Hi everyone, thanks for this opportunity to present some of the work in my lab and special thanks to the organizers, particularly Charlotte and Tobias for this invitation. So when they asked me to indicate the topic that I will discuss at this meeting, I felt that auditory salience is an important aspect of our experience when we perceive sounds in everyday life, in that it explores what sounds in our sensory stimulus command our attention in voluntary fashion. And by understanding what makes sounds salient, it informs us how we can encode the complex information in everyday soundscapes by focusing on what is important, commanding, conspicuous, probably ecologically or perceptually irrelevant, as it's not realistic nor practical to encode all sensory information in our surrounds. If I start with this visual analogy and I present you with this image, you can infer a lot of information from this visual scene. This is obviously a movie theater, performance hall, the movie or performance is probably in the way since the lights are off, yet what grabbed your attention is probably this one audience member who is taking a phone call or browsing her phone. And what makes this aspect of the scene salient are a combination of sensory cues, including changes in luminous and contrast, along with contextual cues about what the setting is about. So now if I move to an auditory example, things are obviously a bit more different. You probably cannot discern much if I show you the time waveform. And even if I show you the corresponding time frequency spectrogram, it's really hard to discern if there is any commanding events that may stand out in this specific auditory scene. Now, if I play the sound, I will engage your auditory system to process this information and the auditory system will use its sensory and attentional processes to guide interpret what the scene is and whether there is something salient or distracting in the scene. So hopefully everybody heard that early on in this quintet performance, somebody's phone started ringing. The phone ring is not necessarily louder than the rest of the signals. If I show you where the phone rang, you wouldn't necessarily, if we had relied only on dynamic range to decide whether on how to code this information, this ring would have gone completely unnoticed. Yet it is an important event. So the same would apply to other ecologically important sounds, an alarm sound, a siren, et cetera. So our goal is to understand what makes a sound command our attention or become salient in a dynamic scene and what processes facilitate this representation in the auditory system. So if this were a study of visual salience, we could have used eye movement as gaze is a good indicator of involuntary attention. But instead for an auditory stimulus, there is really no good equivalent to this behavioral response. So for this study, we use the dichotic listening paradigm and specifically listeners are presented with two dynamic scenes, one in each ear. So we have here scene X and scene Y and these can be an audio recording from a variety of sources. We included speech, nature sounds, a cafeteria, and you could listen to a sporting event basically on your left ear and an orchestral piece on your right ear. And subjects were asked to listen to this challenging environment and point at every moment in time which scene is more attention grabbing using the computer mouse on a screen. So while this paradigm is really actively engaging listeners in reporting which scene left versus right is attention grabbing, it allows us to probe the subject's engagement on a moment by moment basis. And I will show you later that we can validate these results with a different paradigm along with you know physiological recordings where subjects are not actively engaged with these scenes. Now the other important note to make with this paradigm is that by averaging the response to say scene X versus scene Y versus scene Z, we are probing whether there is an event in scene X that was deemed salient or attention grabbing regardless of what was going on in the opposite ear. So what we do is we average across many different scenes to define moments or events in the scene in a reference scene that we call salient or attention grabbing. And now if we look at specific events in a scene that were deemed salient, then we can ask what changed at this moment that causes an involuntary pull of attention. So we perform the first analysis by comparing changes in acoustic features from before to the salient event and examine the range of attributes that we hypothesize would play a role in driving salient's perception. So an obvious first attribute is the change in loudness as captured by temporal envelopes either over the whole signal or over critical bands of the signal. We also looked at a range of spectral and temporal attributes of the signal either over a time slice before and after the event or across a temporal window. And so what we notice is that there is a wide variety of features that seem to correlate or drive salient. So what you're looking at here is on the X axis is the change in feature and on the Y axis is a wide variety of features that we evaluated. And you see that there is a number of features that show a statistically significant change near the event. So particularly we know that loudness is obviously a big driver of salient's perception. A wide range of spectral features, including bandwidth, spectral brightness, spectral scale are also drivers of salience or correlates of salience. Harmonicity or change in harmony city, I should say is a very stable marker of correlates of salience along with a number of temporal dynamics, including both low temporal rates, which are commensurate with syllabic rates in speech, let's say, as well as faster temporal dynamics that tend to correlate with a perception of roughness in the sounds. And so while we see this broad range of both spectral and temporal features that drive salience is also important to keep in mind that these features tend to also be correlated with each other. So we have to interpret these effects as potentially codependent features rather than orthogonal dimensions of salience. It is also worth noting that since we're using natural sounds, those sounds themselves reflect a great deal of constraints on their spectral temporal structure, which would shape how these interdependencies across features come about. So this becomes an important point that complicates our ability to predict and model salience that I will touch on later in this talk. So now we know that salience is modulated by not just the absolute levels of these features, but the relative levels. And that is an important aspect. So, for instance, in this analysis, we look at the overall loudness. So what I'm showing you here on the y-axis is the overall loudness of a group of high salience events. And what we're looking is that the loudness basically changes a great deal just before the subjects indicated that there was an attention grabbing event.  So these are events that not everybody found to be salient or the amount of salience or sort of attention grabbing was not as consistent across subjects or across opposing scenes. You see that the overall loudness is more or less the same. So an event that is a mid-salience event is not necessarily any less louder than that from a high-salience event. But really what is the difference is that the relative change is really what is different. So a sound can be equally loud into different contexts but may not have the same degree of salience perception depending on that context. So the next observation we also looked at is that salience is shaped by long-term acoustic changes not just local changes. And so this is another fascinating observation is that in this analysis we look at changes over fairly long-time windows. So this applies mostly to repetitive events. So for example, if you consider a phone ringing and if we look at the overall loudness shown here in this red curve, sorry the blue curve. So we're looking at the overall loudness of a phone ring. You see that the first and the second ring have more or less the same overall loudness. Yet when you look at how the perceptual salience compares between the first and the second you know that it actually there is a drop in the perception of salience which is not surprising. When your phone starts ringing by the second ring you are slightly less surprised and probably so by the third ring. And so when we look at the overall effect across a group of events you know that the salience does drop quite dramatically over a pretty broad range and so the acoustic change over long ranges up to eight seconds based on our analysis has this kind of mask and effect on salience. So this mask and effect seems to sort of recover or the salience strength does recover after about these eight seconds and subjects on average are able to refresh their baseline salience to react to sounds. Another interesting observation from this behavioral data is that age does seem to play somewhat an interesting role in that it does slow down behavioral salience. So this analysis shows a reaction time over a pool of 325 subjects. We obviously don't have a full range over you know sort of to make smaller brackets of age effects so these are groups sort of age groupings based on a balanced tiering of the data that we have. So this is a collection of the subjects that we have some were collected in the lab and those tend to be more college age students and some were collected online and so those we didn't really target specifically an older population but we do see a pretty significant change in reaction time to subjects that were 55 and older relative to the younger subject. However, we wanted to see whether this sort of slow reaction does affect salience judgments in this 55 and older group and that does not seem to be the case. So this curve that I'm showing you here is a measure of intersubject agreement or judgments of salience measured by this F score. So how consistent is each of these subjects is with the group and what you notice that there is really no big difference between these older subjects and the younger subjects except for this much younger group which tends to be noisier for this particular analysis though in different analyses you don't really see a huge difference in terms of consistency of salience judgments. So really only the main factor here seems to be reaction time slowing down. So next we wanted to both validate the definition of salience obtained with this paradigm as well as explore the neural underpinnings of auditory salience in brain processes. And so we're particularly interested in exploring how does the neural activity in response to a sensory stimulus change with different salience levels. So for this next study we presented subjects with the same natural scenes that I just mentioned earlier but instead of a dichotic paradigm subjects were asked to completely ignore these scenes. So concurrently while subjects are listening to these nature sounds or orchestra and they were just asked to ignore them in the background we presented them with a tone pattern that listeners had to pay attention to and detect when a subtle modulation was introduced as shown here with this modulated tone. So this this task was fairly engaging. We sort of had to adjust the difficulty level to keep the engagement quite high from subjects and the subjects were reminded throughout this experiment that the background, cafeteria nature or car race scenes were really irrelevant to the task and should be ignored. So with this paradigm, what we first note is that the background salient events did significantly disrupt task performance. So this in this setting we are able to confirm that the background salient scenes are in fact grabbing the subjects attention in an involuntary fashion. And then as the subject performed this task we collected EG recordings to explore neural underpinnings of scenic coding as modulated by salients. So using this data we quantified what happened to the brain response when a salient event was playing in the background compared to brain responses away from any event or near a target tone. And so because the attended auditory signal here has this inherent rigidity in this sort of pattern this tone pattern, we can compare the phase lock in sort of the neural phase lock in or change in phase lock in relative to the attended rhythmic sequence at different moments throughout the trial. And so overall what we see is that the phase lock into the periodic rhythm is pretty steady throughout the experiment. If we exclude these moments where salient event is in the background or the target is there. And so you don't see really any big changes throughout the experiment. But then when we compare the changes in phase lock in or when we look at the changes in phase lock in near and attended the attended rhythm. So basically near these modulated tones, we see a fairly significant increase in neural response to the attended rhythm near the modulated target. This is commensurate with changes that were reported previously with voluntary attention since this is an attended target. And then in contrast and what's interesting is this opposite effect. And so basically when a background salient event occurs, even though the subjects are ignoring it or supposedly ignoring it, we know that dramatic drop in phase lock in near these salient events. What is even more interesting is that the amount of drop in phase lock in is modulated by the degree of salience. So the more salient the event is the larger the amount of drop in phase lock in. So one of the questions here is whether this drop in phase lock in coincides with a shift in neural encoding towards the ignored stimulus. If the subjects are being distracted from paying attention to this rhythmic tone, are they really encoding this background sound more with more fidelity. And so to do this analysis, we obviously cannot look at phase lock in since the background scenes are really dynamic auditory stimuli without some inherent publicity for which we can measure phase lock in. But instead what we did is we looked at sort of an envelope reconstruction model using a rigid regression. And what we see is that when a salient event occurs, we do see a statistically significant increase in our ability to decode these background scenes. So this is commensurate with other measures indicating that attention is shifting away from the attended rhythmic sequence towards the salient events. So this change in response to the ignored stimulus does increase encoding of the stimulus during the salient events. So this confirms that when attention is diverted away from the rhythmic notes, it is diverted towards the salient events resulting in an improved representation of the scene envelope at that moment. So this push pull interaction is kind of interesting because it suggests that the brain is pulling on these common resources that it has to divert or sort of dedicate to either one of these or at least shared across these two stimuli that are competing for attention. And so a natural question then comes is whether there are shared brain networks that are engaged during these two forms of interaction between voluntary involuntary attention. And our analysis does confirm that there is definitely sort of a shared network that is being engaged during this task so for this analysis we wanted to compare the topography of voluntary and involuntary and involuntary brain voxels and so what we did is we adapted a classic technique using canonical correlation analysis for this purpose and so here what we're doing is we're comparing the activity the brain activity across brain voxels during these attended targets so voluntary attention to the activity or the topography of brain activity during the salient background so involuntary attention. And so what we did is we adapted this canonical correlation analysis CCA which in fact is a form of multivariate analysis of correlation where high dimensional data are compared in order to discover interpretable associations or correlations represented as data projections but for this analysis what we did is we imposed sparse constraints on this procedure which allowed us to improve interpretability of these projections by confining the map into constrained vectors and therefore identifiable brain regions. So this is what the S here is sparse CCA. And so from this analysis we get a matrix like this or what this matrix is basically showing us it's think of it as a cross correlation between the topography of brain activity during involuntary attention at different time lags and the topography of brain activity during voluntary attention at different time lags on the y axis. And so what you see here is you see there is a significant correlation between these two brain regions that starts at about one second with involuntary attention engaging common brain circuits about half a second sort of one second here versus 1.5 you see this off diagonal activity. So with as I was saying salient events or involuntary attention engaging these networks at about half a second prior to activation by top down attention. These overlapping brain regions with significant correlation when we look at them closely appear to span inferior and middle frontal gyrus as well as superior prior to a logo. So finally, I wanted to touch on some of the complicating factors associated with the study of auditory salience and ultimately, how do we model or develop algorithms that can decide what events in a scene are deemed salient or important and maybe should be encoded with higher fidelity than other events. Now we explored how well does our current understanding truly reflect or predict whether sound events is considered salience given its context or not. And we looked into a number of models in the literature that were developed to explore auditory salience. So for this analysis what I'm showing you here is this ROC curve which quantifies correct salience detections by this model. So correct detections on the y axis versus false alarms on the x axis. And this black curve here is basically quantifying inter observer variability, which we're considering here as an upper bound and to how well the any of these models can perform. So one of the earliest model. And most of these models before I mentioned that basically performs some kind of acoustic analysis with the differences in terms of level of detail and representation of these different features and then some kind of integration across these different features. So one of the earliest models that we looked at is a model by Kaiser at all, which basically adapted the center surround idea from vision to an auditory salience model. So the plot here shows the ROC curve obtained by this Kaiser at all model, which basically, as I said quantifies correct salience versus false alarms. And so what we see here is that the model is rather limited in its ability to predict the presence of salience events in these dynamic scenes in this paradigm that I discussed in today's talk, largely because it treats the auditory spectrogram as an image and performs a vision like analysis on the time frequency image. So mostly ignoring the temporal structure of sound as they evolve in time and, you know, and not really doing any special treatment to the spectral dimension. So other models that we explored from the literature do improve our prediction capability so we see here to relative models one of their main limitations is really a linear treatment of the acoustic dimensions so they ignore the co dependencies across the different or contributions of the different acoustic dimensions. So in other studies we considered both a predictive coding model with nonlinear interactions so basically allowing these features to introduce co variations or co dependencies between them. And I'm not getting into the details as to what these acoustic features are there's variability and changes across these different models in the literature, and even some of the models that we developed here, but really at the high level analysis performs some sort of comparison or integration across these different features, either allowing nonlinear interactions or not so for these better models that we're seeing that give us this improvement. The nonlinear interaction is an important aspect that allows the allows us to. Achieve better predictions of auditory salience. And so these two greenish lines are these two models one that is based on a predictive coding which allows a tracking. Over time of the dynamics of the scene. While the second one is a nonlinear interaction model that integrates nonlinearly across features and while both these models do yield improved predictions in our ability to flag what is salient in a scene. The main takeaway, sort of take home message from these approaches is that auditory salience is really far more nuanced than just a linear combination of acoustic attributes. And so, and there's still a fairly large gap in how well any of these models are able to perform. So in some more recent work we explored how well we can improve predictions by considering a convolutional neural network that is able to learn the co dependencies between acoustic dimensions in a dynamic. Everyday soundscape and so this model is not very deep because we don't have a large amount of data for which we have salience judgments. However, what you note is that the. The ROC curve this orange curve using this approach does show improvements over these previous models that I mentioned. And really what the contribution of this convolutional approach is really in the way it integrates in information across these different dimensions so there's really just. You know, sort of a more detailed approach or mapping of these acoustic features onto a salient space, but nonetheless, you know we see a small improvement but we're still fairly far from the this upper bound of being able to predict human judgments here. And so what the model is doing is likely learning more complex nonlinear interactions between acoustic features than any of these other models but it still remains an acoustic model. And so finally what we were curious about we wanted to test this hypothesis that what drives attention is far more than just the acoustic structure of the sound, but also incorporates some of the semantic interpretation of the scene itself. And so, you know, as I've been saying, the sound of a fork is probably far more surprising in the middle of a classroom that it would be in a restaurant. And so taking into account this context is probably an important aspect that needs to be incorporated in these models. And so what we did is we extended these salience model by including and in addition to acoustic attributes we include what we sort of map as a semantic vector which basically reflect the output of another neural network that is trained not on salience but it's trying to identify the scene or the events in a in a in a scene and so this is a large convolutional neural network that is trained on fairly large amounts of data. And what this model gives us here that complements the acoustic analysis that we perform is it basically gives us this semantic interpretation or contextual interpretation of the scene or the environment where we are. So these that we're able to achieve a far larger improvements you see here in this red curve in our ability to predict which events are salience and which are not, though obviously we're still not fully, we haven't closed the gap with human perceptions suggesting that there are still a number of elements of this auditory salience that remain to be explored. So, overall I think when we think about what we know about auditory salience it is obviously a multi dimensional nonlinear and dynamic process that salience is continuously modulating neural encoding of auditory stimuli that providing a tight interaction between sensory representations and cognitive feedback, and that models of auditory salience do need to consider the complex interplay between low level and high level representations for auditory information. Obviously this is not a, you know, there remains a number of open questions that need to be explored the integration across multiple timescales this role of familiarity semantics and prior knowledge, and salience is not a one to one context can change our interpretation of a sound. A number of other challenges remain you know the behavioral measure of salience remain indirect so they're not really giving us a direct measure of how we our attention is being modulated by different events around us and so that some of the questions that remain is really measuring attention versus detectability and is there sort of a big difference between the two. There is really no common data sets that would allow us to really validate across these models and these models, by and large remain fairly static and really themselves modulated by attention. So, there is a lot of questions that remain to be explored in this space so with that I'm just going to acknowledge the work obviously if all the current and former students in the lab and postdocs who've done pretty much all this work as well as some of the funding agencies and I'll thank you for your attention.


Good afternoon and welcome to Convocation. Please stand as we welcome our student a cappella group drastic measures to sing the national anthem. Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light What's so proud gleaming whose broad stripes and bright stars through the pale... Thank you. The university has several religious organizations for students who work collaboratively with local clergy and our spiritual life office to coordinate spiritual programs on campus. Today the university's multi-faith chaplain and director of spiritual life the Reverend Nancy Sukup will offer invocation. Reverend Nancy. Please join me in a moment of silence in the spirit of the Quaker tradition. Spirit of wisdom. Spirit of truth as we gather to welcome our university's entering class. Draw us near to our namesake the Reverend Roger Williams a man who sought refuge from Massachusetts 383 years ago because he dared to preach new and dangerous ideas. Teach us again about Williams's lively experiment in Rhode Island to promote religious tolerance freedom of speech and respect for all. In still in this class the same eagerness for truth seeking and truth speaking that ignited Williams's own intellect and beliefs. Enable these students to move from scratching the surface of learning to diving deeply into theories postulations ideas and norms embolden them to ask why when others merely accept what is. Grant them joy and achievement courage in the face of disappointment fearlessness on unknown paths and boldness in friendships by opening their hearts to those not exactly like themselves remind each student here that they are not alone on this journey they are encircled by family and friends who support and encourage them ease their concerns and say yes to their dreams. Spirit grant our rising sophomores juniors seniors as well as faculty staff administrators and board members renewed purpose for this next year and most important shower blessings upon our new president Janus Meadows as he takes on the mantle of leading Roger Williams. Finally he make us aware each day that the ground of which we stand is the Poconac at Wampanoag sacred land for generations tribal members lived here and plied these waters with each step we take may we always honor them. Now bless these students bless this university with all that comes from truth and wisdom this day and forever more so be it. Thank you Reverend Suka. Greetings and welcome to members of the board of trustees president mellis the Fulton family faculty university administrators staff marshals orientation advisors and student volunteers parents family members and especially all of the first year and transfer students comprising the entering class as vice provost for academic affairs I thank you for participating in convocation exercises today and for celebrating this important milestone together for both family members and students today is a powerful and as a day of powerful and competing emotions the energy created by pride happiness and excitement conflicting with anxiety about the transition to the university life making new friends taking on new academic challenges and saying goodbye temporarily to loved ones joining you today are the dedicated faculty staff and student leaders who are committed to mentoring you along the way don't hesitate to reach out ask questions seek guidance make suggestions they're here for you students may be asking what is so special about this ceremony and perhaps how long will it last some family members may want a longer ceremony and a longer goodbye history informs us that the term convocation dates back to the 14th century was originally used to describe important religious gatherings and then adopted by universities to celebrate academic ceremonies such as the beginning of the academic school year at roger williams convocation begins with a procession of the entering class wearing hawken blaze and shirts in unity and continues with messages from university community members formally welcoming the entering class to our learning community importantly convocation includes the new class reciting the pledge of academic integrity together your first week is upon us your transition to rw u will continue with several important programs including fall orientation this weekend on monday all of you will join faculty staff and peer leaders for the 15th annual feinstein community connections program named in honor of alan shawn feinstein one of rodalin's leading philanthropists who has dedicated his life to promoting public service you will experience your first day of classes on wednesday and by the end of the week you will have a deeper sense of why you are here what faculty expect who is here to help you and why every rw student matters learning is central to what we do as a university and while we learn together new and returning students faculty and staff we're also in the process of building community and caring about one another this is hard work that requires patience humility and honesty being a community member requires intentional investment in action true community members don't stand by while peers struggle with any of life's challenges losses or injustices they reach out offering empathy intervention and support the call to community requires all of us to listen and understand each other to welcome and value all expressions of diversity and identity and to respect and value the dignity of each individual in order to help others you have to take care of yourself and your responsibilities eat and sleep well exercise dance sing keep up with your coursework go to class every class go for tutoring get involved write a poem laugh cry talk when you're sick visit health services recognize when you're struggling and share your feelings with friends faculty staff family and peer peer supports make an appointment with our campus experts in the counseling center and the center for academic success remember the habits you practice during college can provide a lifetime of benefit for your physical mental intellectual and emotional wellness it's a pleasure to welcome each of you and your family members to the rw community it's now my pleasure to welcome Dean Dean Amy Tiberio associate vice president of enrollment management and marketing to the podium for the presentation of the entering class good afternoon my role today is to officially introduce the entering class of 2023 and all our new transfer students to the greater campus community as you begin your Roger Williams academic career we are so excited for you and honored that you have chosen Roger Williams as your home among many other institutions individually you have all taken very distinct pathways to join us and it is so exciting to see you all sitting together today for the first time as one full class of new students allow me to share some fun facts about you and your new classmates you come to us from 567 different public and private high schools you hail from 23 states in eight different countries 83 percent of you are out of state students with 18 percent and rolling students of color our overall student body will be the most diverse that we've ever had at Roger Williams your involvements and hobbies are also diverse you are athletes activists volunteers musicians dancers actors poets and so much more and you are one of the most academically talented classes we have ever had I can only touch on the talents and experiences that you're bringing us please know individually each of you will make us a better institution and collectively you are an amazing class we cannot wait to see how you will challenge us and help us grow most importantly please know that you are here because we believe in you and we know you can succeed that is the common goal and belief that unites everyone present today it is now my privilege to hand off this incredible class to our president Dr. Mayulis I am pleased to present you the first year and transfer students representing the class of 2023 it's an honor to recognize our board vice chair Marsha Morris trustee Morris co-chair the search committee that brought us our 11th president Yanis Mialis Marsha has served on the board of trustees since 2009 as vice chair since 2016 as chair of the recruitment retention and student life committee since 2010 and as chair of the fund for civic scholars since 2016 in fact just three months ago she stood on this stage at commencement to receive a richly deserved honorary degree from Roger Williams we are grateful for her magnificent leadership as well as the steady hand and wise counsel she provided the university as she and other trustees helped to steer us through a time of transition over the past year we thank you Marsha and I'd like to invite you to the podium to introduce president Mialis good afternoon and welcome to all of you a visionary leader in experiential learning and champion of STEM education Yanis Mialis formally assumed leadership as the 11th president of Roger Williams University just this past Monday Dr. Mialis most recently served as president and director of the Boston Museum of Science where he introduced more than a million and a half visitors a year to science technology engineering and mathematics he led the development of the museum's national center for technological literacy advancing the knowledge of engineering and technology in k through 12 curricula programs that have reached an estimated 200 000 teachers and 18 million students Dr. Mialis began his distinguished career in higher education at his undergraduate alma mater Tufts University where he served as dean of the college of engineering as associate provost as interim dean of the graduate school of arts and scientists sciences I'm sorry and as a professor of mechanical engineering during his leadership at the college of engineering he helped raise 100 million dollars for the engineering school and worked closely with students and faculty to more than double its research initiatives introduced new programs form professional partnerships with industry and significantly increased the number of female students and faculty members in 2001 he spearheaded an initiative to make massachusetts the first state in the nation to bring engineering and technology curricula into its k through 12 public school system Dr. Mialis holds a doctoral degree in mechanical engineering a master of arts in economics a bachelor of science in engineering all from Tufts University as well as a master of science in mechanical engineering from the massachusetts institute of massachusetts institute of technology he's published numerous research papers several textbooks and holds two engineering patents that's a pretty deep science background but importantly and this was a key to the search committee yannis is a big believer in the importance of critical thinking and the role of the liberal arts in educating all students he's a transformative leader with an innate understanding of how to make educational endeavors relevant and fun as one of the presidential search co-chairs it is an honor for me to introduce and welcome to the podium our new president Yannis Mialis good afternoon i'm very excited to officially welcome you to roger williams and as you can imagine we have a lot of in common you are a first year students and i'm a first year president actually i have been on the job for six days now so if you feel like kind of embarrassed you don't know where the dining dining room is or this building that building i don't know either so i'm figuring it all out and so we all shared excitement over the summer orientations anxiety questions need for directions and now i'm honored to also be a member of your entering class and we are all now hawks so let me tell you a little bit about my higher education journey as a student don't be confused by my rhodialan accent i actually came from greece to study engineering in 1980 i went to tufts and i saw a lot of big cars pulling up to offload all your stuff i came with two suitcases from greece and my parents had never been in the u.s in the u.s my mom dropped me off at the airport in Athens she was crying her eyes out as you can imagine because i was leaving her by the way i was replaced by 19 cats eventually but um so i came with two suitcases my dad who had no idea what american colleges are like actually i'm the first one to attend the four year college in my family uh he brought me to his tailor to make sure i have the right suit to attend classes so here is first day of classes and my roommate was american and i was living in a sweet kind of environment in the dormitory i put on my suit i get out of the room all my classmates were looking at me the jaw drops said where the heck do you think you're going you have an interview already you haven't even started class so i said but i'm going to class and of course all day left so i immediately went back and put my jeans on and and i never wore that suit ever again that that was a boring moment so i spent a lot of my life in a higher education at tufts university and my favorite part and the one part i really missed when azote museum is working with students i have a had a very large group of undergraduate research students and most of the research papers i have published were co-authored by undergraduate students i believe that working with undergraduates at all levels teaching them learning from them doing research of them is the most rewarding part of a faculty member and the advantage you all have here is since we have very few graduate programs you'll get a lot more attention here from our fabulous faculty than than other students other classmates of yosem high school will get that attended research focused universities we have fabulous faculty here and fabulous staff so let me share with you what i found so special with roger williams to decide to come here this year aside of being a beautiful beautiful campus by the way in the winter things get a little bit different some days you'll walk out of your dorm and you have to double check and you did wear indeed your pants because you'll feel like you didn't it was so cold so what attracted me here combination of liberal arts and professional studies as marsha mentioned to you i'm a strong believer that a good education or around it educations should have a component strong component of the liberal arts no matter if you're a business student engineer liberal arts student or architect great opportunity here to major and minor or double major a lot of our students graduate with minors double majors in in areas that nobody would imagine they would go together make it possible for our students to become civic scholars fabulous programs to get involved with a community community engagement emphasis on experiential learning and community partnerships students collaborating in teams to solve real program problems in local communities this university is uniquely positioned to be the university the world needs now and our graduates will strengthen society we need inclusive minded future leaders skilled in working across differences in backgrounds perspectives cultures and values at roger williams there is a real commitment and action in support of diversity knowledge forums to training and education and for open and transparent leadership everyone here is welcome regardless the religion ethnicity race sexual orientation and gender identity and i expect all of you to be respectful of differences and celebrate diversity in my interviews and my undercover and i'll give you this story so when i was interviewed here i i did the three undercover visits pretending that my kid wants to go to roger williams well what i'm going to tell them i think i'll be president here and please show me around so so actually some of you might have been in the same tours i attended in late december and early january and one of the things i did is i made a point to go to the dining hall and meet students and so i sat down with students again pretending i was a prospective parent it's amazing every single student i sat next to and chatted love this place they love the place they love the students they love the faculty they love the staff they just loved it and i think you're going to love it also now some advice for the freshman class first be organized and plan ahead so when i was an undergraduate every sunday morning i would wake up go for brunch and then i had one of these big calendars like dentists have that have the day and and little timelines and i had one of those and i would plan my whole week so i would say because as you know this is not like high school you come at eight o'clock and you leave at two in their class after class you're going to have gaps between classes we have evening labs if you're in the sciences and and if you plan your time you don't have to ever pull an all nighter i never pulled an all nighter when i was a in undergraduate simply because i planned my week i was free every friday and saturday night to go out and have fun and i usually did not study one of the weekend days simply because i planned ahead so i recommend to you to get one of these calendars and plan your week every sunday i think you're going to have a lot more fun and do a lot better if you're organized second take advantage of the fantastic educational opportunities learn a second language if you already started the language finish it up here it's very important to graduate speaking another language if you want to be a citizen of the future study abroad we have fabulous study abroad programs go and meet people from another culture get immersed learn the language better become a civic scholar this is one of our signature programs here you learn more about it i strongly encourage you to become a civic scholar get to know your faculty we have fabulous fabulous dedicated faculty engage in undergraduate research and exploring the disciplinary areas and last bit life long friendships your life long partner may be sitting next to you or in front of your behind you right now your best friends for life that you haven't met yet may be sitting next to you in front of your behind you meet students from different states countries races and learn from them and their experiences and now something for the parents i know how hard it is to live your son or daughter here and drive away i did it twice both of my girls went to tufts a university that i knew very well i met their mother there i thought 16 years there but when i dropped them i went to the bathroom and almost fainted so my one piece of advice is let them go let them go we will take good care of them this is probably the best university to drop a son or daughter off and feel sure that you'll be taken care of trust them and trust us to help guide them into the journey my partner heidi and i will be very visible and active in campus life and i want each family member of our students to feel that they are a member of the roger williams family as well we're all in for a new and exciting beginning this is a happy day that you'll never forget good luck to all of you and you're now officially members of the class of 2023 thank you president mellis dr. dave moskowitz is an associate professor of political science and is beginning his 20th year of teaching at rw u his classroom lectures and discussions with students are highly engaging and his research centers on identity and intersectionality as it affects political attitudes please join me in welcoming faculty senate president moskowitz to the podium for the faculty address greetings entering class my faculty to our right or my right your left um and good afternoon the president of faculty speaks of convocation representing the faculty to the incoming class it's a chance to for the faculty to welcome new students and offer some words of advice to help you on your first year roger williams university therefore this afternoon you get me yeah thanks a lot first some bad news the bad news is that none of you are taking a class with me this fall i can say with certainty that the only person here today student body president chris costa can tell you what you're missing poor chris now for the good news i will use the time we would have been in class together roughly 45 hours to discuss what awaits you in your first year here in addition i would not be a political scientist if i did not add and now by unanimous consent i wish to revise and extend my remarks by the way offering advice to incoming students is no small task what do i tell incoming students where no two individuals share the same knowledge and experiences that brought them together today where no two students will walk away with the same meaning from what i say is there a one size that fits all way of telling you what lies ahead that will have that will be meaningful to you when you leave what can i add to the endless streams of advice that you have received thus far what would i have wanted to know sitting where you are now so many years ago what will students think in subsequent if subsequent research this proves my advice like when you listen to npr on your morning commute and a new study dispels accepted wisdom on how you should plan your life given all of that i have reduced a long list of advice to three things first stay engaged by this i mean keep your mind engaged in what you are doing this is especially true when you are in class it never fails that the student who zones off in class is the first one called upon by the professor sitting to your left staying engaged also applies outside of class keep up with what is going on locally nationally and internationally second the faculty are the greatest resource you have not only for the knowledge but also as your academic advisor seek them out ask questions you will find that if they do not know the answer as rare as that might be they will know someone who does whom else would you go to with questions about a class assignment but the person who wrote the assignment third learn from each other all here are uniquely skilled in different things and in different ways learn from each other as you share traditions foods cultures and perspectives learn from each other what study habits work and what does not work you know the student down a hall who is good at mathematics but more uncertain about history while you are good at history but are not quite getting mathematics guess what you have found a natural study partner finally i want to circle back to something i mentioned before while giving you a homework assignment if you will a bit of advice freely offered think big you hear it all the time go bigger go home as a variation on that advice well that got me thinking i want you to google someone for me tonight now john king has asked that i add the word tonight in there so we all don't take out our phones and google it now which begs the question how are you going to remember this name i want you to google somebody tonight and please know sharing what you find or giving the information away the person you google can probably touch each and every one of the disciplines of study here at roger Williams university moreover for the parents and older adults here today those who have made a positive impact on the lives of our entering class you too know this person or shall i say their creations especially when you come upon one of their creations late at night after you stepped on one is everybody ready for the person's name google olay kirk christensen everybody got it olay kirk christians look at us they're googling already now the next time you hear think big think about olay for me thank you thank you for professor moskowitz it's my pleasure to introduce our student senate president christopher costa to give the student senate welcome christ is a senior from port smith road island studying economics please join me and welcoming christ to the podium thank you good afternoon everyone it is my privilege to be the first student to welcome all of the new and transfer students in the entering class and their families to roger on behalf of the student senate my name is christopher costa and i have the great honor of serving as your student body president for this academic year in preparing for the speech i tried to think back and recall how exactly i was feeling during my convocation as i was sitting in the chairs that you are right now one of the first things that came to my mind was why am i wearing this black robe in 85 degree heat and that's because for my entering class our convocation we had to wear robes like you would wear at graduation and then they changed that and so all of you are here in t-shirts and shorts so that's great but in all seriousness i was a little apprehensive about my first days here at roger i was nervous worried and even a little scared just like some of you may be right now i wasn't sure if i would like my school my major if i would make a lot of friends and i had no idea what i was going to do outside of classes but luckily i chose to go to roger williams and looking back on that decision three years later i know it was a great one please know that if you're feeling any of those emotions right now you're not alone the good news is that you've chosen a university where you can truly be yourself and be confident that you will find a place to fit in and feel at home no matter how far from home you may be if your high schools were anything like mine then you may remember all of the pressures that went along with going to them pressures that might have stopped you from pursuing your interests or even pressures that didn't allow you to completely be yourself now that you're in college you have a completely clean slate and roger is a place where you have so many options and opportunities to explore and truly find your passions interests and be the person that you really want to be are you passionate about advocacy and helping people we have so many organizations that focus just on that once that focus on sustainability social justice public health feeding those who are hungry and building homes for those that really need them our sports more up your alley there are dozens of intramural sports to play here from soccer to club hockey or even just renting some kayaks with friends and going out on the water my freshman year i wanted to play soccer but my friend group wasn't exactly interested in that and so i joined the intramural league as a free agent the only problem was the team that i joined was all seniors and here i was as a freshman joining their squad normally i would be so scared to do something like that but those seniors just so like just like so many people here at roger were so nice so kind and so welcoming and joining that team led me to have so many fun experiences that i will remember for the rest of my life maybe sports aren't your thing and you like music or the arts we have dance clubs and teams acapella groups open mic nights an instrument jam room and a standing room only poetry slams and so many other amazing groups or maybe you want to make connections with people of similar communities and identities whether you remember of the queer community like i am come from a different country or are passionate about your political beliefs no matter what your background nationality interests or values there are people places and communities on this campus that share them and you can be confident that you're in a place that's not only safe to be yourself but it's encouraged college can be one of the best experiences we have in our lives but those valuable experiences aren't just going to fall on your lap you need to work for them and put yourself out there so i want to challenge all of you to take a step out of your comfort zones and pursue your interest join a club you think you might like run for positions on student senate or be a class officer get in on an intramural team or even do something as simple as taking that drama or that music class that you've always been interested in every student in college is starting their adult life preparing for their career and further exploring who they're going to be at roger you have an amazing opportunity to be who you want to be and pursue your goals and aspirations be brave be bold and be you in the words of motivational speaker joe duncan if you're going to quit anything quit being lazy quit making excuses and quit waiting for the right time entering class this is the right time so go out there and have an amazing college experience here at roger thank you chris thank you for those wonderful words of advice and welcome trish scott joined the parent and family leadership council at rw u in the spring of 2018 trish and her husband wendell are from new jersey and are the parents of two sons including greg who lives in portland main and colman and rw u junior whose studies are focused on communications and marketing a graduate of tufts university with a double major in history and french trish also earned an mba at stern business stern school of business at new york university and began her professional career in finance at ibm and jp morgan chase she currently works at msm financial strategies an investment advisory firm that trish founded with two partners the scott family also includes two huge bernie's mountain dogs including cinnamon a certified pet therapy dog who teams with trish serving a local elementary school in a reading to the dogs program which supports children working to overcome reading challenges please welcome trish to the podium for the family address good afternoon and congratulations to all the new students and family members as you join the roger williams community community it is a distinct honor for me to speak with you today as you embark on this new and meaningful journey it was just two years ago that i sat with my son and my family in the seats that you are in now move in day flew by we were all so excited for colman as he was embarking on this new and distinctly more independent path after months and months of seemingly endless effort to be accepted at college when the moment came to bring him to campus and then to say goodbye it seemed slightly shocking wow the long awaited very new reality was upon us being on campus set my mind racing with questions of what the very first days would hold colman also had questions i knew certainly they were different than mine remarkably it feels like truly it feels like we have fast forwarded to today two years later perhaps i can address one or two questions that you may be mulling over by providing a glimpse of what the scott family has learned about life at roger williams so i'll start at the beginning actually the very beginning colman was born in 1997 at a hospital in new jersey okay i'm glad you're laughing i'm just kidding we're stepping up colman is a freshman in 2017 a big topic for me as the day two days to come on campus we're approaching was keeping the communication going in our family i was wondering was this a concern for colman i wasn't sure in fact a few days before we headed off to bristol i will admit i panicked considering that my calls offering tender words of motherly advice could be forwarded to voicemail this was a distressing concern for me so a day later rather spontaneously i told colman that i wanted to speak with him by phone at least 15 minutes per week to hear the latest highlights and possible lowlights in real time okay mom is what i heard that actually was great for a moment the queasy feeling that i had did not go away i felt our conversation needed to be more genuine so i shared with colman that for 18 years i had become very accustomed to looking out for him and offering a few maybe more words of advice certainly i trusted him to set off from our family but i wanted to still feel that we were connected in a meaningful way as the conversation unfolded we both recognized that we were simply making an agreement on how to stay in touch and be respectful of each other's needs was this new actually no but the circumstances were new and in these few moments we found the time to be sure we understood each other wendell and i were wanting to share a part of the college journey while remaining on the home front colman assured me that he would regularly engage with us and keep us up to date on his news as the saying goes this isn't rocket science but it did establish a shared agreement and we have found that regular communication by phone by text and by shared photos keeps us connected so for parents and students alike i share with you that a little heart to heart chat at the start of the year followed by many chats or texts during the year makes for a happy journey for those who are on campus and family members who remain at home or elsewhere another aspect of freshman year that captured my attention was how any bumps in the road would be smoothed out we all knew there would be challenges but what they would be and how they would be resolved we didn't know in the time that has elapsed i have observed that colman has had the opportunity to collaborate with many varied resources on campus in ramping up as a new student not just professors but administrators and peers have offered guidance as well as encouragement freshman year had some great successes naturally and also some weaker moments it was striking to me and i mean this most sincerely that in all situations colman has been consistently recognized and respected as an individual who has talent and motivation and ability to move forward even when times are tough the strong element of collaboration on this campus reflects a network that is both supportive and realistically in tune with the ups and downs of daily campus life challenges have been broken down into reasonable steps that create a path forward this committed partnership i find is a resource of tremendous value to both parents and students alike and it provides a solid foundation to move forward and be successful as a final brief comment i would like to share that attending family weekend and homecoming was an event that the scott family particularly looked forward to in the early weeks of freshman year naturally we wanted to see colman fully immersed in campus life in attending the event however we quickly realized that engaging with other students and families offered a wealth of perspective on the multiple aspects of life on this campus we arrived with a limited view that aligned with colman's interests however as that day unfolded and we interacted with others our insight to the campus life greatly expanded this is a vibrant community with a diversity of individuals who are passionate about their myriad pursuits there is much to be learned here by students and families alike do plan to be on campus for family weekend and homecoming it is a must attend event in closing our family can confirm that the college experience flies by very quickly enjoy every moment that you are here i wish each and every student and family member listening or watching a wonderful year thank you thank you trish it's now time to formally welcome the entering class to the university i invite dr susan mcternan dean of the mario j gabelli school of business to the podium to lead the class and the pledge of academic integrity good afternoon to you all i'm so pleased to now have the privilege of administering the pledge of integrity to you our exceptional incoming class this pledge embodies a set of ideals that link this institution to those that have come before it all the way back to the colloquia of socrates something that you will study in the coming months by embracing this pledge you commit to pursuing academic achievement of the highest standards its goal is that we are collegial in the best sense of the word a community of scholars working within an atmosphere of honesty and integrity the faculty of roger williams university considers the honor pledge to be the foundation of trust that makes our community of learning possible when you take this pledge you will be welcomed into this academic community but you must be aware that a violation of the pledge will bring consequences when you accept this code you pledge yourself to personal integrity you pledge to take responsibility for your actions and decisions and that you are interested in acquiring knowledge on your own for its own sake rather than as simply a display of achievement to impress others for competitive advantage finally you pledge to form a bond with your professors and your fellow students that is based on trust and a common pursuit of knowledge will all of our new students please stand as you are able please open your program to the pledge of academic integrity I ask also that the faculty and the officers of the university now stand to witness this pledge I ask that each member of the incoming class concentrate fully on these words as you promise to adopt and practice the following code of conduct please repeat after me we the undergraduate students of roger williams university commit ourselves to academic integrity we promise to pursue the highest ideals of academic life to challenge ourselves with the most rigorous standards to be honest in every academic endeavor to conduct ourselves responsibly and honorably and to assist one another as we live and work together in mutual support thank you we extend the warmest welcome to you all to our academic community and extend our very best wishes as you begin your first semester with us thank you dean mcternan as we near the end of our ceremony i would like to invite dr lisa landerman assistant vice president and dean of student life for the closing remarks please join me in welcoming dr landerman to the podium so it may on this same field we graduated a really impressive class the students were engaged in amazing endeavors research projects community service partnerships internships social change efforts student organization leadership athletic competitions dance and music performances study abroad tutoring advising mentoring and assisting peers all while fulfilling their academic goals yet when many of these recent graduates started their time at rw u they didn't feel certain about what they wanted to accomplish some didn't know exactly what they wanted to study and most couldn't anticipate how their lives would be transformed by their rw u experience and it wasn't always easy some struggled some felt discouraged some changed course but most if not all received assistance and support from members of our community that includes faculty staff students and even alumni sometimes these are the stories that we forget to tell when we are sharing pride for our students and all they're accomplished and all that we have to offer here so let me just say that wherever you are now whatever you're feeling is okay it may take some time to find your way to figure out what you want from this time and what you will need to be well to feel connected and to accomplish your goals know that we are all here to support you as you've heard throughout the speeches today we're here to help you navigate your college experience as you determine what your legacy will be be open to the ride this is your time this is your university and we are excited to become trusted guides for your rw u journey so here's what happens next following convocation commuters are asked to attend a meeting in the college of arts and science building we call that CAS room 157 at about 3 30 and we'll have a meeting that will help you prepare for this transition to the academic year and talk through fall orientation residential students will begin dinner that will start between 4 30 and 6 30 and then you'll have a community meeting from 7 to 8 please check the guidebook app for the specific details of your assigned dinner times you're a large class so we've got to rotate you in and the location of your community meetings at 8 o'clock pm all students are encouraged to attend the pizza and music welcome at the cedar hall basketball court sponsored by the campus entertainment network we call them c en and the w q r i 88.3 f m station now here's the difficult part for family members this is time for you to say goodbye so what we'd like you to do is find a place to meet your students and we ask that around by 3 30 you you are on your way to leaving campus i won't go as far as calling it a curfew but it is so if you everyone would please rise and remain standing at your seats as we prepare the recessional the platform party will leave first followed by the faculty marshals will guide the class out and family members can meet students in front of the field house of the common quad thank you and have a great rest of your day


Hey, today I'll explain what I use to trace my perspective grids in Krita. It's a popular demand on the channel because you all saw me using this type of grids during my time lapses. In a nutshell, it's a set of grids I made and I just import them into Krita and it helps me to trace my perspective grids. It's really not rocket science. I already covered that topic a couple years ago in a long video, the comic page from A to D in Krita. I will post the thumbnail here. But this video now will dig a little bit more on the topic. So before starting, I assume you already know the basics of perspective. You know what? A vanishing point, an horizon line, the 1 point, 2 point, 3 point etc etc system. If it's not already the case, I invite you to watch another basic tutorial on the topic and you can find them almost everywhere, even on basic books, so it should not be a problem. I personally learned on this book by Andrew Loomis. It's called Successful Drawing, a very good one, but I can't show you the inside because it's not creative comments content. So let's start. So go in the description of the video and download the files. It's a zip, so decompress it somewhere on the memory of your device and in the folder of your choice. You should get a folder with a pack of PNG files at this point. I distribute them for free. It's listed under public domain, so do whatever you want with them. Even commercial projects are accepted. So how to use them? First start by eyeballing your scene with the perspective system of your choice. It can be a storyboard, a sketch or even while you are doing thumbnail. Once you have a good idea of your composition and view angle, I advise you to detect where will be your horizon line and where will be your vanishing point. You can trace on a temporary layer, quick cubes, here and there if you are not sure where the perspective is. The cubes will help you especially in scenes where the elements are organic shapes such as characters or landscapes. Then when you have a good idea, you just use the grids I distribute to trace the perspective system. You just need to open them on your folder and drag and drop what you need over the canvas of Krita. You will see a contextual menu and select insert as new layer. Then you can use the transform tool to adapt your grid to your need. Riscal, move, rotate. I use this method because it is just quicker for me than tracing grids manually line after line. It's also really faster compared to the built-in feature painting assistant of Krita and has no performance issue. It's also a better method adapted to comic pages because I can use this way more than a single perspective system per page where the painting assistants are limited at one system per document. If you are interested to know more about my 2013 proposal for perspective feature in Krita, you can read this article on my blog. Before ending the video, I would like to share some tips. To contain your perspective grids to one panel, start by creating your system using the grids. I put them into a layer group. You can also select the three layer and press Ctrl G to group them quicker. And now I trace a selection around the panel. And not your selection can also be circular or non-rectangular. You can decide the shape freely. Then with a selection, select the group layer and add a transparency mask. The transparency mask will automatically understand you want to limit this group to their area selected. Now you can move the grids inside the group. And they will be always contained inside your panel. If you want to get a curved lens for your shot, you can use the transform tool of Krita. The mesh deform is excellent for that. Just inflate a little bit the corners, cut new segment with Ctrl Alt click over the edges. And this way you'll be able to curve your perspective system at will. And a final tip, if you need to turn off temporary the color of your perspective group, just turn the blending mode to luminosity. It's a blending mode you'll find part of the Ash SY group. So I hope this pack of grids will be useful for your project. I could take the time to make this video thanks to my patron on Liberapay, Patreon and TP. I mainly receive your funding when I release a new webcomic episode of Pepper and Carrot. But I keep the production of this type of video as free bonuses in between the episode. So feel free to join the supporters if you like this type of production. It really helps. You can also help me to promote this video and you know what to do depending the platform you are using. Sometimes it's a little thumb up, sometimes it's a comment for referencing, sharing, etc. So thanks again and see you next time, bye bye.