The Current | Vol. 31 Issue 24

March 2, 2021 | nsucurrent.nova.edu 3 News News Briefs Get the scoop on events happening on campus and around campus The World of Anna Sui exhibit is now open at NSU Art Museum The World of Anna Sui exhibit is open at the NSU Fort Lauderdale Art Museum. The exhibit features the work of one of New York’s most beloved and accomplished designers and will be on display until Oct. 3. Tickets for timed entry are required due to COVID-19, but can be purchased at this link . The exhibition was organized by The Fashion and Textile Museum, London and is sponsored by The DouglasA. Hirsch and Holly S. Andersen Family Foundation in honor of Jane B. Holzer. For more information, call 954-262-0249. JCPenney Suit Up event From March 5-7, NSU will host a collaborative Online Suit Up Shop with JCPenney. The event will take place on www.jcpenney.com/m/suit-up and is open to NSU students, staff and alumni. Attendees will be able to find all of the items they need to dress for success with a 30% discount code. Students are encouraged to come out and take advantage of the discounts and deals before Recruit-a-Shark Week at the end of March. Virtual financial literacy, entrepreneur and workforce education workshops On March 3, 10 and 17, the NSUAlvin Sherman Library will sponsor free virtual financial literacy, entrepreneur and workforce education workshops. The events are sponsored by the Truist Foundation and are designedtoinspireandeducateindividualsaboutpersonal and professional success. The workshops will focus on topics including building your nest egg for retirement, effective presentation skills and more. Registration for the event is required and can be found at this link. March Madness bracket challenge Students who are interested in submitting a bracket for the March Madness bracket challenge can fill out a bracket at www.imleagues.com. The student whohastheleastincorrectpickswillwinanintramural sports championship shirt. Sign ups for the Intramural Sports March Madness Bracket Challenge will close on March 17 at noon. capacity due to COVID-19 guidelines. Safety protocols will be strongly enforced. BSU encourages students to arrive on time. Peer Leader Applications Due March 5 The Office of Experiential Education and Learning is hiring Peer Leaders for fall 2021. Applications are due by March 5. Students who are interested in helping new students make successful transitions to college through assisting a UNIV 1000 course can apply to be peer leaders for the fall 2021 semester. Peer Leaders will provide freshmen students with a unique and enhanced classroom experience to ensure they are prepared for success their first semester through graduation. For more information visit: https://tinyurl.com/NSUPeerLeaderProgram. Understanding the NSU Spaces app The newly introduced NSU Spaces app allows students to find rooms that are available for advanced booking or walk-ins. The rooms are located in various on-campus locations that will allow students to meet up, study and collaborate. The app is available on any smartphone app store to download for free. When downloading the app, the first thing the app asks the user to do is put in their NSU ID and password. The user will then have access to find and book spaces across every NSU campus. The app has four tabs: explore, favorites, bookings and settings. The explore tab allows users to choose which NSU campus they would like to find a space for. When the user selects the campus, it will immediately bring them to a screen that shows the available rooms. On each available space, it will either say “walk-in” or “bookable.” The “walk-in” feature means that users can utilize the room on a first-come-first-serve basis. However, if it says “bookable,” then users can pick an available date and time to reserve the room. This page will show you the room information, such as the max capacity and room hours for each day of the week. To book a room, the user would choose the date and time desired and then tap “select room.” Under the “favorites” tab, the spaces that the user selects will be organized for easier access and booking. The “bookings” tab will show the user the spaces that they have booked in the past. The “settings” tab allows the user to make changes to the account and give feedback to the creators of the app. James Drew, NSU’s director of innovation and information architecture, had a big hand in establishing the app. “It’s a very fancy way of saying that I handle the design and development [of the app], ” said Drew, referring to his title. Before designing the app Drew explained that he realized that students needed a way to find and book these spaces. “We developed NSU Spaces specifically for students to help them find and book a space that specifically focused on study rooms and collaboration. Students face the problem of ‘Well, I have a group, we have to study and we have to practice for a presentation . . . If everybody is talking over us, it’s not going to work, right?’ That’s why we wanted to craft this experience [to assist students who have these issues],” said Drew. Due to the pandemic, NSU is using the BlendFlexmodel for classes as of now. However, NSU Spaces is still here for people who want to study in a room on campus while implementing social distancing. “I still think that this app is good to have regardless of the situation that we are all in. At least people know what rooms are out there and they can decide whether or not they’d want to use it. It’s always an option,” said Drew. Drew also emphasized the importance of students leaving feedback on the app. “Our biggest thing is how do we make it better. That’s definitely something that we want to improve consistently. Any feedback that we can get on the app is key,” said Drew. Students are able to give feedback on the app by going into settings on the app and submitting their feedback there. The NSU Spaces app is currently available for free on the app store and Google Play store across all mobile smartphones under the name NSU Spaces. NSU Center for the Humanities hosts Story Booth: Carnival If you could wear a mask and be anyone or anything, who or what would you be?What would you do? Story Booth: Carnival allows students to answer just that. The event is a new take on the Story Booth series hosted by NSU’s Center for the Humanities. The goal is to encourage community collaboration and collect stories produced by the NSU community. The Story Booth series was originally conceptualized by the former humanities center director and interim dean of the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences Andrea Shaw Nevins and has taken on a variety of forms in the past few years. Like most experiences, it has adapted to a virtual setting due to the pandemic. This year, Story Booth: Carnival is a Zoom portal open 24/7 where students are encouraged to join and share their stories. The link begins recording as soon as you join and invites students to respond to the prompt, share about themselves and their culture and experiences or just have fun. Aileen Miyuki Farrar, assistant professor and interim associate chair of the department of humanities and politics, an assistant professor of literature and the director of NSU’s Center for the Humanities explained that this year’s event encourages students to explore the spirit of carnival. “With this [event], we are getting to hear a much more authentic and raw response to the prompt. We have a designated prompt, which is ‘If you could wear a mask and be anyone or anything, who or what would you be? What would you do?’ but we have also invited people to go in and just have fun. The spirit of carnival is to have fun and liberate yourself, to be expressive, to be subversive even. We invite people to go on and just express themselves,” she said. The Zoom link for the event is now open and will close on March 16. After the link has closed, the recording for this year’s Story Booth event will be compiled into a video and posted on the Story Booth website where anyone can access all past Story Booth compilations. Farrar expressed her hope that Story Booth can be a platform where students can let their voices be heard. “It feels like people just need to have a chance to let go… Because we don’t even have a spring break, something like this might give us the chance to express ourselves at a time that we might not be able to otherwise… I hope people recognize their voice is getting to be heard and there is a community of concerns and also unique differences that we can celebrate. This is something that I really hope students can get involved in so they can feel more visible and can also appreciate each other,” she said. While this semester’s Story Booth event is hosted in collaboration with the department of humanities and politics, the Center for the Humanities encourages future collaborations with student clubs and organizations. They are welcomed to propose prompts they wanna to see answered and to join in the efforts to collect stories. For more information about Story Booth: Carnival students can reach out to humanities@ nova.edu . Students can access the Zoom link for the event here. By: Emma Heineman Features Editor By: Jaden Wilson Contributing Writer