Announcing the 2018 Eugene Jarvis Innovation Scholarship Recipients
In 2015, a generous gift by game developer Eugene Jarvis established the Eugene Jarvis Media Innovation Scholarship, in support of undergraduate students learning to critically analyze and help shape developments in new media.
Recognizing that education has become increasingly expensive and that students as a result are motivated to make educational decisions based on future job prospects, Jarvis hopes to promote intellectual exploration. “The undergraduate experience is the most formative in education,” Eugene Jarvis has said. “It’s the one time in your life you have an open mind and are absorbing knowledge while trying to find your mission on earth […] College is the ultimate kickstarter. I want to give students the freedom to learn the tools that will allow them to make something of their lives.”
This year, the Jarvis Scholarship has been awarded to Kojin Glick and Howe Cui!
Kojin is a Political Science and Media Studies double major, primarily interested in the intersection of organizational politics and online communications and media. Through his new media coursework, which include classes on Videogame and Culture and Civic Tech, Kojin has emphasized research into online community organizing. He's since been working on research projects about human behavior, helping to write the world of the games used in these studies.
"I’m incredibly grateful for the support the Eugene Jarvis Scholarship for Design (Media) Innovation has provided me," Kojin wrote. "Not only did it enable me to seek out another cultural perspective from which to understand media, it has motivated me to continue my studies and give back to the Design (Media) community!”
Howe is a Film and Linguistics double major, with a minor in Computer Science, who has spearheaded advances in storytelling in 360 film as an officer at VR@Berkeley. He is currently working on converting several student animated shorts from traditional 3D into 360 narrative film. He has taken numerous new media courses and has also served as a student assistant at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science.
"I am very thankful to receive this scholarship. It is encouraging to know that my work to synthesize knowledge from various fields has not gone unnoticed. The aid that the Eugene Jarvis scholarship provides will enable me to continue combining my studies and producing New Media content with emerging technologies. Presently, my work has largely been focused on VR@Berkeley's Immersive Cinema teams. I encourage people who are interested in Virtual Reality to check out the club and to reach out to me if they have any questions," Howe wrote.
The Eugene Jarvis Scholarship is supported by the Ruth Johnson Scholarship Match Program, which provides a dollar for dollar match for gifts to new endowed scholarships. This match was made possible through the bequest of Ruth Johnson, who graduate with honors from UC Berkeley in 1938. She completed graduate work and obtained her teaching credential the following year. She taught French and Spanish in public high schools for 30 years. Ruth survived her husband Milton, a U.S. Army Veteran. During their marriage the Johnsons lived in a number of places in the US and Japan. Ruth was motivated to benefit undergraduate students with scholarships when she learned about the increasing difficulty many students had paying for their Berkeley education – something she treasured throughout her life.