Search Engines Programmer Sam McCracken Named One of 2024’s Outstanding GSIs

by Lauren Brace

Image description: A digital collage featuring a headshot of Sam McCracken in the center, positioned in front of a deep yellow and pink archway. There’s an explosive blend of classical and modern elements against a dark green background, including a dark brown staircase, a bust sculpture, pieces of UI, strawberries, glittery sticker stars, and a pixelated disc.

Learn more about Sam’s pedagogical practices and inspirations for his course “Internet (Micro-)Aesthetics.”

DSI Certificate Student and Search Engines Graduate Program Assistant Sam McCracken was awarded the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award in 2024 for teaching his course, DIGITAL 258: “Internet (Micro-)Aesthetics.” When asked about his favorite thing about teaching his course, this was McCracken’s response:

“While I loved practically everything about my Summer 2023 course, from designing its basic theme to stacking my syllabus with so many fun, playful texts, I think my favorite part about it was learning from my students. I know that’s a well-hardened cliché in higher education, but in this case, I often did find myself in the invigorating position of figuring out what something meant alongside my students. Because my class centered on emergent, born-digital aesthetic categories, I often turned to my (primarily) Gen-Z students for guidance as we assessed in real-time the dynamics, vibes, and aesthetic calling cards of phenomena like cringe, dark academia, cottagecore, cheugy, so on and so forth. Don’t get me wrong: I’m Very Online. But I’m also in my late 20s, and I also don’t scroll TikTok (anymore). I worked to situate our conversations in critical theory, to historicize, and to give context to the often weird phenomena we examined as things rightly deserving of academic attention. And that dialogue, to me, was pure magic.”

Read more about Sam’s course here.