Listservs

The Academic Senate provides Pratt Forum, an open listerv for the Institute’s academic community. The Senate does not control content of these messages; each sender is responsible for their content. Messages do not necessarily reflect the endorsement by the Academic Senate or Pratt Institute.

To join the Forum, please visit https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pratt-forum and log in with a Google account, or email prattsenate@gmail.com to request membership. Once approved, you will be able to post messages using the Google Groups web interface or by emailing pratt-forum@googlegroups.com from an email address associated with the group. You can also set email digest preferences (all mail, combined messages, daily digest, no email) and view forum members.

Past Forum discussions have addressed the following topics:

  • Rapid prototyping
  • Rapid prototyping of solutions
  • The Idea Lab
  • Nude models at art colleges
  • Contemporary architecture
  • Industry contracts at colleges
  • Research
  • Revolutions in design and making
  • Technological literacy
  • All of MIT’s course material is online
  • Computation and the arts
  • Contemporary art
  • Theory in academia
  • Writing in colleges
  • Online learning
  • Grade inflation
  • The resolution of Zeno’s paradoxes
  • Robotics
  • AI and consciousness
  • Role of chairs at Pratt
  • Biomimicry – Art and Science
  • Comics
  • Diversity
  • Faculty Union elections
  • What students should know
  • Faculty Union contract “memorandum of understanding”
  • Teaching assistants at Pratt
  • Bioluminescence

Listserv Guidelines

First posted December 2002; amended and ratified by the Academic Senate, November 2003

List participants are expected to express themselves with sensitivity and consideration for others. The list administrator therefore reserves the right to take whatever actions are deemed necessary and prudent to maintain a free and lively forum.

  1. Obey Pratt Institute policies or codes and state and federal laws, as they relate to computer and network use.
  2. As a subscriber, you are responsible for the content of the emails you send. Please be aware of this before sending a message.
  3. Do not use the listserv to harass, threaten, libel, slander, or otherwise cause harm to individuals or groups whether by direct or indirect means
  4. Messages sent to the list serve are archived, searchable via the Internet, and CANNOT be deleted.
  5. Do not transmit proprietary, or unauthorized copyright-protected material.
  6. Be polite. Without the visual and audio clues of speech, if your words could be taken the wrong way, they will be. Be clear and civil, and remember that irony and sarcasm really don’t carry over well with plain text.
  7. Try to stay on topic. Keep your messages short; succinct is good. Long and rambling is not.
  8. Make sure your subject line is accurate. If the subject of discussion veers off into other directions, take a couple of seconds to change the subject.
  9. Replying to a message sends the message to everyone in the listserv. To reply to a specific person, please be sure to change the address before replying.
  10. When replying publicly to a previous posting on the list, copy just enough of the original posting to put your reply into context and minimize the amount of text. Keep it brief and clear.
  11. Keep your signature lines small – no more than 6 lines, preferably three.
  12. DON’T SHOUT IN YOUR MESSAGES (all caps is considered shouting and will be perceived as rude). Use them sparingly for emphasis only.
  13. Don’t post messages in HTML, binaries, or word-processing attachments. Use plain text.