November 1, 2023 • 49 mins
Derrick Tate wanted to start his own car company, but he helped start several universities instead. He shares with President Johnson his experience teaching in Texas and China before joining Sattler College. They also discuss the role of design, engineering, and computer science in the church.
Our conversation takes a deep dive into the world of cross-disciplinary computer science capstone projects at Sattler College. We uncover the vibrant, collaborative atmosphere that enables students to create and innovate. We discuss the structure of these projects and the innovative applications that students are developing. From faith-based coding to the intersection of biblical languages and computer science, these projects exemplify the potent synergy of faith and tech.
In the final segment, we explore how Christian principles can influence and drive technology. We discuss the potential of Christian applications in the tech world, how traditional audiences can be engaged with computer science and existing products that have made a meaningful difference in people's lives. If you ever wondered about the crossroads of faith and technology, this conversation promises intriguing insights into how Christian principles can shape technological development for human flourishing.
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Episode Transcript
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Zack Johnson (00:04):
Good morning.
It is October 20th in themorning and I'm here with Dr
Tate.
Thanks for joining me, dr Tate,right now.
I'm going to kick off byreading your bio and then we'll
just have a good conversation.
How does that sound?
Sounds great, all right.
So Professor Derek Tate is theProfessor of Computer Science
and Engineering at SattlerCollege.
(00:24):
He received a BSME degree fromRice University and his SM and
PHE degrees in mechanicalengineering are from MIT and the
areas of manufacturing anddesign.
I'm going to pause.
Can you tell us what BSME?
What is that?
Dr. Derrick Tate (00:40):
That's Bachelor of Science in
Mechanical Engineering.
Good.
Zack Johnson (00:42):
And then SM, master of Science, and then I
think PHG is familiar in IF.
Prior to joining SattlerCollege he was Senior Associate
Professor at okay, okay, onemore time.
Dr. Derrick Tate (00:56):
Xi'an Jiao Tong Liverpool.
Zack Johnson (00:59):
University and founding head of the Department
of Industrial Design.
Dr Tate has also held positionsas Assistant Professor in the
Department of MechanicalEngineering at Texas Tech
University and AssociateProfessor of Beijing.
One more time.
Dr. Derrick Tate (01:13):
Beijing, jiao Tong.
Zack Johnson (01:14):
University.
Yeah, thanks for helping withthe pronunciation there.
Professor Tate's industrialexperience includes working as a
manager of applicationsengineering at Axiomatic Design
Software Inc.
A Boston-based startup company.
And then I'm going to read thisnext part too.
That's fine.
Do you want to add or subtractanything from that initial bio
(01:35):
there?
Dr. Derrick Tate (01:35):
No, no, that's fine.
Zack Johnson (01:36):
Okay.
Dr. Derrick Tate (01:37):
We may come up again some of it.
Zack Johnson (01:39):
Yeah, hopefully we can hone in on it.
Professor Tate has beeninvolved with Christian groups
in China and America.
He aims to impact society bybringing design thinking to
areas of strategic importanceand to integrate and
understanding of humanflourishing into design of new
products and services.
His calling is to make spacefor Christians in academia, to
(02:00):
bring Christian ideas intoacademic discourse and to mentor
a new generation of Christianresearchers and professionals.
Thanks so much for being herewith me.
Dr. Derrick Tate (02:09):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Zack Johnson (02:11):
I thought we could just start by.
I know that bio is verycondensed in academic and nature
.
Would you mind just sharing alittle bit more about your life
story, about where you were bornand how you got to where you
are now, so we can understandyour trajectory and chronology
there a little bit?
Dr. Derrick Tate (02:33):
I mean, my career trajectory has been, I
guess, a little bit unusual inthe sense that, as you can tell
from the bio, I've been cut upall over the place
geographically.
I guess growing up is a littlebit like that as well.
So, yeah, grew up in the South,went to college in Houston and
came to Boston for grad schooland then left Boston in 2001,
(02:58):
went to Colorado, beijing,lubbock, then back to China and
Suzhou and then here, so I cameback to Boston in 2019.
That's right, I've been gonefor about 18 years and then I've
kind of moved around in termsof discipline, in terms of what
I've been teaching, because Ishifted from mechanical
engineering to industrial designand then now I'm doing computer
(03:20):
science.
But there are, I guess, somethemes and connections in there
that kind of explain how thathappened.
In terms of the program I wasdoing at Texas Tech, for example
, was a master's and PhD oftransdisciplinary design process
and systems.
So I had a lot of students thathad backgrounds in software
(03:40):
engineering and as well as otherengineering disciplines, and so
then I ended up with a bunch ofpublications that were related
to artificial intelligence anddata mining and natural language
processing and things like that, as well as my experience of
working for the software companypreviously.
So when you look at my CV orbio, it's cut all over the place
(04:01):
.
But the themes that tie ittogether one, I guess, is this
emphasis on beingcross-disciplinary.
The other would be doing thingsrelated to entrepreneurship,
whether it's the startupinstitutions I've been working
for or trying to connectentrepreneurs with the
university and design.
And then the other would bethis focus on kind of design
(04:26):
thinking and applying that togeneral problems in society.
Zack Johnson (04:31):
Right, yeah, thanks for explaining that.
Let's hone in on that startupword because, as I understand,
you've worked at multiplestartup universities.
Dr. Derrick Tate (04:43):
And.
Zack Johnson (04:43):
I'd love to hear you talk about your experience
and your thinking around startupuniversities.
Dr. Derrick Tate (04:49):
Right.
So I guess the reason I wentinto engineering in the first
place when I was in high schoolmy goal was to create a car
company, right, right.
So I wanted to be somebody likeJohn DeLorean or Preston Tucker
, because I had an interest incars and restoring old cars and
(05:09):
things like that.
And so then I studiedmechanical engineering at Rice
as an undergrad and then when Igraduated I realized well, I
don't really know anymore aboutstarting a car company that when
I started.
And so I continued on to gradschool and did stuff in design
and manufacturing.
But after graduating I workedfor a startup company that did
(05:33):
software related to the designtheory that I studied for my PhD
.
So I was with my advisor andsome other people and so that
was Axiomag Design Software.
And then after that I went towork for some folks who were
trying to start a university inBeijing and we had a Chinese
partner school, capitalUniversity of Economics and
(05:54):
Business, and we had a USpartner school which was Indiana
Wesley, and so we were going tooperate, I guess, as a branch
campus of Indiana Wesley, andthe name of the institution was
Jingmei University Jing fromBeijing and then May from
Mayville, which is America, andso we got a license to organize
the institution.
And we got a license to operatethe institution and I was
(06:19):
working as special academicassistant to the president, you
know, working on accreditation,curriculum and things like that.
Unfortunately, the gentlemanthat had the vision for that,
guy named Dan Harrison, gotbrain cancer and passed away, so
that did not end up working out, and so I ended up going to
(06:41):
Beijing and teaching at aregular Chinese university,
which you mentioned, the biosBeijing Jiao Tong University.
So I was there for two yearsand so that's you know, I guess,
a startup company startupuniversity.
And then the second one wassecond startup university was
the Xiang Jiao Tong University.
So that started in 2006 inSuzhou.
(07:04):
I joined the institution in 2013.
And so I was the founding headof the Department for Industrial
Design and we grew from 26students to more than 300
students in the department,encompassing, I guess, bachelors
, masters and PhD students,mostly undergrad, some grad
students, right, and theinstitution grew from, I think,
(07:27):
an initial number and I neversaw like officially as either
147 or 153 students the firstyear and by the time I left, in
2019, we had a quota from theChinese government for like
15,000 students, and so thatcounted both the students who
were on campus in Suzhou.
And the students had the optionto go to Liverpool for their
last two years of undergradstudies, which about low 40% of
(07:52):
students would go that's inGerman In Liverpool, in the UK,
in the UK, yeah.
And so anyway, it counted boththose students.
So we had like a large numberof students, which is quite
successful.
So it's kind of a goodinstitution for the Chinese
students because a lot of theirparents wanted the students to
(08:13):
get international experience,you know, until it's like, okay,
you can go to this, you knowuniversity, you have an
opportunity to study in aninternational environment and be
a global citizen.
But you could do the first twoyears in China so you didn't
have to go too far away fromhome.
Right, make sure you understoodthe language and then you could
go to Liverpool if you wanted.
And in my department, I guess,with the first group of
(08:35):
industrial design students, 75%went to Liverpool.
But by the time I left thestudents liked our program
better than what they were goingto do in Liverpool.
So it was probably perversewhere, you know, only the
quarter of the students would goto Liverpool for the last two
years, got it, and then all themasters and PhD students were
(08:56):
just on campus with us.
But the students got twodegrees.
So they got a degree from XATLU, which was accredited by the
Chinese Ministry of Education inJiangsu Province, and then they
got a Liverpool degree throughLiverpool's accreditation.
Zack Johnson (09:12):
So I guess my next question is how does that
translate over here to Bostonand why another sort of another
startup university versus a moreestablished university?
What are some of the?
Dr. Derrick Tate (09:26):
lines of thinking there.
I mean my whole sort ofinterest is in, I guess, kind of
a startup environment and kindof creating new things.
So it kind of fits with myinterest there and I guess when
I heard about Sattler andSattler's mission it seemed like
a good fit for things I wasinterested in doing.
(09:48):
I guess my wife and I and ourfamily were looking to come back
to the States and so Boston wasone of the two areas that we
were considering in terms oflike, if we could rank wherever
we could go in the US, boston orprobably Houston would be kind
of the first choice is.
Of course I was looking allover.
Zack Johnson (10:08):
And you mentioned a few times this idea of
cross-disciplinary approach.
Graham Weber (10:14):
And.
Zack Johnson (10:15):
I'd love to hear you think about that in your
current role with.
You're the head of the computerscience major here and we sort
of do have a cross-disciplinarymind of thinking about things.
But in particular computerscience and Christianity those
two terms sometimes that peopleassociate them and sometimes
(10:36):
people don't associate them.
So I'm curious how you thinkabout that.
Dr. Derrick Tate (10:40):
Yeah, I mean I guess it's one benefit of being
at a startup institution thatit's pretty small and you kind
of know everybody and it's kindof a tight-knit community.
So you have, I guess, a lotmore informal interaction and
it's a lot easier to build someof those cross-disciplinary
connections.
But I think if you look at theCS students in the students in
(11:00):
computer science at Sattler andkind of the things they're doing
for their capstone projects,they are all pretty much
interested in cross-disciplinarytopics.
And I mean you can kind of lookat the variety chatbot for
apologetics, a app for buildingcommunity in the city, how to
(11:28):
facilitate interaction duringthe day and interacting with
communities and stuff in anurban context, and then doing a
literacy app for, or build itlike an app for building sort of
competent literacy in Hebrew,and then last year.
Zack Johnson (11:52):
Like All of these are capstones that have happened
here at Sattler.
Dr. Derrick Tate (11:57):
That was like the first group of students.
And then last year we had agirl that did a interface for a
microfinance app for missionsorganization and then a using
word embeddings for semanticsearch of ancient Greek texts.
So, as I said, they're all kindof cross-disciplinary and kind
(12:19):
of integrating the students'interest in the church community
, their faith, biblicallanguages with something to do
with the CS.
I mean, I had opportunities tocollaborate or communicate with
faculty and business.
In principle you can docollaboration with biology.
(12:40):
We haven't had students thatdid that yet, but that's
certainly an area that wouldwork as well.
So pretty much all of the otherprograms here would be
something that you could workinto a computer science capstone
in one way or another.
Stan.
Zack Johnson (12:53):
Mallow.
And then just for people thatdon't know what is a capstone
and why is it, I know that wordmeans different things to
different people.
My capstone was a very smallpart of my college experience
and I think it's a little bitdifferent, marshall.
Dr. Derrick Tate (13:12):
T J C.
How small Stan Mallow.
Zack Johnson (13:13):
Three credits Marshall T, j, c.
Okay, stan Mallow.
So it's three credits and justbasically a class.
That and then.
And so it's sort of a differentexperience here and maybe you
can talk about how we leveragethat.
Marshall T.
Dr. Derrick Tate (13:26):
J, c, right.
So yeah, I mean I've, I guess,got a lot of experience with
capstones kind of across thedifferent institutions that I've
been at Stan, mallow, right,marshall, t, J, c.
So typically in engineering,like where I was at Texas Tech,
engineering students have acapstone.
That's usually two semestersand like three credits per
(13:49):
semester Can't say like 100% allinstitutions, but that would be
kind of the typical iterationof it.
And so my role when I was atTexas Tech was to usually do the
first semester of that sequence, because we had like a thousand
students in mechanicalengineering so we were always
looking for kind of new projectsand we had like multiple
(14:12):
sections of that going on everysemester.
So I would do like typically Idon't know like one grad course
and one capstone course, like inthe fall, and then in the
spring I'd have like twocapstone sections, for example,
and so you'd have like 30students in there.
I had as many as like 40, whichis really too many, but we were
(14:33):
always like looking for topics.
But the first semester is likethe students are defining a
project that they're going towork on, and in engineering
typically it's a group project,and so the normal number would
be about four students.
You could have projects withmore, like five or six, but then
(14:55):
you end up with kind of thefree rider problem right if you
have that many.
And so where we were in Lubbockthere were not like a lot of
major industries in Lubbock.
Lubbock is a city of about200,000 people and you've got
some number of hospitals,healthcare, you've got the
university, there's a lot ofranching and farming around, so,
(15:17):
like cattle ranching, cottonfarming, there's some energy not
really oil production right inLubbock, but once you got
outside of town and then a lotof like wind farms and things
like that.
So we didn't have like a lot ofcompanies that you could talk
to.
It's okay, well, you know Fordor GM or somebody like that.
Okay, give us some projects forstudents to work on.
(15:38):
And so a lot of our productswould either come from like
other faculty which is where thecross-disciplinary thing comes
in or the students would come upwith topics themselves.
Or we had some likeentrepreneurs in kind of West
Texas generally that had topicsthat they were interested in.
(15:58):
And so for me it was good forthe students to have a project
to be, say, entrepreneurial,where it's like okay, here's
somebody, they've got an ideafor a project and they want to
develop that and make something,test it see, is that a
reasonable idea or not?
So it's kind of low risk butpossibly high reward, right?
(16:19):
So it's like, okay, thestudents aren't getting any
money for it, they're gettingcredit for their capstone,
they're getting periodsdeveloping it.
But they could start then withinteracting with users and
trying to understand what theneeds were.
So the way I would teach theclass, they would do a lot of
interact with users, doing likeinterviews or talking to people,
(16:39):
defining the needs, and thenthere's different tools that you
can learn in design, whichmaybe we can then to design kind
of dealing with brainstormingor resolving contradictions in
your requirements and thingslike that, and they can
basically take the whole processand start at the very beginning
and then develop into somethingthat they can physically
(16:59):
realize at the end, that you cantouch.
You've got something tangible.
So examples of projects thatstudents did were things like
from some of the entrepreneurs,like Papercreate.
There was a guy that had acompany for Redumix-Semit but he
wanted to do something that wasmore sustainable.
So could you take recycledpaper and make that into a block
(17:23):
that you could use in buildings, houses, whatever, and so that
was an interdisciplinary projectwhere you had mechanical
engineering students working,but then some students in civil
engineering or architecture orother disciplines could look at
that and say, okay, let's lookat this, not just on the
mechanical property of thisblock and the recipe although
(17:46):
you do that part but also like,how would this fit in kind of
the larger context?
Another example was Compressorof Block.
So there's a guy that had aextruder for making Compressor
of Block.
He had a little prototype thatmade a block that was I don't
know six inches by nine inchesand you could make a block.
And we ended up buildingequipment for that to make a
block that was like a foot byfoot and a half and you could
(18:07):
make it whatever link you wantedto, like 10 feet long, and so
you could use like a back or acrane or something.
But his goal was to take thatsustainable material and make it
competitive with timber frameconstruction so that you could
have like a crew of six peopleand you could build the walls
for a house in a day.
Basically so that it wouldn'tbe something that you'd only use
(18:30):
for rich people making, like inNew Mexico or someplace where
they've got a history of adobeconstruction or in dirt world
countries where the labor costsare much cheaper, but you could
actually make it, you know,competitive with timber frame
construction in the US and ifyou make the blocks without a
stabilizer then it's just soiland water and then at the end of
(18:52):
life you can just tear it offand put it back in the ground,
you know.
So that would be some you knowentrepreneurial type projects.
But sometimes the students wouldcome up with you know projects
themselves, like one student wasinterested in a sludge for a
fixed-gear bicycle.
So there's just something hewas interested in, you know.
Or another student wanted to doa camera jib that you could use
(19:16):
for video production.
But he wanted something thatyou could set up and take down
with one person and he couldthrow in the back of a pickup
truck and take it to some siteand use it for videoing things.
So anyway, you kind of have anidea and then you want to make
something with it and test andsee is this something reasonable
that you want to do?
So the students in Texas Techdid that over two semesters.
(19:38):
In China the capstone projectswere individual projects because
that was the requirement fromthe government in terms of how
they run the final year projects.
But the students had a lot ofother opportunities prior to
their senior year to work ingroups so they weren't like
missing the group interaction ontheir other projects, whereas
at Texas Tech, you know, thecapstone project was probably
(20:00):
the first time that they didanything in design really, and
so it was kind of a differentexperience that a lot of the
other engineering courses wereat SELP Lecture and solving
problems and things like that.
And so here at Sattler thecapstone sequence in computer
science is 12 credits, same asthe other programs, and it's
(20:21):
divided up so that in the junioryear the students work on
developing, kind of learning,some tools related to the
capstone and defining theproblem and coming up with a
proposal, and then they havethree credits in the fall of
their senior year and sixcredits in the spring, which is
more focused on likeimplementation, and so they're
able to kind of like percolateand kind of define their topic
(20:43):
and maybe even shift around some.
I mean, some of our studentskind of went off in quite
different directions than theyoriginally intended, and so it
gives them more time to developit and produce something that
they can after their portfolio.
Zack Johnson (20:56):
Yeah, anyways, kind of a long answer, but just
out of curiosity, graham, whatare you doing for your?
We're joined by a throughscience student.
What are you doing for yourcapstone?
Graham Weber (21:04):
I'm working with an organization called Faith
Tech that brings Christiantechnologists together in
community and they volunteer tobuild things, work with
technology to help the churchand the poor.
Zack Johnson (21:23):
That's awesome.
And how does so?
There's a lot of crossdiscipline there, because I'm
assuming a lot of that projectisn't I'm going to use the word
in the weeds and computerscience.
Is that Trigger Falls or likein the?
Tell me about it.
Graham Weber (21:43):
Yeah, there's.
It's very cross disciplinary,at least at this stage.
There's a lot of organizationalwork and also the organization
has a focus on theology aroundhow should the church think
about technology and what is adistinctly Christian way to
(22:03):
create and use technology?
Zack Johnson (22:06):
Do you have any comments on that capstone, and
particularly or Faith Tech, Ithink?
I think Faith we that groupthat they're meeting here.
They launched the Bostoninitiative and they're on campus
here.
Anything else about?
Dr. Derrick Tate (22:20):
I mean, so far I guess we've had two in-person
meetups here at Sattler.
One goes in January and onedoes end of September.
Next one will be this comingJanuary.
Okay, so we have a Boston, Iguess, lead team for organizing
the Faith Tech activities andtrying to build a community.
(22:41):
We had I don't know 35 people,I think, at both meetings and so
Graham and I are working onthese labs portion of the Faith
Tech activities.
So the way their groups work,they've got meetups which are
kind of networking dinnerspeaker, and then you've got
(23:03):
labs where people developprojects similar to the capstone
, you know, people working intechnology potentially, and then
they, as Graham indicated, havemaybe some other activities
looking at I don't know biggerpicture issues, ethics related
to technology and how thatrelates to theology and things
like that.
We've got some different ideason how we can, I guess, grow the
(23:27):
group here and Graham'scontributing to that.
Zack Johnson (23:30):
Great.
And then I wanted to sort offocus in on a word that comes
out in your bio and in the waythat you talk, and I'm guessing
most humans probably don't thinkabout the word design the same
way that you do.
So tell me about what designmean.
What are design tools and howdoes it relate to all of the, to
(23:53):
everything you're talking about?
Dr. Derrick Tate (23:56):
Yeah, so design, I would say, is a sort
of fundamental human activity,right, and people, like you said
, don't necessarily think of itthat way.
They think of, okay, well,design, you know, maybe
sketching a car or something,right, it's kind of an artistic
activity, but not necessarilysomething that everybody's doing
and that can be part of design,certainly, but like an example
(24:24):
that in general I go fromWorcester Polytechnic Institute
uses is like designing yourvacation, right, right.
So design, or like a honeymoonor something like that yeah
exactly so.
design is anytime you're mappingfrom what you want to do to how
you're going to do it.
Zack Johnson (24:42):
Sorry, I'm just like I'm the gram.
Look, gave me a funny look overthere.
Sorry, it's like.
Okay, got it.
Dr. Derrick Tate (24:48):
Yeah.
So you're going from what tohow.
Okay, and anything you couldrepresent as mapping from what
you want to do to how you'regoing to do it is a design
problem.
So, like I said, it could beyour vacation, it could be
honeymoon, but you know it couldbe a car, it could be a
computer, it could be whateveryou can define it, I guess more
(25:08):
formally as like developing andwe're selecting means to satisfy
objectives subject toconstraints.
So you've got three things thatright the objective, what you're
trying to do.
You've got your means, whichyou know could be like the car,
the sketch of the car and so on.
(25:28):
And then you've got constraints, which would be limits on what
would be an acceptable solution.
So the constraints wouldbasically say, okay, certain
things are, you know, outerbounds, it could be too
expensive, it could take toolong, has to fit with, like an
existing system.
Okay, you got to use, you knowthis port and you got to plug
into the existing you know USBport or something.
(25:49):
So that would limit yourchoices.
But anything you can representwith those different pieces
would be a design problem.
So very, very crossdisciplinary approach to it.
Zack Johnson (26:00):
And then the other word I want to focus on and
then I'll try to connect themhere is the word human, the term
human flourishing.
Graham actually mentioned it alittle bit here too, in Faith
Tech, that there's this ideathat there's poverty exists in
the world and there are thingsthat we can be doing towards
moving away from poverty,towards human flourishing across
(26:22):
the board here.
So tell me a little bit abouthuman flourishing and then I'll
try to connect design and humanflourishing together and maybe
looping computer science as away to think about doing that.
Dr. Derrick Tate (26:34):
Right.
So for design, I guess I wouldsay, in terms of I guess my
approach to design, some thingsto think about one.
It's like a specific discipline.
So, as you mentioned, there aredifferent tools that you can
use in the design process.
So they would be like a sort ofprocess that you would follow.
(26:54):
There's tools in XMAC design,which was the name of the
software company and kind ofwhat I did for my PhD.
Actually, the XMAC seems tohelp you identify or recognize
good design.
There's other tools, like thetheory of a better problem
solving, which comes from theformer Soviet Union.
That's like TRIZ.
(27:15):
It looks at how do you resolveconflict or contradiction and
the goal is to be more creative.
There's other tools as well.
So, anyway, design is kind oflike its own discipline that you
can apply to many differentareas.
The second would be that youfocus on users, which is where
(27:36):
the human flourishing comes in.
And I guess there's not.
I mean, I guess human wouldmaybe be the kind of broadest
term that you could think aboutthere.
When you think of, like users,of design, a piece of software
or something, it's like theperson that's actually typing in
things and actually making useof it and in, say, business, you
(27:59):
could maybe distinguish thatfrom the customer.
So somebody making thedecisions about which product or
which software to buy may notbe the person that's the end
user.
And you could do othercategorizations of users, like
lead users, which would bepeople that want to adopt a new
technology first because theystand to get some significant
(28:19):
benefit from adopting thattechnology.
But if you come up with adesign or product without really
thinking about the users orreally understanding their
context, then it's going to behard to have something that's
really successful.
So you really need to take intoaccount what the product needs
(28:43):
to do, which would be thefunctionality which would come
from the users in kind of thisbroadest sense, including other
stakeholders and the companymanufacturing it or whoever is
involved with it, as well askind of economics of it.
Is it something that is goingto be able to be sustainable
based on the economic aspect ofit and then also sort of
(29:04):
environment and sustainabilitykind of point of view.
So you really have to look atany design from kind of multiple
perspectives and if you don'tconsider all those, then you
could come up with something butnobody wants to use it, or you
come up with it but it's noteconomically feasible.
And you see that a lot withtechnology today, where
(29:26):
companies are losing money on,for example, like AI tools that
we're using online.
I mean, they see it as aninvestment.
Okay, people are using this andwe're getting data and we're
seeing what applications andstuff of it are, but it's not
something that can necessarilybe maintained at the level that
it currently is indefinitely,because each time somebody is
(29:49):
using it, potentially a companyis losing money.
So you got to think about kindof all these different aspects.
But, as I said, the goal is notjust thinking, well, can we do
something?
But is it something that wereally should be doing or want
to do and how does it contributeto, like you said, human
flourishing at the sort ofindividual level or in terms of
(30:11):
like interaction with otherpeople and kind of group level,
or even at like a societal level?
Zack Johnson (30:16):
And then help me think about a little bit.
There's a pool of likehypothetical or a real situation
.
There's a pool of young people,let's just say going into a
college and they're consideringwhat to invest themselves in.
Let's just even say thesatirical environment, pure
science, history, business,biology and usually there's a
(30:38):
problem that somebody caresabout a little bit more than
another problem, right, why isstudying computer science a
compelling way to think aboutaddressing a particular issue?
Let's even use like classicissues we're dealing with, let's
just say global poverty, ormaybe even now here we see, even
(31:02):
like clashes, political clashes, polarization there's a lot of
different arenas happening androlling out ahead of us.
Why is computer science acompelling field for Christians
to use to address problems?
It's kind of a big question,right.
Dr. Derrick Tate (31:22):
Yeah, I mean, I guess from my perspective it
would be sort of the ideal placeto situate yourself in being
able to address these problems.
I mean, at Sattler inparticular, there's like a large
core curriculum thateverybody's taking and so
Sattler has the cohort modelwhere the students come in
(31:43):
together, focus in on these corecourses, get kind of a body of
knowledge related to biblicallanguages, humanities, western
heritage and classics and so on.
But then what you have, thatfoundation, you can think, well,
how do I use that to dosomething and the sort of things
(32:05):
our students have been doing,both for their capstones and
then maybe after they leaveSattler, address some of these
areas that connect withtechnology and their other
interests, like their faith.
So, for example, like themicrofinance app that student
did last year, right, so thatwould be a way to actually
(32:27):
physically do something on theground related to dealing with
poverty and refugees and thingslike that, where you're
promoting some, I guess,educational materials related to
finances, saving money.
And then there was an app thatwas helping this soryization
(32:47):
implement their teaching andplans and stuff and they were in
, I forget it was like 15countries or something that they
have operations in.
So here you're doing somethingvery tangible.
I guess the other thing tothink about it you know it's
(33:07):
like you're graduating, you needto get a job.
Technology obviously issomething that everybody it
pervades everybody's life thesedays, and so by understanding
technology, it's going to helpwith some of these issues that
you mentioned, whether it'spolarization or political
(33:28):
conflict and so on, becausetechnology has a role to play in
those, and if you're going toreally address them, it's like
you have to think okay, well,how are people interacting with
social media, for example, andwhat effect do sort of patterns
that people have of theseinteractions relate into
(33:49):
increasing or decreasingpolarization?
Likewise with other types ofconflict, there's a role for
technology, and if people don't,I guess, consider the
technology aspect of it.
It's going to be hard to reallycome up with solutions to these
bigger questions.
So it's not just a technologyis going to be the only solution
, but it needs to be kind of apart of the broader conversation
(34:12):
.
So I remember there was like areport from the National
Association of Engineering,national Academy of Engineering.
They were talking aboutrecruiting more people into
engineering and I worked with aTSTEM center at Texas Tech that
did outreach to different highschools and kind of promoted
(34:32):
engineering and they pointed outthat the way that you recruit
people to be medical doctors isjust okay.
You want to help people, youwant to help them get well, you
got to treat them, cure theirillnesses, develop cures for
diseases and so on.
But the way people typicallythink about engineering, like
(34:53):
high school teachers, they'relike oh okay, well, you're good
at math, you're good at science,maybe you should think about
engineering.
And it's like, well, if you'regood at math or you're good at
science, maybe you should be amathematician or a scientist.
The goal for engineering is toactually create things that are
going to meet people's needs.
Until you're going to somehowimprove people's lives by the
(35:16):
things that you're creating,whether it's a person
individually or part of a largereffort in most cases, but the
goal is to help people's livesbe better and I think Sattler
provides a good context forwrestling with some of these
issues in terms of thinkingabout the impacts.
Okay, if I make this, what arethe social impacts and how can
(35:41):
we kind of learn from pasttechnologies and the way that
they've impacted people andsociety and how can we make
better decisions moving forwardwith technology?
Zack Johnson (35:53):
All right, Graham, is anything peaked to your
interest that you think weshould talk about?
If not, I got some more thingsto talk about.
Anything, Go for it, Go for it.
Yeah, thanks.
So the next sort of topic Iwant to explore.
It's very related.
When I look at technology andscience, there's a perception
(36:14):
that it's, I'll just say,secularizing at a very rapid
pace.
And even if you look at thelargest companies in the world
just say Google, Amazon, Apple,even through an Elon Musk
company, Tesla they appear to bevery secular and serving sort
(36:37):
of a secular purpose.
What is the role of theChristian?
Is the role of the Christian tocreate a new company that
stands for something different?
Is it to try to innovate withinthe existing sphere, or is it
maybe that's not the right wayto think about it?
How do we think about thesecularizing environment and
sort of holding the values whileleveraging technology?
Dr. Derrick Tate (37:02):
Right.
I mean I don't think there'slike one answer right.
I mean it's going to depend onthe individual student.
So I think, for example, thecapstone project and internships
gives the students a chance tokind of explore their options.
We have connections with anumber of companies and
(37:25):
organizations where studentshave done internships some in
the US, some internationally asthey're doing their bachelor's
degrees, and then students haveworked with different outside
organizations for theircapstones.
I mean, I guess once theygraduate and they start working,
probably in most cases they'llgo to work for an existing
(37:48):
company with it, small or large,but maybe eventually they'll
have some ideas where they couldcreate their own company.
So I mean I think there's roomfor any and all of that when
students are thinking about howthey want to apply their lives
and what they want to do withtheir degrees.
(38:08):
But I think something likeFATEC that Graham is involved
with I think that's one of thegoals of FATEC is to kind of
bring like-minded peopletogether and just think, okay,
maybe in my job I'm doingsomething pretty secular, but if
I work together with some otherChristians that I meet through
some networking event meetup, wecan develop something that has
(38:31):
maybe a more Christianapplication.
That would be something thatwould be good for the church and
do not like one answerobviously.
Zack Johnson (38:42):
And then just a sort of lay this to rest, if
somebody is particularlyinterested in the church, let's
even say biblical missions ordifferent ministries.
Okay, computer science is aviable way to fulfill those
callings Right, and I don'tthink the path is very well-worn
(39:04):
or well-walked of people usingthose two together.
So is there sort of anythingthat you'd like to see happening
to have more people walkingdown this road?
We think about it a lot, as howdo we drum up interest?
in computer science with atraditional audience that might
not have imagined that pathforward in their life.
Dr. Derrick Tate (39:29):
Well, I mean again, we've got students who
are working with differentChristian organizations for
their internships and projectsand after they graduate, I know
some of us are interested inmaybe living overseas and
continuing to do things for thechurch in other countries.
Zack Johnson (39:51):
So that's one thing.
I've heard that computerscience is like a door into
other countries that youwouldn't traditionally have with
a non-technical experience.
Is that accurate?
Dr. Derrick Tate (40:04):
Yeah, that would probably help in getting
visas and things like that.
I mean, there are likeChristian organizations that do
things that are very related tocomputer science, like Wycliffe
Bible Translators or somebodylike that.
They have a lot of software.
They develop, I guess,different fonts for just playing
Greek text and other things, aswell as like tools for doing
(40:28):
interviews of native speakersand transcribing that using
international phonetic, alphabetand other things.
They're very, very technical,but even just the skills that
being able to talk to users andtalk to people and kind of
understand the problems andthings like that could be used
(40:49):
in a context that's quitedifferent than developing the
pieces of software.
It would be kind of a generallife skill.
Some of these things related todesign.
And I do think there could be arole for making connections
with existing churches to kindof bring in some knowledge of
(41:12):
technology to these churches,where maybe congregations have
questions like, well, how do wedeal with technology?
Or we have folks in thecongregation have this or that
or the other question abouttechnology and its impact on the
church or people's lives andstuff, and I do think doing
activities to sort of promoteawareness and knowledge about
(41:36):
technology along existingcongregations would be something
that would be beneficial.
Zack Johnson (41:44):
Right.
Is there a product that youcurrently use, or maybe a
software or an app that is anexample of the power of
leveraging this?
I have a couple in the back ofmy mind, but that sort of have
made a meaningful difference inpeople's lives.
Is there anything come toimmediately to your mind?
Dr. Derrick Tate (42:03):
I mean, why do you share yours?
Zack Johnson (42:05):
So the Bible app is a really interesting one that
the you version put it on.
I think it's based out of thechurch.
I forget the big church downthere.
And then we have all ourstudents use logos or logos,
Bible software which leverages.
It's a pretty incredibletechnology that leverages
(42:27):
computer science software.
But then the user experience, Ithink, is one of the most
important things about that.
So it's really interesting howyou have to design it well so
that it actually serves thepurpose Right.
What other one Do you have?
Any that come to mind, Graham?
Graham Weber (42:44):
I use PrayerMate, which is an app to remind you to
pray and help you to organizeprayer lists, and things like
that.
Zack Johnson (42:52):
Prayermate, remember, is an app that helps
people memorize scripture.
We even tried one.
We actually tried one time todesign an app for our
discipleship program for habittracking Right.
Someday it might get launched.
It's sitting on a shelf, thecomputer shelf, so to speak, but
I think it's good to kind ofthink about hey, these are
(43:14):
examples of ways that this hashappened before.
Does anything come to your mind?
Dr. Derrick Tate (43:19):
I mean yeah, I guess I have something.
You've already mentioned someof them, yeah, I guess, for
doing prayer at different timesduring the day and things like
that.
I guess the sort of things thatI tend to use online tend to
maybe be a little more niche orwhatever.
But maybe somebody from acomputer science background
(43:39):
working with databases there's awebsite with a guy that's like
doing his own translation of theOld.
Testament, learning Hebrew andthen kind of looking, I guess,
very rigorously at okay, well,what's sort of this word in this
context?
And also, I think, trying toreproduce the original music
that would go along with thetext from these different notes,
(44:03):
notations that are in themanuscripts and stuff.
I'm not musicals, I'm not sure.
Zack Johnson (44:08):
You don't want to sing one of those, I'm just
kidding.
And then I did want to ask alittle bit about sort of your
international experience.
Where did you meet your wifeagain, I mean, I met her online.
Online and she's from China andyou two have managed to sort of
(44:29):
live in China and in the US anddo you have any advice for
people doing sort ofcross-cultural relationships in
church or beyond, for living incities and stuff like that?
Dr. Derrick Tate (44:43):
Not really.
I mean, I guess, given ourexperience.
We lived in Beijing, we were inTexas Suzhou.
My wife's background is alanguage teacher, so the
language, I guess, would be kindof a key part of it.
Unfortunately I can understandsome Chinese and people are
(45:07):
talking Chinese, but I canunderstand more than I can say.
But our kids are fluent inChinese and so that helped.
When we went back to China theywent to the local Chinese
schools for a while and thensort of being in China and kind
of experiencing the culturethere is different than just
(45:28):
kind of hearing about it here.
So kind of having opportunitiesto kind of experience both
cultures and knowing thelanguage and things like that it
was good for the family.
Zack Johnson (45:39):
Got it, yeah.
And then our audience.
The people listening are justgenerally people subscribed to
sort of our settler marketinglines of communication and I
think we have.
There's a lot of people on thatand we're not knowing who
exactly it is.
Is there anything else thatyou'd like to mention to anybody
in the audience that we haven'ttalked about yet?
Dr. Derrick Tate (46:01):
Not too much.
Yeah, I mean we've been workingon that project to look at
Siler's mission statement, sokind of a focus on training
graduates to kind of strengthencommunities, whether they're
parts of the community orbuilding new communities,
(46:25):
looking at biblical languages,looking at sources of
Christianity throughout historyand an emphasis on holistic
discipleship and kind ofrelationship building.
So I think Siler has a veryunique sort of niche that
(46:46):
they're fulfilling and I thinkit's something that a lot of
people would be interested in.
I guess, unfortunately, peoplearen't as aware of it as there
should be you meet people likeoh, I didn't know there was a
college downtown Boston and soon.
So hopefully we can get theword out and welcome people to
(47:09):
come and visit, sit in on somecomputer science classes or
other classes as well.
Zack Johnson (47:15):
And then is there anywhere that we can follow your
worker, anywhere that you pointpeople to, to sort of read
about the things that you'repassionate about?
I don't know if yeah, notreally yeah.
And then are any of thosecapstones listed online anywhere
?
Yet?
Dr. Derrick Tate (47:33):
I think some of the materials online, yeah.
Zack Johnson (47:36):
Right, I think I'd love to point people to those
in the three of show notes orsomething like that Show notes
Particularly there's a few thatthe natural language processing
one I think is a reallyinteresting one.
They're all interesting, but Iknow I've heard some a lot of
excitement about looking that.
Dr. Derrick Tate (47:57):
Right?
Well, he went to book area overthe summer and presented a
paper on what he'd done.
Zack Johnson (48:01):
So maybe we can link those.
And for everybody listening,I'm going to close out, unless
there's anything else to say.
Well, it's like there, Graham.
Anything else?
Alright?
Yeah, thanks for listening andthanks for being here.
I know that it's a massive fieldand there's a lot to cover, so
if you're interested in learningmore, send us a note at
(48:25):
infoatsattleredu.
We'll put you in contact withDr Tate and then also the next,
some next events coming up.
If you happen to be inPennsylvania on November 3rd,
I'll be there giving a sort of ainvesting in service talk about
how Sattler's really trying toshake up the tuition model, and
(48:46):
it's really good news, I think,for some future students and
then also educators.
I think all of this means a lotin terms of deciding
institutions that work forpeople.
So we're trying hard to reallymake this an exportable and
excellent experience, not onlyaffordable, but trying hard to
look at how colleges use tuition.
So join me there and then,beyond that, keep your eyes
(49:09):
peeled for some open houses inthe spring and things like that.
Thanks for joining us, heyStark.
Dr. Derrick Tate (49:16):
Thank you.
Good morning.
It is October 20th in themorning and I'm here with Dr
Tate.
Thanks for joining me, dr Tate,right now.
I'm going to kick off byreading your bio and then we'll
just have a good conversation.
How does that sound?
Sounds great, all right.
So Professor Derek Tate is theProfessor of Computer Science
and Engineering at SattlerCollege.
(00:24):
He received a BSME degree fromRice University and his SM and
PHE degrees in mechanicalengineering are from MIT and the
areas of manufacturing anddesign.
I'm going to pause.
Can you tell us what BSME?
What is that?
Dr. Derrick Tate (00:40):
That's Bachelor of Science in
Mechanical Engineering.
Good.
Zack Johnson (00:42):
And then SM, master of Science, and then I
think PHG is familiar in IF.
Prior to joining SattlerCollege he was Senior Associate
Professor at okay, okay, onemore time.
Dr. Derrick Tate (00:56):
Xi'an Jiao Tong Liverpool.
Zack Johnson (00:59):
University and founding head of the Department
of Industrial Design.
Dr Tate has also held positionsas Assistant Professor in the
Department of MechanicalEngineering at Texas Tech
University and AssociateProfessor of Beijing.
One more time.
Dr. Derrick Tate (01:13):
Beijing, jiao Tong.
Zack Johnson (01:14):
University.
Yeah, thanks for helping withthe pronunciation there.
Professor Tate's industrialexperience includes working as a
manager of applicationsengineering at Axiomatic Design
Software Inc.
A Boston-based startup company.
And then I'm going to read thisnext part too.
That's fine.
Do you want to add or subtractanything from that initial bio
(01:35):
there?
Dr. Derrick Tate (01:35):
No, no, that's fine.
Zack Johnson (01:36):
Okay.
Dr. Derrick Tate (01:37):
We may come up again some of it.
Zack Johnson (01:39):
Yeah, hopefully we can hone in on it.
Professor Tate has beeninvolved with Christian groups
in China and America.
He aims to impact society bybringing design thinking to
areas of strategic importanceand to integrate and
understanding of humanflourishing into design of new
products and services.
His calling is to make spacefor Christians in academia, to
(02:00):
bring Christian ideas intoacademic discourse and to mentor
a new generation of Christianresearchers and professionals.
Thanks so much for being herewith me.
Dr. Derrick Tate (02:09):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Zack Johnson (02:11):
I thought we could just start by.
I know that bio is verycondensed in academic and nature
.
Would you mind just sharing alittle bit more about your life
story, about where you were bornand how you got to where you
are now, so we can understandyour trajectory and chronology
there a little bit?
Dr. Derrick Tate (02:33):
I mean, my career trajectory has been, I
guess, a little bit unusual inthe sense that, as you can tell
from the bio, I've been cut upall over the place
geographically.
I guess growing up is a littlebit like that as well.
So, yeah, grew up in the South,went to college in Houston and
came to Boston for grad schooland then left Boston in 2001,
(02:58):
went to Colorado, beijing,lubbock, then back to China and
Suzhou and then here, so I cameback to Boston in 2019.
That's right, I've been gonefor about 18 years and then I've
kind of moved around in termsof discipline, in terms of what
I've been teaching, because Ishifted from mechanical
engineering to industrial designand then now I'm doing computer
(03:20):
science.
But there are, I guess, somethemes and connections in there
that kind of explain how thathappened.
In terms of the program I wasdoing at Texas Tech, for example
, was a master's and PhD oftransdisciplinary design process
and systems.
So I had a lot of students thathad backgrounds in software
(03:40):
engineering and as well as otherengineering disciplines, and so
then I ended up with a bunch ofpublications that were related
to artificial intelligence anddata mining and natural language
processing and things like that, as well as my experience of
working for the software companypreviously.
So when you look at my CV orbio, it's cut all over the place
(04:01):
.
But the themes that tie ittogether one, I guess, is this
emphasis on beingcross-disciplinary.
The other would be doing thingsrelated to entrepreneurship,
whether it's the startupinstitutions I've been working
for or trying to connectentrepreneurs with the
university and design.
And then the other would bethis focus on kind of design
(04:26):
thinking and applying that togeneral problems in society.
Zack Johnson (04:31):
Right, yeah, thanks for explaining that.
Let's hone in on that startupword because, as I understand,
you've worked at multiplestartup universities.
Dr. Derrick Tate (04:43):
And.
Zack Johnson (04:43):
I'd love to hear you talk about your experience
and your thinking around startupuniversities.
Dr. Derrick Tate (04:49):
Right.
So I guess the reason I wentinto engineering in the first
place when I was in high schoolmy goal was to create a car
company, right, right.
So I wanted to be somebody likeJohn DeLorean or Preston Tucker
, because I had an interest incars and restoring old cars and
(05:09):
things like that.
And so then I studiedmechanical engineering at Rice
as an undergrad and then when Igraduated I realized well, I
don't really know anymore aboutstarting a car company that when
I started.
And so I continued on to gradschool and did stuff in design
and manufacturing.
But after graduating I workedfor a startup company that did
(05:33):
software related to the designtheory that I studied for my PhD
.
So I was with my advisor andsome other people and so that
was Axiomag Design Software.
And then after that I went towork for some folks who were
trying to start a university inBeijing and we had a Chinese
partner school, capitalUniversity of Economics and
(05:54):
Business, and we had a USpartner school which was Indiana
Wesley, and so we were going tooperate, I guess, as a branch
campus of Indiana Wesley, andthe name of the institution was
Jingmei University Jing fromBeijing and then May from
Mayville, which is America, andso we got a license to organize
the institution.
And we got a license to operatethe institution and I was
(06:19):
working as special academicassistant to the president, you
know, working on accreditation,curriculum and things like that.
Unfortunately, the gentlemanthat had the vision for that,
guy named Dan Harrison, gotbrain cancer and passed away, so
that did not end up working out, and so I ended up going to
(06:41):
Beijing and teaching at aregular Chinese university,
which you mentioned, the biosBeijing Jiao Tong University.
So I was there for two yearsand so that's you know, I guess,
a startup company startupuniversity.
And then the second one wassecond startup university was
the Xiang Jiao Tong University.
So that started in 2006 inSuzhou.
(07:04):
I joined the institution in 2013.
And so I was the founding headof the Department for Industrial
Design and we grew from 26students to more than 300
students in the department,encompassing, I guess, bachelors
, masters and PhD students,mostly undergrad, some grad
students, right, and theinstitution grew from, I think,
(07:27):
an initial number and I neversaw like officially as either
147 or 153 students the firstyear and by the time I left, in
2019, we had a quota from theChinese government for like
15,000 students, and so thatcounted both the students who
were on campus in Suzhou.
And the students had the optionto go to Liverpool for their
last two years of undergradstudies, which about low 40% of
(07:52):
students would go that's inGerman In Liverpool, in the UK,
in the UK, yeah.
And so anyway, it counted boththose students.
So we had like a large numberof students, which is quite
successful.
So it's kind of a goodinstitution for the Chinese
students because a lot of theirparents wanted the students to
(08:13):
get international experience,you know, until it's like, okay,
you can go to this, you knowuniversity, you have an
opportunity to study in aninternational environment and be
a global citizen.
But you could do the first twoyears in China so you didn't
have to go too far away fromhome.
Right, make sure you understoodthe language and then you could
go to Liverpool if you wanted.
And in my department, I guess,with the first group of
(08:35):
industrial design students, 75%went to Liverpool.
But by the time I left thestudents liked our program
better than what they were goingto do in Liverpool.
So it was probably perversewhere, you know, only the
quarter of the students would goto Liverpool for the last two
years, got it, and then all themasters and PhD students were
(08:56):
just on campus with us.
But the students got twodegrees.
So they got a degree from XATLU, which was accredited by the
Chinese Ministry of Education inJiangsu Province, and then they
got a Liverpool degree throughLiverpool's accreditation.
Zack Johnson (09:12):
So I guess my next question is how does that
translate over here to Bostonand why another sort of another
startup university versus a moreestablished university?
What are some of the?
Dr. Derrick Tate (09:26):
lines of thinking there.
I mean my whole sort ofinterest is in, I guess, kind of
a startup environment and kindof creating new things.
So it kind of fits with myinterest there and I guess when
I heard about Sattler andSattler's mission it seemed like
a good fit for things I wasinterested in doing.
(09:48):
I guess my wife and I and ourfamily were looking to come back
to the States and so Boston wasone of the two areas that we
were considering in terms oflike, if we could rank wherever
we could go in the US, boston orprobably Houston would be kind
of the first choice is.
Of course I was looking allover.
Zack Johnson (10:08):
And you mentioned a few times this idea of
cross-disciplinary approach.
Graham Weber (10:14):
And.
Zack Johnson (10:15):
I'd love to hear you think about that in your
current role with.
You're the head of the computerscience major here and we sort
of do have a cross-disciplinarymind of thinking about things.
But in particular computerscience and Christianity those
two terms sometimes that peopleassociate them and sometimes
(10:36):
people don't associate them.
So I'm curious how you thinkabout that.
Dr. Derrick Tate (10:40):
Yeah, I mean I guess it's one benefit of being
at a startup institution thatit's pretty small and you kind
of know everybody and it's kindof a tight-knit community.
So you have, I guess, a lotmore informal interaction and
it's a lot easier to build someof those cross-disciplinary
connections.
But I think if you look at theCS students in the students in
(11:00):
computer science at Sattler andkind of the things they're doing
for their capstone projects,they are all pretty much
interested in cross-disciplinarytopics.
And I mean you can kind of lookat the variety chatbot for
apologetics, a app for buildingcommunity in the city, how to
(11:28):
facilitate interaction duringthe day and interacting with
communities and stuff in anurban context, and then doing a
literacy app for, or build itlike an app for building sort of
competent literacy in Hebrew,and then last year.
Zack Johnson (11:52):
Like All of these are capstones that have happened
here at Sattler.
Dr. Derrick Tate (11:57):
That was like the first group of students.
And then last year we had agirl that did a interface for a
microfinance app for missionsorganization and then a using
word embeddings for semanticsearch of ancient Greek texts.
So, as I said, they're all kindof cross-disciplinary and kind
(12:19):
of integrating the students'interest in the church community
, their faith, biblicallanguages with something to do
with the CS.
I mean, I had opportunities tocollaborate or communicate with
faculty and business.
In principle you can docollaboration with biology.
(12:40):
We haven't had students thatdid that yet, but that's
certainly an area that wouldwork as well.
So pretty much all of the otherprograms here would be
something that you could workinto a computer science capstone
in one way or another.
Stan.
Zack Johnson (12:53):
Mallow.
And then just for people thatdon't know what is a capstone
and why is it, I know that wordmeans different things to
different people.
My capstone was a very smallpart of my college experience
and I think it's a little bitdifferent, marshall.
Dr. Derrick Tate (13:12):
T J C.
How small Stan Mallow.
Zack Johnson (13:13):
Three credits Marshall T, j, c.
Okay, stan Mallow.
So it's three credits and justbasically a class.
That and then.
And so it's sort of a differentexperience here and maybe you
can talk about how we leveragethat.
Marshall T.
Dr. Derrick Tate (13:26):
J, c, right.
So yeah, I mean I've, I guess,got a lot of experience with
capstones kind of across thedifferent institutions that I've
been at Stan, mallow, right,marshall, t, J, c.
So typically in engineering,like where I was at Texas Tech,
engineering students have acapstone.
That's usually two semestersand like three credits per
(13:49):
semester Can't say like 100% allinstitutions, but that would be
kind of the typical iterationof it.
And so my role when I was atTexas Tech was to usually do the
first semester of that sequence, because we had like a thousand
students in mechanicalengineering so we were always
looking for kind of new projectsand we had like multiple
(14:12):
sections of that going on everysemester.
So I would do like typically Idon't know like one grad course
and one capstone course, like inthe fall, and then in the
spring I'd have like twocapstone sections, for example,
and so you'd have like 30students in there.
I had as many as like 40, whichis really too many, but we were
(14:33):
always like looking for topics.
But the first semester is likethe students are defining a
project that they're going towork on, and in engineering
typically it's a group project,and so the normal number would
be about four students.
You could have projects withmore, like five or six, but then
(14:55):
you end up with kind of thefree rider problem right if you
have that many.
And so where we were in Lubbockthere were not like a lot of
major industries in Lubbock.
Lubbock is a city of about200,000 people and you've got
some number of hospitals,healthcare, you've got the
university, there's a lot ofranching and farming around, so,
(15:17):
like cattle ranching, cottonfarming, there's some energy not
really oil production right inLubbock, but once you got
outside of town and then a lotof like wind farms and things
like that.
So we didn't have like a lot ofcompanies that you could talk
to.
It's okay, well, you know Fordor GM or somebody like that.
Okay, give us some projects forstudents to work on.
(15:38):
And so a lot of our productswould either come from like
other faculty which is where thecross-disciplinary thing comes
in or the students would come upwith topics themselves.
Or we had some likeentrepreneurs in kind of West
Texas generally that had topicsthat they were interested in.
(15:58):
And so for me it was good forthe students to have a project
to be, say, entrepreneurial,where it's like okay, here's
somebody, they've got an ideafor a project and they want to
develop that and make something,test it see, is that a
reasonable idea or not?
So it's kind of low risk butpossibly high reward, right?
(16:19):
So it's like, okay, thestudents aren't getting any
money for it, they're gettingcredit for their capstone,
they're getting periodsdeveloping it.
But they could start then withinteracting with users and
trying to understand what theneeds were.
So the way I would teach theclass, they would do a lot of
interact with users, doing likeinterviews or talking to people,
(16:39):
defining the needs, and thenthere's different tools that you
can learn in design, whichmaybe we can then to design kind
of dealing with brainstormingor resolving contradictions in
your requirements and thingslike that, and they can
basically take the whole processand start at the very beginning
and then develop into somethingthat they can physically
(16:59):
realize at the end, that you cantouch.
You've got something tangible.
So examples of projects thatstudents did were things like
from some of the entrepreneurs,like Papercreate.
There was a guy that had acompany for Redumix-Semit but he
wanted to do something that wasmore sustainable.
So could you take recycledpaper and make that into a block
(17:23):
that you could use in buildings, houses, whatever, and so that
was an interdisciplinary projectwhere you had mechanical
engineering students working,but then some students in civil
engineering or architecture orother disciplines could look at
that and say, okay, let's lookat this, not just on the
mechanical property of thisblock and the recipe although
(17:46):
you do that part but also like,how would this fit in kind of
the larger context?
Another example was Compressorof Block.
So there's a guy that had aextruder for making Compressor
of Block.
He had a little prototype thatmade a block that was I don't
know six inches by nine inchesand you could make a block.
And we ended up buildingequipment for that to make a
block that was like a foot byfoot and a half and you could
(18:07):
make it whatever link you wantedto, like 10 feet long, and so
you could use like a back or acrane or something.
But his goal was to take thatsustainable material and make it
competitive with timber frameconstruction so that you could
have like a crew of six peopleand you could build the walls
for a house in a day.
Basically so that it wouldn'tbe something that you'd only use
(18:30):
for rich people making, like inNew Mexico or someplace where
they've got a history of adobeconstruction or in dirt world
countries where the labor costsare much cheaper, but you could
actually make it, you know,competitive with timber frame
construction in the US and ifyou make the blocks without a
stabilizer then it's just soiland water and then at the end of
(18:52):
life you can just tear it offand put it back in the ground,
you know.
So that would be some you knowentrepreneurial type projects.
But sometimes the students wouldcome up with you know projects
themselves, like one student wasinterested in a sludge for a
fixed-gear bicycle.
So there's just something hewas interested in, you know.
Or another student wanted to doa camera jib that you could use
(19:16):
for video production.
But he wanted something thatyou could set up and take down
with one person and he couldthrow in the back of a pickup
truck and take it to some siteand use it for videoing things.
So anyway, you kind of have anidea and then you want to make
something with it and test andsee is this something reasonable
that you want to do?
So the students in Texas Techdid that over two semesters.
(19:38):
In China the capstone projectswere individual projects because
that was the requirement fromthe government in terms of how
they run the final year projects.
But the students had a lot ofother opportunities prior to
their senior year to work ingroups so they weren't like
missing the group interaction ontheir other projects, whereas
at Texas Tech, you know, thecapstone project was probably
(20:00):
the first time that they didanything in design really, and
so it was kind of a differentexperience that a lot of the
other engineering courses wereat SELP Lecture and solving
problems and things like that.
And so here at Sattler thecapstone sequence in computer
science is 12 credits, same asthe other programs, and it's
(20:21):
divided up so that in the junioryear the students work on
developing, kind of learning,some tools related to the
capstone and defining theproblem and coming up with a
proposal, and then they havethree credits in the fall of
their senior year and sixcredits in the spring, which is
more focused on likeimplementation, and so they're
able to kind of like percolateand kind of define their topic
(20:43):
and maybe even shift around some.
I mean, some of our studentskind of went off in quite
different directions than theyoriginally intended, and so it
gives them more time to developit and produce something that
they can after their portfolio.
Zack Johnson (20:56):
Yeah, anyways, kind of a long answer, but just
out of curiosity, graham, whatare you doing for your?
We're joined by a throughscience student.
What are you doing for yourcapstone?
Graham Weber (21:04):
I'm working with an organization called Faith
Tech that brings Christiantechnologists together in
community and they volunteer tobuild things, work with
technology to help the churchand the poor.
Zack Johnson (21:23):
That's awesome.
And how does so?
There's a lot of crossdiscipline there, because I'm
assuming a lot of that projectisn't I'm going to use the word
in the weeds and computerscience.
Is that Trigger Falls or likein the?
Tell me about it.
Graham Weber (21:43):
Yeah, there's.
It's very cross disciplinary,at least at this stage.
There's a lot of organizationalwork and also the organization
has a focus on theology aroundhow should the church think
about technology and what is adistinctly Christian way to
(22:03):
create and use technology?
Zack Johnson (22:06):
Do you have any comments on that capstone, and
particularly or Faith Tech, Ithink?
I think Faith we that groupthat they're meeting here.
They launched the Bostoninitiative and they're on campus
here.
Anything else about?
Dr. Derrick Tate (22:20):
I mean, so far I guess we've had two in-person
meetups here at Sattler.
One goes in January and onedoes end of September.
Next one will be this comingJanuary.
Okay, so we have a Boston, Iguess, lead team for organizing
the Faith Tech activities andtrying to build a community.
(22:41):
We had I don't know 35 people,I think, at both meetings and so
Graham and I are working onthese labs portion of the Faith
Tech activities.
So the way their groups work,they've got meetups which are
kind of networking dinnerspeaker, and then you've got
(23:03):
labs where people developprojects similar to the capstone
, you know, people working intechnology potentially, and then
they, as Graham indicated, havemaybe some other activities
looking at I don't know biggerpicture issues, ethics related
to technology and how thatrelates to theology and things
like that.
We've got some different ideason how we can, I guess, grow the
(23:27):
group here and Graham'scontributing to that.
Zack Johnson (23:30):
Great.
And then I wanted to sort offocus in on a word that comes
out in your bio and in the waythat you talk, and I'm guessing
most humans probably don't thinkabout the word design the same
way that you do.
So tell me about what designmean.
What are design tools and howdoes it relate to all of the, to
(23:53):
everything you're talking about?
Dr. Derrick Tate (23:56):
Yeah, so design, I would say, is a sort
of fundamental human activity,right, and people, like you said
, don't necessarily think of itthat way.
They think of, okay, well,design, you know, maybe
sketching a car or something,right, it's kind of an artistic
activity, but not necessarilysomething that everybody's doing
and that can be part of design,certainly, but like an example
(24:24):
that in general I go fromWorcester Polytechnic Institute
uses is like designing yourvacation, right, right.
So design, or like a honeymoonor something like that yeah
exactly so.
design is anytime you're mappingfrom what you want to do to how
you're going to do it.
Zack Johnson (24:42):
Sorry, I'm just like I'm the gram.
Look, gave me a funny look overthere.
Sorry, it's like.
Okay, got it.
Dr. Derrick Tate (24:48):
Yeah.
So you're going from what tohow.
Okay, and anything you couldrepresent as mapping from what
you want to do to how you'regoing to do it is a design
problem.
So, like I said, it could beyour vacation, it could be
honeymoon, but you know it couldbe a car, it could be a
computer, it could be whateveryou can define it, I guess more
(25:08):
formally as like developing andwe're selecting means to satisfy
objectives subject toconstraints.
So you've got three things thatright the objective, what you're
trying to do.
You've got your means, whichyou know could be like the car,
the sketch of the car and so on.
(25:28):
And then you've got constraints, which would be limits on what
would be an acceptable solution.
So the constraints wouldbasically say, okay, certain
things are, you know, outerbounds, it could be too
expensive, it could take toolong, has to fit with, like an
existing system.
Okay, you got to use, you knowthis port and you got to plug
into the existing you know USBport or something.
(25:49):
So that would limit yourchoices.
But anything you can representwith those different pieces
would be a design problem.
So very, very crossdisciplinary approach to it.
Zack Johnson (26:00):
And then the other word I want to focus on and
then I'll try to connect themhere is the word human, the term
human flourishing.
Graham actually mentioned it alittle bit here too, in Faith
Tech, that there's this ideathat there's poverty exists in
the world and there are thingsthat we can be doing towards
moving away from poverty,towards human flourishing across
(26:22):
the board here.
So tell me a little bit abouthuman flourishing and then I'll
try to connect design and humanflourishing together and maybe
looping computer science as away to think about doing that.
Dr. Derrick Tate (26:34):
Right.
So for design, I guess I wouldsay, in terms of I guess my
approach to design, some thingsto think about one.
It's like a specific discipline.
So, as you mentioned, there aredifferent tools that you can
use in the design process.
So they would be like a sort ofprocess that you would follow.
(26:54):
There's tools in XMAC design,which was the name of the
software company and kind ofwhat I did for my PhD.
Actually, the XMAC seems tohelp you identify or recognize
good design.
There's other tools, like thetheory of a better problem
solving, which comes from theformer Soviet Union.
That's like TRIZ.
(27:15):
It looks at how do you resolveconflict or contradiction and
the goal is to be more creative.
There's other tools as well.
So, anyway, design is kind oflike its own discipline that you
can apply to many differentareas.
The second would be that youfocus on users, which is where
(27:36):
the human flourishing comes in.
And I guess there's not.
I mean, I guess human wouldmaybe be the kind of broadest
term that you could think aboutthere.
When you think of, like users,of design, a piece of software
or something, it's like theperson that's actually typing in
things and actually making useof it and in, say, business, you
(27:59):
could maybe distinguish thatfrom the customer.
So somebody making thedecisions about which product or
which software to buy may notbe the person that's the end
user.
And you could do othercategorizations of users, like
lead users, which would bepeople that want to adopt a new
technology first because theystand to get some significant
(28:19):
benefit from adopting thattechnology.
But if you come up with adesign or product without really
thinking about the users orreally understanding their
context, then it's going to behard to have something that's
really successful.
So you really need to take intoaccount what the product needs
(28:43):
to do, which would be thefunctionality which would come
from the users in kind of thisbroadest sense, including other
stakeholders and the companymanufacturing it or whoever is
involved with it, as well askind of economics of it.
Is it something that is goingto be able to be sustainable
based on the economic aspect ofit and then also sort of
(29:04):
environment and sustainabilitykind of point of view.
So you really have to look atany design from kind of multiple
perspectives and if you don'tconsider all those, then you
could come up with something butnobody wants to use it, or you
come up with it but it's noteconomically feasible.
And you see that a lot withtechnology today, where
(29:26):
companies are losing money on,for example, like AI tools that
we're using online.
I mean, they see it as aninvestment.
Okay, people are using this andwe're getting data and we're
seeing what applications andstuff of it are, but it's not
something that can necessarilybe maintained at the level that
it currently is indefinitely,because each time somebody is
(29:49):
using it, potentially a companyis losing money.
So you got to think about kindof all these different aspects.
But, as I said, the goal is notjust thinking, well, can we do
something?
But is it something that wereally should be doing or want
to do and how does it contributeto, like you said, human
flourishing at the sort ofindividual level or in terms of
(30:11):
like interaction with otherpeople and kind of group level,
or even at like a societal level?
Zack Johnson (30:16):
And then help me think about a little bit.
There's a pool of likehypothetical or a real situation
.
There's a pool of young people,let's just say going into a
college and they're consideringwhat to invest themselves in.
Let's just even say thesatirical environment, pure
science, history, business,biology and usually there's a
(30:38):
problem that somebody caresabout a little bit more than
another problem, right, why isstudying computer science a
compelling way to think aboutaddressing a particular issue?
Let's even use like classicissues we're dealing with, let's
just say global poverty, ormaybe even now here we see, even
(31:02):
like clashes, political clashes, polarization there's a lot of
different arenas happening androlling out ahead of us.
Why is computer science acompelling field for Christians
to use to address problems?
It's kind of a big question,right.
Dr. Derrick Tate (31:22):
Yeah, I mean, I guess from my perspective it
would be sort of the ideal placeto situate yourself in being
able to address these problems.
I mean, at Sattler inparticular, there's like a large
core curriculum thateverybody's taking and so
Sattler has the cohort modelwhere the students come in
(31:43):
together, focus in on these corecourses, get kind of a body of
knowledge related to biblicallanguages, humanities, western
heritage and classics and so on.
But then what you have, thatfoundation, you can think, well,
how do I use that to dosomething and the sort of things
(32:05):
our students have been doing,both for their capstones and
then maybe after they leaveSattler, address some of these
areas that connect withtechnology and their other
interests, like their faith.
So, for example, like themicrofinance app that student
did last year, right, so thatwould be a way to actually
(32:27):
physically do something on theground related to dealing with
poverty and refugees and thingslike that, where you're
promoting some, I guess,educational materials related to
finances, saving money.
And then there was an app thatwas helping this soryization
(32:47):
implement their teaching andplans and stuff and they were in
, I forget it was like 15countries or something that they
have operations in.
So here you're doing somethingvery tangible.
I guess the other thing tothink about it you know it's
(33:07):
like you're graduating, you needto get a job.
Technology obviously issomething that everybody it
pervades everybody's life thesedays, and so by understanding
technology, it's going to helpwith some of these issues that
you mentioned, whether it'spolarization or political
(33:28):
conflict and so on, becausetechnology has a role to play in
those, and if you're going toreally address them, it's like
you have to think okay, well,how are people interacting with
social media, for example, andwhat effect do sort of patterns
that people have of theseinteractions relate into
(33:49):
increasing or decreasingpolarization?
Likewise with other types ofconflict, there's a role for
technology, and if people don't,I guess, consider the
technology aspect of it.
It's going to be hard to reallycome up with solutions to these
bigger questions.
So it's not just a technologyis going to be the only solution
, but it needs to be kind of apart of the broader conversation
(34:12):
.
So I remember there was like areport from the National
Association of Engineering,national Academy of Engineering.
They were talking aboutrecruiting more people into
engineering and I worked with aTSTEM center at Texas Tech that
did outreach to different highschools and kind of promoted
(34:32):
engineering and they pointed outthat the way that you recruit
people to be medical doctors isjust okay.
You want to help people, youwant to help them get well, you
got to treat them, cure theirillnesses, develop cures for
diseases and so on.
But the way people typicallythink about engineering, like
(34:53):
high school teachers, they'relike oh okay, well, you're good
at math, you're good at science,maybe you should think about
engineering.
And it's like, well, if you'regood at math or you're good at
science, maybe you should be amathematician or a scientist.
The goal for engineering is toactually create things that are
going to meet people's needs.
Until you're going to somehowimprove people's lives by the
(35:16):
things that you're creating,whether it's a person
individually or part of a largereffort in most cases, but the
goal is to help people's livesbe better and I think Sattler
provides a good context forwrestling with some of these
issues in terms of thinkingabout the impacts.
Okay, if I make this, what arethe social impacts and how can
(35:41):
we kind of learn from pasttechnologies and the way that
they've impacted people andsociety and how can we make
better decisions moving forwardwith technology?
Zack Johnson (35:53):
All right, Graham, is anything peaked to your
interest that you think weshould talk about?
If not, I got some more thingsto talk about.
Anything, Go for it, Go for it.
Yeah, thanks.
So the next sort of topic Iwant to explore.
It's very related.
When I look at technology andscience, there's a perception
(36:14):
that it's, I'll just say,secularizing at a very rapid
pace.
And even if you look at thelargest companies in the world
just say Google, Amazon, Apple,even through an Elon Musk
company, Tesla they appear to bevery secular and serving sort
(36:37):
of a secular purpose.
What is the role of theChristian?
Is the role of the Christian tocreate a new company that
stands for something different?
Is it to try to innovate withinthe existing sphere, or is it
maybe that's not the right wayto think about it?
How do we think about thesecularizing environment and
sort of holding the values whileleveraging technology?
Dr. Derrick Tate (37:02):
Right.
I mean I don't think there'slike one answer right.
I mean it's going to depend onthe individual student.
So I think, for example, thecapstone project and internships
gives the students a chance tokind of explore their options.
We have connections with anumber of companies and
(37:25):
organizations where studentshave done internships some in
the US, some internationally asthey're doing their bachelor's
degrees, and then students haveworked with different outside
organizations for theircapstones.
I mean, I guess once theygraduate and they start working,
probably in most cases they'llgo to work for an existing
(37:48):
company with it, small or large,but maybe eventually they'll
have some ideas where they couldcreate their own company.
So I mean I think there's roomfor any and all of that when
students are thinking about howthey want to apply their lives
and what they want to do withtheir degrees.
(38:08):
But I think something likeFATEC that Graham is involved
with I think that's one of thegoals of FATEC is to kind of
bring like-minded peopletogether and just think, okay,
maybe in my job I'm doingsomething pretty secular, but if
I work together with some otherChristians that I meet through
some networking event meetup, wecan develop something that has
(38:31):
maybe a more Christianapplication.
That would be something thatwould be good for the church and
do not like one answerobviously.
Zack Johnson (38:42):
And then just a sort of lay this to rest, if
somebody is particularlyinterested in the church, let's
even say biblical missions ordifferent ministries.
Okay, computer science is aviable way to fulfill those
callings Right, and I don'tthink the path is very well-worn
(39:04):
or well-walked of people usingthose two together.
So is there sort of anythingthat you'd like to see happening
to have more people walkingdown this road?
We think about it a lot, as howdo we drum up interest?
in computer science with atraditional audience that might
not have imagined that pathforward in their life.
Dr. Derrick Tate (39:29):
Well, I mean again, we've got students who
are working with differentChristian organizations for
their internships and projectsand after they graduate, I know
some of us are interested inmaybe living overseas and
continuing to do things for thechurch in other countries.
Zack Johnson (39:51):
So that's one thing.
I've heard that computerscience is like a door into
other countries that youwouldn't traditionally have with
a non-technical experience.
Is that accurate?
Dr. Derrick Tate (40:04):
Yeah, that would probably help in getting
visas and things like that.
I mean, there are likeChristian organizations that do
things that are very related tocomputer science, like Wycliffe
Bible Translators or somebodylike that.
They have a lot of software.
They develop, I guess,different fonts for just playing
Greek text and other things, aswell as like tools for doing
(40:28):
interviews of native speakersand transcribing that using
international phonetic, alphabetand other things.
They're very, very technical,but even just the skills that
being able to talk to users andtalk to people and kind of
understand the problems andthings like that could be used
(40:49):
in a context that's quitedifferent than developing the
pieces of software.
It would be kind of a generallife skill.
Some of these things related todesign.
And I do think there could be arole for making connections
with existing churches to kindof bring in some knowledge of
(41:12):
technology to these churches,where maybe congregations have
questions like, well, how do wedeal with technology?
Or we have folks in thecongregation have this or that
or the other question abouttechnology and its impact on the
church or people's lives andstuff, and I do think doing
activities to sort of promoteawareness and knowledge about
(41:36):
technology along existingcongregations would be something
that would be beneficial.
Zack Johnson (41:44):
Right.
Is there a product that youcurrently use, or maybe a
software or an app that is anexample of the power of
leveraging this?
I have a couple in the back ofmy mind, but that sort of have
made a meaningful difference inpeople's lives.
Is there anything come toimmediately to your mind?
Dr. Derrick Tate (42:03):
I mean, why do you share yours?
Zack Johnson (42:05):
So the Bible app is a really interesting one that
the you version put it on.
I think it's based out of thechurch.
I forget the big church downthere.
And then we have all ourstudents use logos or logos,
Bible software which leverages.
It's a pretty incredibletechnology that leverages
(42:27):
computer science software.
But then the user experience, Ithink, is one of the most
important things about that.
So it's really interesting howyou have to design it well so
that it actually serves thepurpose Right.
What other one Do you have?
Any that come to mind, Graham?
Graham Weber (42:44):
I use PrayerMate, which is an app to remind you to
pray and help you to organizeprayer lists, and things like
that.
Zack Johnson (42:52):
Prayermate, remember, is an app that helps
people memorize scripture.
We even tried one.
We actually tried one time todesign an app for our
discipleship program for habittracking Right.
Someday it might get launched.
It's sitting on a shelf, thecomputer shelf, so to speak, but
I think it's good to kind ofthink about hey, these are
(43:14):
examples of ways that this hashappened before.
Does anything come to your mind?
Dr. Derrick Tate (43:19):
I mean yeah, I guess I have something.
You've already mentioned someof them, yeah, I guess, for
doing prayer at different timesduring the day and things like
that.
I guess the sort of things thatI tend to use online tend to
maybe be a little more niche orwhatever.
But maybe somebody from acomputer science background
(43:39):
working with databases there's awebsite with a guy that's like
doing his own translation of theOld.
Testament, learning Hebrew andthen kind of looking, I guess,
very rigorously at okay, well,what's sort of this word in this
context?
And also, I think, trying toreproduce the original music
that would go along with thetext from these different notes,
(44:03):
notations that are in themanuscripts and stuff.
I'm not musicals, I'm not sure.
Zack Johnson (44:08):
You don't want to sing one of those, I'm just
kidding.
And then I did want to ask alittle bit about sort of your
international experience.
Where did you meet your wifeagain, I mean, I met her online.
Online and she's from China andyou two have managed to sort of
(44:29):
live in China and in the US anddo you have any advice for
people doing sort ofcross-cultural relationships in
church or beyond, for living incities and stuff like that?
Dr. Derrick Tate (44:43):
Not really.
I mean, I guess, given ourexperience.
We lived in Beijing, we were inTexas Suzhou.
My wife's background is alanguage teacher, so the
language, I guess, would be kindof a key part of it.
Unfortunately I can understandsome Chinese and people are
(45:07):
talking Chinese, but I canunderstand more than I can say.
But our kids are fluent inChinese and so that helped.
When we went back to China theywent to the local Chinese
schools for a while and thensort of being in China and kind
of experiencing the culturethere is different than just
(45:28):
kind of hearing about it here.
So kind of having opportunitiesto kind of experience both
cultures and knowing thelanguage and things like that it
was good for the family.
Zack Johnson (45:39):
Got it, yeah.
And then our audience.
The people listening are justgenerally people subscribed to
sort of our settler marketinglines of communication and I
think we have.
There's a lot of people on thatand we're not knowing who
exactly it is.
Is there anything else thatyou'd like to mention to anybody
in the audience that we haven'ttalked about yet?
Dr. Derrick Tate (46:01):
Not too much.
Yeah, I mean we've been workingon that project to look at
Siler's mission statement, sokind of a focus on training
graduates to kind of strengthencommunities, whether they're
parts of the community orbuilding new communities,
(46:25):
looking at biblical languages,looking at sources of
Christianity throughout historyand an emphasis on holistic
discipleship and kind ofrelationship building.
So I think Siler has a veryunique sort of niche that
(46:46):
they're fulfilling and I thinkit's something that a lot of
people would be interested in.
I guess, unfortunately, peoplearen't as aware of it as there
should be you meet people likeoh, I didn't know there was a
college downtown Boston and soon.
So hopefully we can get theword out and welcome people to
(47:09):
come and visit, sit in on somecomputer science classes or
other classes as well.
Zack Johnson (47:15):
And then is there anywhere that we can follow your
worker, anywhere that you pointpeople to, to sort of read
about the things that you'repassionate about?
I don't know if yeah, notreally yeah.
And then are any of thosecapstones listed online anywhere
?
Yet?
Dr. Derrick Tate (47:33):
I think some of the materials online, yeah.
Zack Johnson (47:36):
Right, I think I'd love to point people to those
in the three of show notes orsomething like that Show notes
Particularly there's a few thatthe natural language processing
one I think is a reallyinteresting one.
They're all interesting, but Iknow I've heard some a lot of
excitement about looking that.
Dr. Derrick Tate (47:57):
Right?
Well, he went to book area overthe summer and presented a
paper on what he'd done.
Zack Johnson (48:01):
So maybe we can link those.
And for everybody listening,I'm going to close out, unless
there's anything else to say.
Well, it's like there, Graham.
Anything else?
Alright?
Yeah, thanks for listening andthanks for being here.
I know that it's a massive fieldand there's a lot to cover, so
if you're interested in learningmore, send us a note at
(48:25):
infoatsattleredu.
We'll put you in contact withDr Tate and then also the next,
some next events coming up.
If you happen to be inPennsylvania on November 3rd,
I'll be there giving a sort of ainvesting in service talk about
how Sattler's really trying toshake up the tuition model, and
(48:46):
it's really good news, I think,for some future students and
then also educators.
I think all of this means a lotin terms of deciding
institutions that work forpeople.
So we're trying hard to reallymake this an exportable and
excellent experience, not onlyaffordable, but trying hard to
look at how colleges use tuition.
So join me there and then,beyond that, keep your eyes
(49:09):
peeled for some open houses inthe spring and things like that.
Thanks for joining us, heyStark.
Dr. Derrick Tate (49:16):
Thank you.
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