Maps, number lines, shapes, artwork and other materials tend to cover elementary classroom walls.  

However, new research shows that too much of a good thing may end up disrupting attention and learning in young children.

Published in Psychological Science, Anna V. Fisher, Karrie E. Godwin and Howard Seltman looked at whether classroom displays affected children's ability to maintain focus during instruction and to learn the lesson content.  

They found that children in highly decorated classrooms were more distracted, spent more time off-task and demonstrated smaller learning gains than when the decorations were removed.

Read more. 

Dietrich Honors Fellowship Program: The Beginning 

2014 Adamson Student Writing Awards     

Award-winning and New York Times' bestselling author Andre Dubus III was the keynote speaker at the 2014 Adamson Student Writing Awards.

The Department of English presents the annual writing awards to recognize excellence in fiction, poetry, screenwriting and non-fiction. The awards are open to CMU undergraduate and graduate students, and the winners are selected by non-CMU writers.  

The Adamson Awards honor Pauline B. Adamson at the bequest of her husband, the late Clarence H. Adamson, as a testimonial to their marriage and her interest in the English language and American Literature.

 Read more and find out who won. 

Reshaping Mathematics

Philosophy Professor Steve Awodey has received a $7.5 million, five-year grant from the Department of Defense (DOD) to reshape the foundations of mathematics by developing a new approach that allows for large-scale formalization and computer verification.

The award, part of the highly competitive Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program, is one of 24 issued this year totaling $167 million over five years.

The grant will allow Awodey and his research team to continue building on his groundbreaking discovery in 2005 of "Homotopy Type Theory," a deep and surprising connection between abstract, mathematical geometry and computational logic.

Read more. 

"Lucky After Dark" Exhibit Opens

The Pittsburgh Queer History Project, an oral history and media preservation initiative directed by Harrison Apple and Tim Haggerty, will present its first exhibit, "Lucky After Dark: Gay and Lesbian Nightlife in Pittsburgh, 1960-1990," from May 30 through June 29 at Future Tenant Gallery.

"Lucky After Dark" will explore the role after-hours nightlife in postwar Pittsburgh played in establishing and shaping gay and lesbian identities.

Paul Eiss, director of the Center for the Arts and Society and associate professor of anthropology and history, called the work "one of the most impressive oral historical projects I've witnessed."

Read more. 

More Dietrich College News 

Dietrich College Multimedia 

Find out what's new with Jesse Kates (DC'00, CS'01), Joshua Swanson (DC'15), Jasper Wang (DC'17) and others in Class Notes.