THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, November 21, 1995 TAG: 9511210265
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Charlise Lyles
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Lucinda Roy is just what I needed. A technology expert with a poet's brain. She soothes some of my anxiety over whether technology will make us and our children more humane or less.
One minute Roy talks technology - web sites and megabytes - and the next her mellifluous voice, with a bit of a British accent, recites her ode to ``The Archangel Michael''. . . Jordan that is:
``He is a man until the leap
when,
in his arc to a net lynched to a rim of steel,
he posits flight as a matter of fact...''
Then the talk returns to the Internet and e-mail.
Roy visited Virginia Wesleyan College last week, coming from Virginia Tech, where she is an associate dean specializing in technology and diversity.
Her own path is as amazing as a route on the information superhighway. Of British and Jamaican parentage, she came to Tech from England by way of Sierra Leone, West Africa and Arkansas, where she received a graduate degree in poetry.
At Tech's ``Cyberschool,'' Roy is a wizard whipping up new projects that encourage professors to design on-line courses. Recently, a $200,000 private grant boosted those efforts.
As a literature professor, Roy pens poetry. Lovely poetry. Exquisite, prize-winning poetry. Her second book, ``The Humming Birds,'' received the 1994 Eighth Mountain award.
Talk about a Renaissance woman.
Bright-eyed and petite, she's graced with an elegant energy that shouts ever so eloquently, ``Come on, future. I'm ready for ya.''
That was good for the folks at Virginia Wesleyan. They're eager to use technology to teach literature, history, philosophy and other humanities courses.
Last summer, Roy taught a civil rights course in class and on-line. She saw clear advantages.
``Something excited me about the link between this part of history and the use of technology,'' Roy told about 500 Wesleyan students and faculty.
``As a child, I had sat in many classes and been appalled by racism. I had been forced to speak when the teacher wanted me to do so. I had been a lone voice of color in a class of white students. I knew how precious silence could be, how important it was to have time to collect your thoughts before the emotion overcame you.
``Couldn't technology provide those necessary pauses - those places where students could dwell on what they had seen and heard in the privacy of their own computer screens? They could then speak when they were ready to speak.''
E-mail allowed class discussion to continue long after the bell rang, Roy said. And ``Listserv'' let teachers contact students at any time, bringing student and teacher closer.
Roy knows that the computer and other forces are changing a way of life. The five-day workweek, job security and retirement could become relics of a civilization past.
``We are preparing students as much for the jobs they will take as we are for what they will do when their jobs evaporate, or their parents die, or the economy takes an unheralded downswing, or their supervisor invites them to work abroad,'' she said.
Talk about a Renaissance woman. In this time of change, Roy is the kind of human being that we want our daughters and sons to become. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by VICKI CRONIS, The Virginian-Pilot
``We are preparing students as much for the jobs they will take as
we are for what they will do when their jobs evaporate,'' says
Lucinda Roy, an associate dean at Virginia Tech who specializes in
technology and diversity.
by CNB