Catch IDI
Catch IDI
On a summer day in 2018, Miriam Lillebo, both a student and student contact (students who work in the IDI-administration.) at the Department of Computer Science (IDI) had lunch with Excited PhD Madeleine Lorås. They were talking about the IDI Christmas-party half a year earlier and how good it had been for the student environment and relationship between IDI students and staff. Lorås was also telling Lillebo about all the exciting research going on at IDI.
"We realized there was a distance between students and academic employees, where students really don't know what their lecturers are doing outside of the auditorium. Even people in neighboring offices don't know what the person next door is working on," Lorås explains. They figured there had to be a way to get all this information about the Department’s research across to other students and close the gaps between IDI employees. That’s when the idea of Catch IDI emerged.
“Together we figured out that a conference and a banquet was the perfect solution” Lillebo explains. At the conference, professors can present their research to the students helping them understand what is going on in the department outside lectures. At the banquet IDI students across all study programs can mingle with each other and the Department staff. "Never underestimate the effects of a good dinner" Lorås states firmly. She has talked to several colleagues experiencing closer bonds with students after the Catch IDI banquet.
Communication and cooperation
Catch IDI is a result of close cooperation between Excited and IDI. Together Lorås from Exited and Lillebo from IDI approached Excited Coordinator Ida Sortland. She liked the idea and encouraged them to present it to Head of the Department of Computer Science, Professor John Krogstie. He supported Catch IDI right away and was willing to fund it together with Excited, turning idea into reality. Perhaps quicker than either Lillebo or Lorås expected. The first Catch IDI was held in January of 2019.
Catch IDI is by and for IDI. Still, it could never have come together the way it did had it not been for the support of Excited according to Lillebo. “Excited provided funds so we could fly IDI students from Gjøvik to attend the Conference in Trondheim. They helped plan the Conference, helped facilitate it and made several of their learning assistants available to us”.
“My experience is that the cooperation between IDI’s student contacts and Excited is especially good. We have good communication across the units. When we work together, we work as one unit, not separate units” she says. Ida Sortland agrees. “The Excited staff, Excited learning assistants, IDI’s student contacts, the student organizations the professors and the department leader group all have good structured and unstructured communication between them, which gives room to find new and creative ways to work together and develop”.
![Overview of Key Note lecture Catch IDI, Alf Inge Wang](/documents/1271705576/1294243453/catchidi_2020_keynote1.jpg/06b68d60-4f81-89f6-0800-95c73e38aee3?t=1597060240066&imagePreview=1)
An immediate success
The first Catch IDI Conference was an immediate success. “Everyone from the most experienced professors to the newest students praised the conference” Lillebo says proudly.
“I think Catch IDI’s success is rooted in us reaching a wide audience” she continues. “Exciting research is presented at a student-friendly level. It’s possible for students to grasp what professors do outside lectures, and for staff to see what their colleagues actually spend their time on”. "An event like this lowers the bar for students and staff to talk to each other, both at the event and later at campus" Lorås ads.
“I think it’s quite awesome that two young, female IT-students like Madeleine and I are the ones behind Catch IDI, in what is typically a very male dominated environment”, Lillebo concludes.
![The crew, Catch IDI 2020](/documents/1271705576/1294243453/alle_crew.jpg/22b93a63-537a-392f-623d-09b93e81f5b3?t=1597059787706&imagePreview=1)
Member of the board
When a position on the Excited board opened up in 2019, Miriam was the natural choice being a student at IDI and having worked closely with Excited through Catch IDI.
“I think having students on the Excited board is imperative”, Lillebo says. “Excited works to improve all aspects of IT-education, and nobody knows IT-education better than the students who are in the middle of it”.