White House Taps Parsons Faculty for Games Consortium
Photo by Erin Feinberg.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy recently established the Academic Consortium for Games for Impact, and, of course, Parsons has been there from the start. Colleen Macklin, director of Parsons’ public-interest game design lab, PETlab and an associate professor in the School of Art, Media and Technology, sits alongside an illustrious collection of representatives from academic, industry, and government research organizations.
It’s no surprise that that White House sought out Macklin. As Director of PETlab, she leads Parsons efforts to explore new and creative ways for organizations to use games as a means of public-interest engagement. She’s overseen the creation of games to teach people in the developing world about malaria vaccines, or ways to evacuate a flood zone, or using game design as a way for children to learn science, technology, engineering, and math skills (STEM).
Joining Macklin in the Consortium are 15 other academics from institutions like USC, Dartmouth, NYU, Northeastern, Yale, MIT. Also represented are giants in the game design industry, like Sony, Microsoft, Google, and Valve. Rounding out the Consortium are government research groups like NASA, the National Science Foundation, and DARPA.