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Dream, Girl to Be Screened at White House

dreamgirl.jpDream, Girl, a documentary produced by Erin E. Bagwell ’09, will be screened at the White House on May 26 in the South Auditorium for 180 key individuals from Capitol Hill, along with the film’s cast and friends and family of the filmmakers.  The world premiere of Dream, Girl will be held in New York City on June 9.

Dream, Girl is a documentary that showcases the empowering stories of women-run companies and the founders whose ambition and dedication drive them. Dream, Girl features several female founders from a variety of diverse companies in tech, fashion, non-profit organizations and advertising.

In her documentary, Bagwell takes an inside look at these businesses, including the risks, challenges, struggles and successes. She examines cultural forces that make today the most exciting time in history for women to start a business, and explores the deeply-rooted conventions, gender roles, and sexism that can hold women back despite their progress.

Like many others, Bagwell became disenfranchised with her job—in her case, as an interactive designer for a digital company. But unlike most people, she woke up one day and decided to change her fate. Bagwell launched her own website, Feminist Wednesday, for which she interviewed many women about their personal and professional accomplishments. Inspired by their stories, she decided to make Dream, Girl, a documentary about empowered female entrepreneurs. But first she had to raise some money.

Bagwell shared her own personal story and the outpouring of support from women was extraordinary. She was able to raise $104,157 on kickstarter.com – nearly double her $57,000 goal. Bagwell produced Dream, Girl with those funds.

Bagwell is a 2009 graduate of Canisius with a degree in digital media arts (with a digital filmmaking concentration) and an alumna of the Canisius College Video Institute.

“The Video Institute gave me the experience, confidence and foundation I needed to go into the real world and trust I had the video skills to work at a production company. When I didn’t land the perfect job, I created it myself.”

Bagwell is a New York City-based filmmaker, graphic designer and feminist blogger.

Submitted by: Public Relations

Desire2Learn Upgrade is May 19

d2l_logo27Desire2Learn will be unavailable to Canisius College users on Thursday, May 19 between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. Desire2Learn’s engineers will need to take it offline to complete the scheduled upgrade. This time frame begins after spring semester grades are submitted and concludes several days before the summer session classes begin.

The upgraded D2L will be quite similar to our current D2L visually, but some changes aimed at making D2L more intuitive and easier to use will be noticeable.  For example, features are better described to faculty, within the Quizzes tool.

If you have any questions concerning this down-time period, or upgrades to Desire2Learn, please contact the Canisius ITS helpdesk at helpdesk@canisius.edu, or at Ext. 8340.

Submitted by: Mark Gallimore, academic technology specialist

Zoom Replacing GoToMeeting June 19

ZoomCanisius will migrate its web conferencing service from GoToMeeting to Zoom on June 19. This decision was made, not just because of cost, but because of a few unsolvable issues with GoToMeeting. The search for a replacement began last year with consults to many of our fellow Jesuit institutions in the process. Out of the schools surveyed, 75 percent use and are happy with Zoom.

The Office of Alumni Engagement and ITS began piloting Zoom last semester. We heard nothing but great things from those who experienced the product. Zoom also records webcams, something frequently requested of GoToMeeting.

Usually, we hope to have at least a semester to transition from one product to another. Unfortunately, this is not the case this time around because of contract dates. We will have our Zoom site-wide licenses ready to use by June 13. We are here to support you in this transition. Please bookmark this site and stay tuned to The Dome for further communication.

Submitted by: Leah MacVie, instructional designer, academic affairs