The Digital Humanities Committee has awarded nine DH Seed Grants of $500 each to the following faculty members from across the university to advance their work using DH tools in their teaching and/or research.
Faculty who attended at least one day of the Digital Humanities Summer Seminar, May 24-26, 2016, were eligible to apply. The seminar showcased a variety of DH tools and programs supported by the TLTC, many of which are currently being used by faculty on campus. Applicants were asked to propose a project using digital technologies or to engage in a collaborative project with faculty or other DH specialists (e.g., museum administrators, archivists) at another institution. Applicants were also asked to identify future funding opportunities, since one purpose of the project is to fund work that might result in competitive grant applications. Innovation and experimentation are hallmarks of this grant.
The awardees are as follows:
Beth Bloom, University Library:
In conjunction with a project for the Center for Catholic Studies Praxis Program, this project will utilize R or a similar program to help organize the Praxis writings that now are housed in the university’s e-repository and find associations between the essays and ATMs. The goal is to help elucidate some of the more difficult concepts in the study of Bernard Lonergan’s theories through data visualization. These new access points into the database might also bring more faculty into the Lonergan workshops, which would enrich pedagogy at Seton Hall, while also furthering its Catholic mission.
James Daly, Education Studies
This project proposes a collaboration between Seton Hall University (James Daly) and the Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University (Dr. Olga Tarasenko and Dr. Oksana Salata) that focuses on the Ukrainian diaspora. We have worked together, along with our students and local area high schools in both countries, for over eight years. The Ukrainian students will research and prepare materials on historic causes for, the nature and extent of, and the internal consequences of Ukrainian migration patterns. The Seton Hall students will research and prepare materials on the patterns and consequences of Ukrainian settlement in New Jersey.
Sara Fieldston, History:
This WordPress project, for a course on The History of New York City being taught in Fall 2016, will serve as a virtual guidebook to the history of NYC. As an assignment for the course, each student will research and contribute an entry for the site, finding primary sources and writing captions and analytical text. Visitors to the site will be able to view entries on a map, as well as sorted by category (such as events and landmarks). Students will also create their own tags (for example, “civil unrest” or “Robert Moses”), allowing them to design new ways of sorting content themselves.
Anthony Haynor, Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work:
The goal of the project is to develop a timeline of social problems research that either advocates on behalf of particular approaches or challenges or debunks particular approaches. The time period in question is 1945 to the present. Key words will be used to mine the bibliographic data that will be targeted; then an EXCEL file will be created consisting of the following fields: “Year of Publication,” “Periodical Category” (top tier, middle tier, lower tier), “Keywords bearing on the researcher’s/author’s social problem approach,” and “Keywords bearing on the approach that the researcher/author critiques.” The EXCEL file could then be converted to a CSV file so that the data can be displayed graphically as a timeline.
Anne Hewitt, Healthcare Administration:
This project links together the academic study of population health management and the adoption of the PolicyMap technology to help students develop essential analytical skills applicable to real-time health industry decision-making. This project will prepare students to identify populations at risk, develop risk segmentation characteristics and criteria and to complete risk stratification in order to complete integrated care plans and management. The map representation will help students further engage in determining risk factors and treatment options/availabilities that will be crucial in planning, preventing and managing any of the at-risk health conditions.
Penina Orenstein, Computer and Decision Science:
This project requires the collection of hierarchical supply chain relationships using supply chain vendor data (FACTSET – (www.factset.com). The objective of this study is primarily to visualize the structure of a supply network and understand how these evolve. Ultimately we plan to demonstrate which structural parameters influence financial performance and supply network reliability. Undergraduate students who have taken BITM3741 (Supply Chain Management) will be mapping out supply network structures using the FACTSET database. The students will be given clear guidelines as to how to collect the historical data as well as how it should be organized. Once the data is arranged, it can then be imported into a digital visualization software package (such as Gephi (https://gephi.org/), for further analysis and metric calculation. Students will gain a better understanding of the inter-relationships in supply networks (an integral part of the class) and will also be part of a cutting edge research project.
Catherine Tinker, Diplomacy and International Relations:
The goal of this project is to reconfigure teaching by using a DH tool, such as VisualEyes, to develop inter-active learning modules for a graduate course, DIPL 6015, which will be offered for Masters’ degree candidates and for the Certificate Program in UN Studies by the School of Diplomacy and International Relations in Fall 2016.
Michael Vigorito, Psychology:
The purpose of this WordPress project is to reconstruct the history of a location on Staten Island once known as the Watering Place (in present day Tompkinsville/St. George area). There were many historical events that took place here, but the most notable is the Quarantine and Marine Hospital which operated for 6 decades. In 1858 the nearby residents’ fear of disease, as well as economic, political and social factors, caused the community to destroy all of the buildings on the quarantine grounds. The Quarantine at Tompkinsville was the original “Ellis Island”, but actually much more took place here. This will involve working with the new “National Lighthouse Museum”, which is located on a portion of the former quarantine grounds, to tell the full story.
Genevieve Zipp, Interprofessional Health Science Health Administration
The goal of this project is to develop an Interprofessional Education (IPE) learning module, using PolicyMap. This will enable all students in the professional graduate programs in Athletic Training, Physical Therapy, Physician Assistant, Occupational Therapy, and Speech-Language Pathology to work collaboratively to develop research questions and explore data analysis options. Additionally, this project will provide the opportunity to use this tool to engage students and help them see the connection between research and clinical practice in healthcare.
The work of the DH Committee and the DH Seed Grants are supported by the Provost’s Office and the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Center.
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