Notre Dame College EDC AR APK

Notre Dame College will officially dedicate its campus Enterprise Development Center (EDC @ NDC) with a special celebration of corporate-community partnerships—highlighted by an innovative technology presentation created by game design students at the College.

The EDC @ NDC Spring Showcase will feature a virtual reality demonstration by the Notre Dame game design student collaborative class on Monday, April 16, at the newly renovated center space in the Connelly Center on the College campus. At the invitation-only event, the graduating seniors will premiere their capstone project, an original 360-degree virtual experience of a real life service project for Holocaust awareness that resides a state away.

As an initial project, Notre Dame students earning a minor in game design under the leadership of Elizabeth Keegan, M.F.A., assistant professor of game design and interactive technology at the College, have developed an interactive component for the community art piece, “Gary and Nancy Tuckfelt Keeping Tabs: A Holocaust Sculpture,” at Community Day School (CDS) in Pittsburgh. Keeping Tabs is a memorial in the shape of the Star of David, constructed of glass blocks filled with aluminum “pop tabs” collected and counted by CDS students. Each tab represents a human life lost during the Holocaust. The sculpture was dedicated at the school in 2013.

In addition to collaborating on creative efforts involving CDS prekindergarten through eighth-grade students, the College game design program has evolved the partnership to include startup tech companies 360 Alley and IRL Labs and a Notre Dame alumnus working at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Entrepreneur Martin Tarr, CEO of the augmented reality firm 360 Alley in Cleveland, and Aparna Wilder, COO and co-founder of IRL Labs in Pittsburgh, which builds storytelling tools from mobile and web technologies, are both expected to attend the EDC @ NDC Spring Showcase, as is Notre Dame alumnus John Balash, educational network coordinator at the Entertainment Technology Center.

Balash graduated from Notre Dame in 2005 with a dual degree in fine arts and graphic design and with a post-graduate educator license.

Tarr is an information technology professional whose original tech company, which he built across North America and Europe, was successfully sold to EMC/Dell Technologies.

Wilder leads IRL Labs outreach and education programs and is responsible for facilitating new partnerships, research projects and workshops.

In creating the game design presentation, and connecting with the partners for the project it explores, the Notre Dame students have gained not only course credit but also career experience in new enterprise areas while networking with business and nonprofit organizations. The EDC @ NDC was created to provide interdisciplinary academic and experiential learning opportunities for students while supporting startups in Northeast Ohio and emerging industries in the region.

In preparation for the EDC @ NDC Spring Showcase event, members of the campus and extended community are encouraged to donate aluminum can “pop tabs” to help continue to raise awareness for the Holocaust and to support the College’s game design program senior student collaborative.

Details on the project, which will be unveiled at the event, are forthcoming. Tabs can be dropped off in the Administration Building on the College campus.