up her athletics as well, participating in the 2002-03 Reebok Cross [Country] Challenge, November 2, 2002, coming in with a 28:13, coming in number 50 of 66 in the Senior ['senior'?? - c.] Women class, listed as 'Emma Brunskill Oxford University'; 3 and in the 'Harpoon Brewery Oktoberfest Blues Run & BBQ Bash', in Somerville, Massachusettes, October 30, 2003, 137 of 500 mixed-gender participants listed, with a time of 24:41 4.
She attended the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, November 7-12, 2003 and enjoyed New Orleans when she wasn't in conferences. Emma is also currently a member of MIT's Committee on Foreign Scholarships conducts interviews September through November with applicants for the major international scholarships: Marshall, Rhodes, Fulbright, Fulbright-Hayes, Gates, Churchill, and DAAD awards.
Her sister, Amelia, is following right behind her, also having been made a Mary Gates Scholar and having entered the University of Washington in the same Early Entrance Program. Amelia is majoring in Psychology, but is also being quite the theatre maven.
"We gave them a lot of space. Both are very organized with their time. We never had to say, 'Do your homework,'" said their mother, Clare Brunskill, a first-grade teacher in the Edmonds School District.
Their father, Andrew Brunskill, a medical director for the Washington State Health Care Authority, also downplayed his role. "We're delighted and amazed by what they did," he said. "We try to support them and stay out of the way."1
Posted by: Emma Brunskill at February 19, 2004 03:49 PM:
I agree with the idea expressed in both papers that educational experiences involving projects and creating and designing can be very productive learning experiences. However, I think it is important to remember that there may be some ideas that are easier to learn in traditional ways. Re-discovery through projects of simple concepts, like color mixing, is an effective method of aquiring such concepts and is likely to mean more than simply route learning such ideas. Similarly, other projects like building houses out of blocks may allow kids to develop the intuition between structure and stability. But for more advanced concepts, such as those involved in robots and electronics for example, it is likely that the project process will initiate inquiries into matter that is then perhaps most efficiently learned through traditional methods. There is a tremendeous amount of knowledge already present in the fields of mathematics, physics, and chemistry to name just a few. It does not seem necessary nor efficient for people to rederive the principles of all these fields from scratch. Rather, it seems like project learning can interact with traditional learning: when a question arises during a project, consulting a textbook on electronics may be the most effective source to answer it.
I do feel like there are a number of basic concepts that it is beneficial for all people to have a basic understanding of. Cavallo's paper argues for education that involves the undertaking of deep prolonged projects rather than "rushing through a broad curriculum in a shallow manner." I think if a project-based approach is to be taken, it is important that the projects be diverse enough so that the learner ends up with a broad range of knowledge over a wide range of disciplines. Such a broad knowledge base facilitates the learner's ability to play a role in more of society, as well as allows them to make cross-connections between disciplines. However, I don't think there is a necessary parallel between long periods of time & specific curriculum and/vs short periods of time and a broad curriculum. Instead school periods could be arranged to promote students undertaking a number of different projects bridging different disciplines that could be pursued over a longer time scale than the typical 1 hour classes of current schools.
http://dtm.media.mit.edu/dtm/dtm04/blog/archives/000048.html
1 http://www.americanrhodes.org/newsletter2001/brunskill.html
2 http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/rhod11.shtml, rhod28.shtml
3 http://www.ukathletics.net/vsite/vcontent/page/custom/0,8510,
4854-133222-134530-21747-81581-custom-item,00.html
4 http://www.coolrunning.com/results/03/ma/Oct30_Harpoo_set1.shtml
5 http://www.artsci.washington.edu/newsletter/WinterSpring01/awards.htm
http://www.funjournal.org/
http://people.csail.mit.edu/emma/
