A University of Mary Washington building created to embrace the future is flashing back to its past.
A new Hurley Convergence Center (HCC) exhibit – “A Decade of Digital Convergence” – celebrates the first 10 years of a space meant to tap into emerging technology, bring a campus together and break ground.
“The Convergence Center introduced the UMW community to a wide array of technologies and opportunities that simply hadn’t existed before and in a format that didn’t exist at other schools at the time,” Chief of Staff and Vice President of Strategy Jeffrey McClurken said during the exhibit’s opening reception last month. Then special assistant to the provost for teaching, technology and innovation, McClurken served on the building’s planning committee and oversaw its opening.
Architectural renderings, video collections, before-and-after photos and more tell the story of the HCC’s quest to make state-of-the-art technologies and media tools accessible to the campus community, while fueling a sense of connection, collaboration and creativity. Since the center first opened in August 2014, tens of thousands of students have pushed through its transparent front doors in search of essentials – cameras and tripods, microphones and audio recorders – they need for their projects, and the training it takes to bring them to life.
“I’ll get emails every day from somebody with an idea of something they want to do,” Cartland Berge, director of the HCC’s Digital Knowledge Center (DKC), said on a 2016 video called “Creating a Buzz.” It’s one of several installations in the exhibit, on view in the Digital Gallery through the end of the year. “My job is to see … how we can use the equipment and facilities in the building to make what they’re thinking of into a reality.” Read more.