Brenda Harger stalks the aisles of an amusement-park trade show. The 麻豆村 professor is hunting for companies that might be attractive career-placement fits for her Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) students. Suddenly, she freezes. A child鈥檚 eyes stare at her from a logo for Give Kids the World Village, a place she hasn鈥檛 thought about鈥攐r wanted to鈥攊n nearly a decade. Images of her daughter bounding beneath palm trees, and of oncologists measuring their words, flood her mind. She approaches the booth. 鈥淚 know you guys,鈥� says Harger. 鈥淚 was a 鈥榳ish鈥� mom.鈥�
In 1990, Harger鈥檚 18-month-old daughter Hallie was diagnosed with leukemia and given a 78% chance of survival. For nearly three years, Harger and her husband watched chemotherapy treatments steal their daughter鈥檚 hair, and steroids puff up her cheeks. After Harger (A鈥�00) quit working to tend to Hallie鈥檚 illness full-time, the family survived almost entirely on her husband鈥檚 schoolteacher salary. Eating out became a luxury. 鈥淭he word 鈥榲acation鈥� wasn鈥檛 even in our lexicon,鈥� remembers Harger鈥攖hat is, until Hallie鈥檚 doctors recommended her family to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Just after Hallie entered the maintenance stage of her treatment, when chemo becomes less intense and less frequent, Make-A-Wish granted Hallie a visit to Disney World and several other Orlando theme parks, giving the Hargers their first vacation in nearly three years. For one all-expense-paid week, they stayed at the Give Kids the World Village, a non-profit storybook resort that provides cost-free lodging to children with life-threatening illnesses and their families.
In the mornings, before the family visited Disney World, Universal Studios, and Sea World, four-year-old Hallie careened around the Village鈥檚 attractions. Designed with its exceptional guests in mind, the resort includes a wheelchair-accessible pool and carousel, an ice-cream parlor that starts slinging sundaes at 7:30 am, and Julie鈥檚 Safari Theatre, where characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck visit twice a week. In the evenings, Mayor Clayton, a six-foot-tall rabbit who watches over the Village, tucks the children in at bedtime.
For Harger and her husband, it was a worry-free respite from checking for fevers and monitoring white blood cell counts. For Hallie, it was a week free from the torment of saline drips and hospital trips. Five years later, Hallie鈥檚 doctors declared her cured.
At that trade show booth, Harger tells Kathy Aubruner, the Village鈥檚 director of strategic alliances, all about her family鈥檚 trip and her daughter鈥檚 battle with cancer. Tears flow. During the conversation, an idea comes to her. 鈥淚鈥檓 at this graduate program where we make stuff using technology,鈥� says Harger. 鈥淧erhaps we might be able to help?鈥� They exchange contact information.
Founded in 1999 by now-retired drama professor Don Marinelli and the late computer science professor Randy Pausch, ETC is the home to a unique two-year program of the College of Fine Arts and the School of Computer Science. The center, which identifies itself as the 鈥淕raduate Program for the Left and Right Brain,鈥� unites students of diverse backgrounds鈥攆rom engineers and software developers to artists and philosophers鈥攁nd teaches them how to create new forms of digital entertainment. Through semester-long projects, students work in teams to conceive, design, and build prototypes of video games, animated films, and virtual-reality technology for actual and fictional clients. Their training turns them into candidates for careers at places like Pixar, Microsoft, and Disney鈥攁ll of which employ ETC alumni. The hallways of the center鈥檚 home鈥攕everal floors in a building on the Pittsburgh riverfront鈥攁re lined floor-to-ceiling with memorabilia. There are eight-foot-wide replicas of Nintendo controllers, life-size statues of Batman, and Star Wars鈥� C-3PO.
Harger has 15 ETC students in tow the following year when she returns to the conference, this time in Orlando. She brings the students by the Village鈥檚 booth, and Aubruner offers to give them a tour of the resort. By the time the students finish their visit, tears run down their faces and ideas line their notebooks. 鈥淲e have to do something with them. We have to,鈥� the students tell Harger. But what?
Upon their return to Pittsburgh, the students pitch several ideas for Village projects. An ETC and Give Kids the World partnership has its merits. Marinelli and Pausch, when founding ETC, aimed for the program to be life-changing, life-enlightening, and life-enhancing, and they strived to impart the values of compassion and altruism to their students. In addition to the goodwill, a collaboration would present some terrific learning opportunities鈥攅specially in the way of client constraints. For the resort, which survives exclusively on donations, budget concerns ring loudest. As Harger puts it, the Village 鈥渋s held together with duct tape and love.鈥�
Still, Harger and other faculty members have their reservations. ETC鈥檚 curriculum emphasizes risk-taking and creativity. Students are taught to embrace failure as an almost expected by-product of innovation. Their completed projects are functional, but by no means intended to be finished products. Harger, knowing intimately what the students鈥� failure would mean, is wary鈥攖o say the least. 鈥淚 was terrified,鈥� she remembers. 鈥淲e make prototypes. What are we doing promising completed products?鈥�
Her fears are no match for her students鈥� enthusiasm, and the faculty ultimately gives them the go-ahead. They green-light a computer-animated short-film project called The Big Surprise, which will follow several Village characters as they plan a surprise birthday party for Mayor Clayton (that six-foot-tall bunny).
This will be no ordinary film. In addition to writing the script and doing the animation, the students plan to revamp the Village鈥檚 under-utilized theater by outfitting it with wind, bubble, and mist machines to bring the film to life. It鈥檒l be a small-scale version of similar Disney World experiences. The scope is ambitious鈥攅specially given the semester-long timeline. But shooting for the stars is what ETC is all about. 鈥淏y the end of the semester, they weren鈥檛 sleeping anymore. I told them, 鈥楽low down. Cut something,鈥欌�� remembers Harger. 鈥淣o! No! No!鈥� was their answer.
At semester鈥檚 end, the students visit the Village for installation. They even organize an elaborate red-carpet premiere, with visiting parents acting as paparazzi for the Village鈥檚 true stars: the children. The experience is jaw-dropping. Near the end of the film, Windy, the cloud, gives Mayor Clayton his birthday gift鈥攁 rainbow. Children鈥檚 eyes light up as bubbles float around the theater and pop on their noses. 鈥淲e had never seen the Village鈥檚 characters animated鈥攎uch less 3-D,鈥� remembers Aubruner. 鈥淭o see them up on the big screen in such detail, it was perfect.鈥�
ETC was just getting started. 鈥淥nce it happened, it was a match made in heaven,鈥� says Harger. With such special guests, the Village encountered some equally special problems鈥攑roblems ETC students were exceptionally suited to tackle.
In the early 鈥�90s, the Village began having children write their names on two-inch, gold plastic stars. Each night, a volunteer glued the stars to the ceiling of the Village鈥檚 Castle of Miracles, and the next day, children returned to see their stars鈥攁nd their wishes鈥攖winkling in the night sky. By 2005, the castle鈥檚 ceiling boasted more than 50,000 stars, each representing a wish child. A fable about a star fairy who placed each star in the sky had emerged as well.
The stars took on added significance when parents of children who had passed away began returning to see their children鈥檚 stars. Because they were placed on the ceiling in no particular order, finding one amid the galaxy often turned into an hours-long odyssey.
In the spring of 2006, seven ETC students undertook the massive Gold Star project. To bring the star fairy myth to life, they created a rumbling star box, into which children dropped their stars after autographing them. The children then followed the star fairy, whom the students named Stella, via an animated show on three video screens鈥攆airy windows鈥攁s she placed their stars in the night sky.
They also created an electronic database to track each star鈥檚 location. Again, the scope was extraordinary. But according to Amber Samdahl (麻豆村鈥�06), currently a Disney Imagineer, who was a team member at the time, 鈥淲e never lost sight of why we were doing it. When things got tough, we鈥檇 yell out, 鈥楾hink of the kids!鈥� and keep going.鈥�
The final result was stunning. But the Castle of Miracle鈥檚 ceiling had only so much room. As the Village grew and more children visited, ceiling space started to disappear. So, in 2010, the Village proposed to Harger that her students invent a way to make the stars digital. In an odd twist, Harger would have none of it. As she noted at the outset of the original star project planning: 鈥淭he stars have to be physical. They鈥檙e too meaningful for the families.鈥� Luckily, a company offered to build and donate a 30-foot addition to the Castle of Miracles, known as the Star Tower, to house tens of thousands of additional real, not digital, stars. The company then reached out to ETC: Would any students be interested in designing the star-tracking software for the new tower?
鈥淚t sounded like a fantastic project,鈥� says then-team member Tom Corbett (麻豆村鈥�11), who now works for video-game juggernaut Electronic Arts. The Village needed a very specific solution. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a physical component, a location component, and a software component,鈥� Corbett says. But the students were motivated by more than just the challenge. 鈥淲hen you make a video game, you don鈥檛 necessarily touch other people,鈥� he adds. 鈥淚n this case, we could create something that had a lot of impact.鈥�
By May 2011, Corbett and seven other students had designed, coded, and installed remote-controlled cameras embedded in the tower walls, an updated star-tracking database, and a light and sound display that would make Disney jealous. The team even created an interactive application for the iPad that used the ability of the tablet鈥檚 internal accelerometer and gyroscopes to respond to movement to make children feel like they were looking right into the star fairy鈥檚 world.
But shooting for the stars creates its own problems. Because few鈥攊f any鈥攐f the park鈥檚 army of volunteers have experience with software coding or entertainment technology, maintenance of the complex attractions designed by ETC students is difficult. Luckily, many graduates go on to design attractions at Orlando鈥檚 theme parks, so they鈥檙e sometimes able to return to make repairs. To assist them, Harger and several alumni are raising funds to create a paid summer internship position for an ETC student, as well as cover travel costs for current students to make periodic maintenance visits.
Over the years, ETC has delivered several other projects, including a giant interactive pillow-tree and a reservation kiosk for Mayor Clayton鈥檚 bedtime tuck-ins. And an ETC team just debuted a new short film, Stardust, which will run before the poolside 鈥渄ive-in鈥� movie. The stunning 3-D animated film tells the story of how Mayor Clayton and his wife, Miss Merry, originally met.
The partnership has even inspired some alumni to found their own ventures, including an interactive technology firm, Electric Owl, launched by 2007 grads Patrick Mittereder and Brad Patton. Their company鈥檚 first product, a kiosk developed to help alleviate children鈥檚 fears and anxieties when visiting the doctor, is currently in hospitals on three continents.
Give Kids the World, which just celebrated its 27th anniversary and hosted its 120,000th child, has big plans for future additions and attractions, so the partnership isn鈥檛 going anywhere. Every addition creates ever more opportunities for ETC students to donate their time and talents. And before too long, an ETC team will have to dream up a new star-tracking solution, too.
But for Harger, the Village is the one doing the giving: 鈥淔rom my perspective, it鈥檚 a gift to our students that the Village is willing to work with us in this capacity.鈥� She wouldn鈥檛 wish her daughter鈥檚 ordeal on anyone. But as more stars fill the tower鈥檚 sky, and as her students help bring more smiles to the faces of those who need them most, she can鈥檛 help but see the beauty in it all. Sometimes the darkest clouds have the brightest silver linings.?
Nicholas Ducassi (A鈥�10), an actor, writer, and filmmaker, has been a regular contributor to this magazine since his senior year.
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