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A Peek Inside … INFO College Professor Jessica Vitak’s Office

‘Dynamite’ Space Features BTS ‘Luv,’ ‘Butter’-y Sweet Appreciation Notes, Framed Failures

By Karen Shih ’09

Jessica Vitak stands in a red dress in her office

Information studies Professor Jessica Vitak's office, which overlooks Hornbake Plaza, is bright, colorful—and full of sheep.

Photos by Dylan Singleton

Doctoral students joining the College of Information this fall were welcomed with elaborate red, black and gold cards hand-pressed to create raised patterns and embellished with little Testudos—a touching, tactile creation from Ph.D. program director and Professor Jessica Vitak.

red and yellow cards with turtles

They’re among the many carefully crafted objects that adorn the walls and shelves of her Hornbake Library office, so different from her work pondering the privacy and ethical implications of new technologies and how they affect people’s lives at home, work and school. For example, she researches how popular smart TVs or speakers from Amazon or Google are always listening to everything you say, collecting information and waiting for a command to spring to life.

“People often forget that these devices keep that data and might share it with third parties, maybe to improve services,” she said. “But everything you do and don’t do, and when you’re home or not—all of that is mapped out.”

Vitak, who also serves as the director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab, shares why she keeps a “C.V. of Failures,” her unabashed love for K-pop supergroup BTS and why a hockey stick pokes out from behind her office couch.

UMD Rejections

two framed rejection letters

She can laugh about it now, but Vitak’s University of Maryland journey was cut short not once, but twice before she joined as a faculty member 12 years ago. The two rejection letters, which she framed this summer, are from UMD’s sociology and communications graduate programs in the mid-2000s. (She later earned a master’s degree from Georgetown University and a doctorate from Michigan State.)

“In academia, many people only focus on the wins, especially on social media,” she said, such as getting papers accepted or getting grants funded. “But I want to make visible the fact that we all have failures.”

She started her “C.V. of Failures” on her website in 2016, detailing rejected papers, presentations and more, and it’s become popular, especially among students. “They’ll come up to me at conferences and say, ‘Thank you for doing this.’”

various sheep objects on a windowsill

Sheep Galore

When 3-year-old Vitak got a 2-foot-long stuffed sheep made by her mom at Christmas, it kicked off a lifelong obsession with the fluffy farm animals that spanned her study abroad adventures in the United Kingdom, where she desperately tried to pet one, into her office today, which features dozens of them in all forms: stuffed, stamps and even stained glass.

Permission to … Love BTS

five framed art pieces on a wall

Prominently in the center of her wall of art is Suga, one of the seven members of K-pop sensation BTS, made by colleague Associate Professor Yvette Wohn of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The two attended his concert in Newark together last spring.

“My husband makes so much fun of me for being a fan, but I’m not ashamed,” said Vitak, who also has a BTS calendar gifted by a student.

The rest of the pieces were made by fellow colleagues, her tattoo artist and her now college-aged stepson, Aidan, when he was little. “I like to support my friends who do art,” she said.

HCIL Hockey Stick

Bookshelf and gray couch with a white stuffed unicorn and a green hockey stick poking out behind it

Wedged between Vitak’s comfy gray couch, featuring her emotional support unicorn plushie for students to hug in times of stress, and her whiteboard, is a taped-up hockey stick.

She’s not a big Capitals fan or popping in a mouthguard to hit the ice on weekends. Former HCIL Director Jen Golbeck is a big hockey fan who even got the team HCIL-branded hockey jerseys, and now, “we’ve turned it into a tradition, where there’s a ceremonial passing of the hockey stick when there’s a new director.” (UMD’s HCIL, which works to transform the way people interact with new technologies, is the oldest lab of its type in the country.)

framed sheep stamps and assorted cards

iAppreciate You

These cute cards are distributed each month at the INFO College’s monthly lunch, where faculty and staff acknowledge each other’s contributions.

“You don’t just want to be called out if you make a mistake—you want to be called out when you do something good or help someone,” she said. “It’s just a nice way to give somebody something that’s like, ‘Hey, you’re awesome.’”

This is part of an occasional series offering a look inside some of the most interesting faculty and staff offices around campus. Think you have a cool workspace—or know someone’s that you’d like to recommend? Email kshih@umd.edu.

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College of Information

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