This month, Bryant welcomed Katheryn Wright, Ph.D., to its ranks as associate dean of the university’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Wright, who spent 15 years at Vermont’s Champlain College, is a digital humanist interested in exploring the questions and tensions that arise when humans, technology, and communities interact. Wright recently sat down with Bryant News to chat about her background, research, and ideas for the Bulldog community:
What sparked your interest in higher education, and what has kept you passionate about this work throughout your career?
Katheryn Wright: I've always been fascinated with structures and how individual parts connect to form the larger whole. As an undergraduate, I became intrigued by social structures and power dynamics, trying to understand how people's ways of thinking, through art, media, and public spaces, are shaped by broader frameworks.
In higher education, my interest in structures carries into how we design learning in a way that supports growth, is adaptable, and is flexible. There are rigid structures that can disable intellectual growth, but asking, ‘How do we design the structures that allow people to grow and learn?’ is a live problem that educators are trying to figure out daily. To me, that’s what keeps me interested in this work because the answers are always shifting and changing.
What excites you most about joining the university’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences?
Wright: What excites me most is that the College of Humanities and Social Sciences — in its current configuration — is new, and there’s a unique opportunity to collaborate with faculty and students to build its identity.
The knowledge and creative work of the humanities and social sciences are as important as ever. While institutions around the country are scaling back these programs, Bryant is actively investing in them. Whether it’s addressing the impact of rising housing costs, supporting people facing food scarcity, or figuring out the new realities of digital transformation, we need the deep critical insights of the humanities and social sciences to help us navigate through complexity.
Tell us about some of the research you’ve been working on.
Wright: I have been working on two major research projects. First, I am completing my second book, Speculative Education, which is about what it means to learn and teach within conditions of uncertainty. Higher education is changing almost by the minute, and my work looks at how we, as educators and learners, teach through and embrace change.
Second, I’ve been working on several digital humanities projects. At Champlain College, I collaborated on a soundscape project examining the sonic environments and acoustic ecologies of Vermont by recording and analyzing sounds in urban, rural, and suburban settings. As part of this project, I worked with a team of undergraduates developing a machine learning sound classifier model to analyze thousands of hours of audio data.
Drawing on what I’ve been learning through both the soundscape project and writing my book, I’ve been experimenting with different research-creation projects. One is called ‘the algorithmic sidewalk’ that examines how data collection is optimized in public spaces. This project asks what do we miss when we extract data from an environment without considering the context from which it was generated? Participants will be able to record their own experiences and sonic data in a public space in a way that’s different from how a security camera, for example, is collecting information about their movements. Their stories will be remixed into a soundscape that can grow and change when new recordings are added.
As you begin this new role, what opportunities do you see, and what are you hoping to accomplish as CHSS associate dean?
Wright: I've been teaching and working within general education for my entire career, and at Bryant, my goal is to build and elevate the identity of its general education program, the Impact Core. General education is the foundation of a university's curriculum; it is powerful because it establishes a connection between what students learn, what they value, and how their academic experiences with the university’s broader mission.
Pedagogically, I want to implement a comprehensive assessment plan that supports faculty as they work, analyze, and adapt their processes both within the Impact Core and, long term, across CHSS. A dynamic curriculum has to be flexible and responsive to what students need. The goal of assessment is to consider not only the intent of what we're trying to do, but the impact of what's happening in the classroom. The hope is to connect the dots between intent and impact to evolve our curriculum and teaching practices.
Institutionally, I'm focused on how the humanities and social sciences are evolving into new career pathways. Our fields are changing, and the way we understand the purpose of academic disciplines is changing how we make knowledge; helping students learn what it means to live meaningful lives and thrive in a world in constant flux is central to our work as educators and scholars.