NEW YORK, Feb. 3, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Associate Professor Jody Culkin of the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC)—Deputy Chair of the Media Arts and Technology Department and a world-class sculptor, photographer and new media artist—has just created an online comic, Arduino, that explains an open-source microcontroller of the same name, to her students.

And now, thanks to Boing, Boing, Gizmodo, Engadget and other sites with global audiences, Culkin's Arduino comic has garnered well over a million hits.

In the open-source spirit of making technology accessible to as many people as possible, and reflecting BMCC's mission to make the STEM—Science, Technology, Engineering and Math—majors accessible to underserved students, Culkin's comics hit a much-needed chord.

"I think comics are a fascinating way to get information across to students," she says. "And for students who are more visual learners, comics can be a really useful tool."

In June she led a workshop, "Instructional Comics: Comics That Explain Technology," at ITP Camp 2011, a conference sponsored by the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, where she earned an MPS degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Department, following a Bachelor's in Visual Studies, from Harvard.

An artist as well as a professor, Culkin's photography, sculpture and new media works have been featured at museums and galleries throughout the U.S., as well as in Italy, Germany, Cuba and England. Her many awards include an Artists Fellowship in Sculpture from the NY Foundation on the Arts, a sponsored-project grant from the NY State Council on the Arts, a Design Award from the NYC Dept. of Transportation, and a research fellowship from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Department.

The good news is, she's passing her success forward, bringing community college students into technology, art and computer science, explaining both theory and mechanics, through hands-on projects, hard work—and comics.

Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) of the City University of New York (CUNY) enrolls over 24,000 degree-seeking and 10,000 Continuing Ed. students a year, awarding Associate Degrees in 28 fields.

Contact: Barry Rosen
212-346-8503
brosen@bmcc.cuny.edu

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Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York

SOURCE Borough of Manhattan Community College

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http://www.bmcc.cuny.edu