I am coming to the end of my first graduate seminar since moving to MSU, and finding the experience particularly rewarding. Perhaps many stars aligned, such as having a small seminar, or as I get more experience in the classroom, I simply enjoy the experience more, but this semester was terrific.

My class was on Media and Information Policy. It covered a wide range of broad topics, such as privacy and surveillance, intellectual property, access and more (850 Course-22JAN15). The students could then do presentations related to the topics of most interest, and write their paper on one particular topic, allowing them to go into depth on what interested them most. This is pretty standard, but what a pleasure to spend three hours a week talking about topics that I find valuable to my own work with students who are bright and engaged, and writing papers on such issues as interesting and diverse as the right to be forgotten, municipal broadband, copyright in the music industry, cybersecurity, and media concentration, focusing on the proposed Comcast-Time Warner merger? During the term, one of the students won a Presidential Fellowship to pursue these issues, while another arranged the music for a parody music video of the MSU basketball team that generated tens of thousands of views. Looking forward to seeing the completed papers this week. On top of that, I had a couple of doctoral students auditing, and a Visiting Fellow from Israel, Dr Avsha Ginosar, sitting in and adding to the mix of perspectives. Great to be back in the classroom.