Sept. 10, 2010 — It’s not often that freshmen at a major research institution find themselves in a class taught by the university’s president, but that is just what is happening at Texas A&M this fall for students participating in the First Year Seminar (FYS) program. Such sessions apply seminar-style teaching to a learning community setting focused around a particular topic. One class that Texas A&M President R. Bowen Loftin will be teaching is "Simulation And Gaming: Transforming Society." The class will be taught with Dr. James Wall, who is the director of the Computing and Information Technology division of the Texas Center for Applied Technology (TCAT), which is a center within the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES).
The course will examine how gaming technology is transforming society with respect to decision-making activities for both military and civilian applications. "I’m looking forward to getting to know the students in the first-year seminar in simulation and gaming that I’ll be teaching this semester with Dr. James Wall," said Loftin. The seminars at Texas A&M are taught by a variety of professors, many of whom are among the university’s top faculty and have won awards for their teaching and research.