Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

About Serendip Studio

Welcome to Serendip Studio, a digital ecosystem for exploring. We're glad you stopped by, and hope that you will stay to collaborate with fellow travelers, who are asking questions that have no boundaries.  There are plenty of websites out there which will tell you what to think; Serendip instead aims at helping you to think for yourself, in the process formulating new questions and new directions for exploration. Nothing on Serendip is "authoritative," but there is lots here that you can learn from and contribute to. Need a few pointers to get started?

Currently, our focal areas of activity include dialogue-based learning, public teaching, and special projects in community-based digital publishing. Have an idea about a new project? Please contact us.

How Serendip Studio Fosters Communal Innovation: A Process-Oriented Approach

We explore boundary conditions of any content space we are working with, and innovations occur when those conditions change in a generative way. This is probably the most significant way in which "mixing" disciplines (among other "mixes") has the potential for radical change.

We don’t know for sure, before we experiment with a specific project, whether it will examine boundary conditions, or be generative. But we do think that some kinds of projects have greater potential probability than others. For example,
● if the intention of the participants is to create something new,
● if the participants are open to change and exploring new directions generally, and/or
● if the participants bring very different assumptions, organizations, or disciplines from each other and wish to discuss and work constructively with that diversity.

Approaching Web-Based Communication: A Note to Contributors

In the spirit of the Web's guiding principles of openness and neutrality, the conversation here on Serendip Studio is essentially public. It aims to enlarge people's access to information, multiple perspectives, and voices of inquiry (including their own). At the same time, participants in this conversation are always and must be free to make their own choices --not to post, not to post with their real name, to post privately, and also to consult with us or with their course instructors (in the case of courses housed here) in making these choices.

Serendip Studio Contributors

Alice Lesnick, a former member of Serendip Studio's steering group, is an educator, writer, and painter/poet interested in collaborative learning, kids and families, feminisms, and change via all of the above.  She is Term Professor of Education and Director of the Bryn Mawr/Haverford Education Program, where she was awarded the Rosalyn R. Schwartz Teaching Award in 2004. A faculty associate of the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College since 1993 and a former preschool, elementary, middle, and high school teacher, Alice works on social justice education, including via partnership with Titagya Schools, an early learning project in Northern Ghana and with Parkway West High School in Philadelphia. Her most recent publications include: (with Jody Cohen, in press...

Ann Dixon, BMC '83, is co-founder and chief technologist of Serendip and a member of Serendip Studio's steering group. An English major who later went to computer science grad school, she is interested in learning beyond and between the boundaries of space, time and academic disciplines. She welcomes all explorers to Serendip Studio.

Anne has been teaching at Bryn Mawr College since 1982; she is Term Professor of English, a long-time affiliate (and erstwhile director) of the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, and a more recent associate in Environmental Studies. During the 2011-2012 academic year, she received the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Change Master Fund award for her contributions to social betterment through scholarship. Her areas of research include emergent pedagogies and assessment practices, feminist theory and narrative traditions, revisionary work in the canon of American literatures, and the intersections between science and literature. She also has a long-standing commitment to various forms of digital dialogue.

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Ingrid taught for many years in the Biology Department at the University of Pennsylvania. Currently, she teaches K-12 teachers in a variety of professional development settings. Her teaching emphasizes actively engaging students in order to foster understanding of important biological concepts. She and her colleagues have developed multiple minds-on activities for teaching biology and scientific thinking to middle school and high school students, as well as students in college-level biology courses for non-majors. These activities include both hands-on activities (available at http://serendipstudio.org/sci_edu/waldron/) and analysis and discussion activities (available at...

As the Coordinator for Academic Technology initiatives at Bryn Mawr College, Jennifer serves as a liaison between the Provost’s Office and Information Services, and is responsible for helping faculty incorporate technology into their teaching and research in meaningful ways.  In this capacity she also coordinates a multi-institutional study of Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts, initially funded by a Next Generation Learning Challenges Wave I grant. Jennifer began developing her technological skills and the ability to teach them to others while working as technical writer and (2-D) graphic designer in the computer game industry.  She co-founded a writing and design services company specializing in this area, called Incan Monkey God Studios, in Austin, Texas in 1997....

Jody Cohen has been teaching and learning at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges since 1998.  A Term Professor of Education, she teaches courses in areas such as urban education, multicultural education, and education for ecological literacy.  Jody is highly engaged with interdisciplinary teaching and learning as part of the 360 program at Bryn Mawr College, which features clusters of courses linked around shared themes or questions.  This semester she is teaching a course on schools and prisons as part of the 360 called “Women in Walled Communities.”  Her current research interests include interdisciplinary teaching and learning, education and ecology, and the role of the unconscious in teaching and learning for social justice.  Jody is a recent and appreciative...

Julia has been a Serendipian (contributor) since the summer of 2008.  As a Bryn Mawr College K-12 Summer Science Institute 2008 intern, she was active in conversations about science, education, and life here.  She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 2010 with a double major in Biology and Chemistry.  Serendip has continued to be an important place for her to think through interesting problems, the broader, the stranger, the better.  She enjoyed being a member of the Slippery Brain Sodality (a Serendip book club).  This summer, she attended the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. The creation of the Writers' Studio has helped satisfy her desire for workshop and publication.  She is planning to start working on an MFA next fall.  Julia fully expects...

Laura is a Bryn Mawr alum and longtime Serendipian. She began working on Serendip projects as a part of the Serendip/SciSoc Group of 2006, creating models using Netlogo. Her interests also lead her to several projects on Serendip relating to brain & behavior and Mental Health. Laura graduated in 2008 as a biology major to begin working in neuroscience, although she can still be found playing, exploring, and creating on Serendip.

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Olivia has been the Outreach and Information Technology Librarian at Bryn Mawr College since 2011.  Her background is in cognitive psychology and anthropology, via undergraduate work at the University of Chicago and graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University.  She serves as the main social science and data librarian at Bryn Mawr supporting the faculty and students of all social science departments as well as the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research.  Her additional interests in social media and educational technology motivate her work with faculty to develop innovative approaches to pedagogy and classroom engagement, such as Serendip Studio.

Riki graduated from Bryn Mawr in 2011 with a degree in biology. She has been playing on Serendip since her first week of studying at the institution. Riki began working on Serendip in January 2008, moving older posts to the newer version of the site. In 2011, she updated the Comparative Neuroanatomy and Intelligence Exhibit to give it a more modern feel (designing Web 2.0 buttons was very exciting for her). 

Currently Riki indulges her insomnia with nightshift work as a home care associate for the elderly. She hopes to be involved in future Serendip projects. 

Shannon is currently in her senior year as a McBride Scholar at Bryn Mawr College.  She is working toward her Bachelors degree in English Literature with a concentration in Gender and Sexuality.  Prior to transferring to Bryn Mawr, she studied at the Community College of Philadelphia and participated in their Liberal Arts Honors Curriculum, which is designed prepare students for the transition to four year colleges.  Shannon's involvement in such programs led her to run for Advocacy Mistress of the McBride Scholars program at BMC so she could help other students like herself with the sometimes daunting transition from a community college or the workplace to Bryn Mawr.  Her interests include graphic narrative, film, American Popular Culture, and social justice....