PRESS OFFICE • 15 MetroTech Center, 6th Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201
For Immediate Release:
Contact: Kathleen Hamilton
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
718-260-3792/mobile 347-843-9782
kathleen.hamilton@nyu.edu
NYU HELPS LAUNCH GROUNDBREAKING GAMES ALLIANCE
NYU School of Engineering Professor Katherine Isbister Announced as a Founding Member of
the Executive Committee of the Higher Education Video Game Alliance
NYU Steinhardt’s Jan L. Plass and NYU MAGNET Faculty to Contribute to New Association
The NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering announced today that Katherine Isbister, an associate professor of computer
science, director of the school’s Game Innovation Lab, and a member of the faculty of the NYU Game Center of the Tisch
School of the Arts, has become a founding member of the executive board of The Higher Education Video Game Alliance.
Fellow NYU Professor Jan L. Plass, of the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and codirector of the Games for Learning Institute, will become a charter member of the group, and other members of NYU’s
Media and Games Network (MAGNET) are expected to become major participants in the alliance’s activities.
Launched today at the Aspen Ideas Festival, the alliance will provide a platform for leading academics to showcase the
critical role video game programs are playing in educating and preparing students for the 21st century workforce. The group
will afford its members, including professors and other campus leadership, an opportunity to share and highlight best
practices, publish research, initiate and strengthen industry connections, educate, and engage policymakers and the media.
"NYU and other universities across the country are performing cutting-edge research in this emerging field, and game
designers and programmers are doing foundational work that expands into health, education, and many other fields beyond
entertainment,” said Isbister. “There are now almost 400 schools of higher education in the United States that offer video
game design as part of their curriculum; I am proud that NYU will play a formative role in shaping the Alliance for the
benefit of these scholars and the broader community.”
Princeton Review ranked NYU’s graduate and undergraduate programs among the best game-design programs. Four NYU
schools share space at MAGNET, which co-locates teaching and research programs in games as a creative art form, game
design, digital media design, computer science, and engineering. Isbister and Plass are members of its Presidium.
-more-
Isbister authored the highly regarded book, Better Game Characters by Design: A Psychological Approach, and co-edited
Game Usability: Advice from the Experts for Advancing the Player Experience. Isbister’s work focuses on enhancing the
social and emotional qualities of human computer interaction. She serves on the editorial board of the International Journal
of Human Computer Studies and is a senior member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). In 1999 she was
selected as one of MIT Technology Review's TR100 Young Innovators most likely to shape the future of technology. Her
research has appeared in Wired, The New York Times, Forbes, and on NPR and BBC programs.
Plass is the inaugural holder of the Paulette Goddard chair in digital media and learning sciences at NYU Steinhardt, where
he directs the programs in educational communication and technology, which includes a master’s of science in Games for
Learning. He is the founding director of the Consortium for Research and Evaluation of Advanced Technology in Education
(CREATE) and co-directs the Games for Learning Institute. That multi-institutional institute studies games to find benefits
for learning as well as for cognitive and socio-emotional development.
Addressing the founding of The Higher Education Video Game Alliance, Mark DeLoura, senior advisor for digital media at
the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said: "Game development programs are growing the next
generation of America's STEM leaders: providing excellent career training, serving as incubators for game design and
technology innovation, and advancing state of the art game research. Efforts to increase the connections between educators
and professional game developers will help to further strengthen American competitiveness by enhancing the collective
power of these programs.”
Michael D. Gallagher, president and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), said: “As the leading
association representing the video game industry, ESA is excited by this new collaboration among the country's top game
design departments and professors. The Alliance is more important than ever because game design skills are an increasingly
critical part of driving innovation across numerous sectors of the economy. ESA and our member companies are fully
supportive and enthusiastic about the mission of The Alliance and look forward to future collaborations.”
The Alliance—initially supported by ESA—will aim to achieve multiple goals:
 survey game programs, placements, and practices across membership;
 improve Bureau of Labor Statistics information on the games industry;
 host events to connect higher education programs and policy makers;
 provide recognition and awards for innovations from member labs;
 encourage stronger connections between higher education and industry through things like student internship
programs and trend/need discussions and reports; and
 conduct meta-analyses of the state of play along various sector issues such as health, education, and technology
challenges.
The NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering dates to 1854, when the NYU School of Civil Engineering and
Architecture as well as the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (widely known as Brooklyn Poly) were
founded. Their successor institutions merged in January 2014 to create a comprehensive school of education and
research in engineering and applied sciences, rooted in a tradition of invention, innovation and entrepreneurship.
In addition to programs at its main campus in downtown Brooklyn, it is closely connected to engineering
programs in NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai, and it operates business incubators in downtown Manhattan
and Brooklyn. For more information, visit http://engineering.nyu.edu.
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