Furman University's Center for Collaborative Learning and Communication (CCLC) is a facility filled with cutting-edge technology and software. Highly trained student instructors offer one-on-one instruction on the use of the facility, as well as writing consultations. The CCLC is not a drop-off service, but an opportunity to gain assistance, or step-by-step instructions, on a new skill, whether it is web design, Power Point, video capture and editing, or a more graceful prose style. While CCLC consultants help in the progression of projects, they also act as a listening board for individuals who can benefit from a discussion of their work.

Furman's CCLC Director Jane Love, with the assistance of a grant recently awarded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is taking the facility to the next phase, and in a new direction.

"When I took this position, my vision for the CCLC focused on the 'collaboration' part of its name: of course, our student consultants are trained to work collaboratively with students, faculty, and staff, but I had a feeling that collaboration could play a much broader role in the mission of the CCLC. Since then, after getting to know Furman better, I feel even more strongly the importance of academic collaboration for both the liberal arts and for a sense of intellectual community. The project made possible by this planning grant from Mellon will let us begin to explore a new dimension of collaboration here at Furman."

Love and Kevin Treu, a Furman computer science professor, are developing a multidisciplinary collaborative teaching and technology program to consist of a user-input, web-based, searchable database created through the assistance of information provided by Furman professors. Technology, however, is just one component of the project:  also planned are a series of workshops designed to stimulate and facilitate small-scale, short-term, course-to-course collaborative teaching (or ad hoc collaborative teaching, as Love calls it). While this system is in its planning stages on a local or institutional level, plans are to use open standards in development of the tool so that it will be available to other universities on a consortium level.

Love says, "From my perspective here in the CCLC, academics at Furman are a matrix of crisscrossing and intersecting themes, topics, questions, and issues, but there's currently no way for faculty to get a 'picture' of these webs of interest and leverage them through their teaching. We're hoping to use technology to empower faculty by giving them a window onto Furman's intellectual life."

Over the 12 months of the planning grant, the workshops will be used to populate a prototype database to be used primarily for proof-of-concept. The primary goal for this prototype tool will be to record the outcomes of the workshops and to help faculty identify and solicit new opportunities for collaboration, but it will also serve as the point of departure for designing a more sophisticated tool that takes advantage of current data mining techniques, such as latent semantic indexing and topic mapping.

According to Treu, "This project provides a wonderful opportunity to do something that we have talked about and (sometimes) struggled with since the last institutional self study -- use cutting-edge technology to support our teaching in a significant, meaningful way.  It will also provide the student members of our project team with the opportunity to be engaged in what we expect to be -- an ongoing research program."

Love was appointed as director of the CCLC in August of 2001 after James Inman, the first director, moved to the University of South Florida.  Love's background is in literary theory and philosophy, with experience in women's studies and teaching with technology. Originally from the Volunteer State of Tennessee, Love came to Furman by way of the University of Florida, and says, "I don't think I'll ever leave."

Treu has played key roles in the implementation of previous Mellon grants -- as co-instructor of summer workshops on enhancing learning through technology, and as the primary instructor of summer workshops for the Furman/Wofford project. His professional interests are in web programming technologies, database management systems, and technology in teaching. He co-designed and created the first Furman web site in 1994, and served as the director of the web site until 1999, largely on a volunteer basis. Treu joined the Department of Computer Science at Furman in 1992 after completing his graduate work at the University of Virginia.

The new CCLC reaches far beyond the scope of its planned beginning and matches perfectly with the University's recently adopted strategic initiative to elicit and support innovative and creative teaching methods. Given the vision of its director and the quality staff she has available at Furman, Love has the components required to make the CCLC a haven for students, faculty, and staff seeking a place to explore the intellectual dimensions of collaboration and new technologies.