Brian Kerr

Snippet from a course announcement for a winter 2007 class to be taught by Don Blumenthal at the U-M School of Information:

This course will examine: 1) privacy issues related to the safeguarding of sensitive information against inadvertent disclosure; 2) policy and societal questions concerning the value of security and privacy regulations, the real world effects of data breaches on individuals and businesses, and the balancing of interests among individuals, government, and enterprises; 3) current and proposed laws and regulations that govern data security and privacy; 4) self-help and private sector regulatory efforts; 5) emerging technologies that may affect security and privacy concerns; and 6) issues related to the development of enterprise data security processes and programs that take into account the requirements of all relevant constituencies: e.g., technical, business, and legal.

Here’s the course catalog page for Data Security and Privacy: Legal, Policy and Enterprise Issues. I met Don at a2b3 lunch some time ago. This looks like a great topic and a relevant offering, since — when I was on an outbound trajectory from the department, at least — so much of the dork curriculum actually resulted in half-baked SQL-injectable junk and so forth.

(tags: course networks privacy process security umich umsi)

Course announcement for a winter 2007 class, open to undergraduates and graduates at U-M, highly recommended (see also a recent syllabus):

This course provides an interdisciplinary approach to disability studies, including focus on the arts and humanities, natural and social sciences, and professional schools. Some topics include the history and cultural representation of disability, advocacy, health, rehabilitation, built environment, independent living, public policy. The point of departure of the course is the idea that disability provides a critical framework that reorients the basic assumptions of various fields of knowledge, from political science to architecture, from engineering to art history, from genetics to law, from public policy to education, from biology to poetry, and so on. Disability Studies views people with disabilities not as objects but as producers of knowledge whose common history has generated a wide variety of art, music, literature, and science infused with the experience of disability. Students will have the opportunity to interact with visiting speakers from a broad range of fields. The course is offered for 1 or 3 credits. Accessible classroom with realtime captioning. For more information, please contact Kristine Mulhorn and Tobin Siebers.

I took this course in fall 2006. It was a powerful antidote to a bunch of horseshit baked into the School of Information MSI curriculum, and therefore recommended for any HCI types.

(tags: accessible course design edu umich uminds umsi universal)