Scott Weingart Joins Carnegie Mellon as Digital Humanities Specialist
By Shilo Rea / 412-268-6094
Having just received a five-year, $2 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to transform graduate education in the humanities, Carnegie Mellon University has begun to form the team that will train its humanities Ph.D. students in digital scholarship and technology-enhanced learning (TEL) and support research in these areas. Effective Feb. 16, Scott Weingart will join CMU as the university's first digital humanities specialist.
"Scott is a great addition to the Carnegie Mellon community. Having already established himself as a rising star in digital humanities, Scott will have an immediate and profound impact on our ability to teach and do research in an exciting new discipline that is transforming how humanities research can be carried out. Being strong computationally and in the humanities, Scott connects two areas of strength at Carnegie Mellon. We are all very excited to work with him," said Richard Scheines, dean of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
With a well-established legacy of pioneering TEL and through its Simon Initiative, a strategic, university-wide commitment to use TEL to improve learning outcomes for all students, Carnegie Mellon is uniquely positioned to advance digital scholarship and TEL in the humanities.
In his new role, Weingart, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in information science and history of science at Indiana University, will support digital humanities research at CMU, fostering collaboration across campus. He will teach a weeklong summer workshop that all humanities Ph.D. students and interested faculty will take to become fundamentally literate in digital humanities. He also will serve as an internal consultant, teaching faculty how to use computational techniques in their research. Last year, Weingart was Stanford University's first digital humanities data scientist and is looking forward to spending five years at Carnegie Mellon.
"I am excited about the prospect of growing the digital humanities at CMU and being on the ground-level to jump start it," he said.
The Mellon grant will primarily involve the Dietrich College's English, History, Modern Languages and Philosophy departments. Fellowships will be available to Ph.D. students who wish to pursue a thesis that centrally involves digital humanities or TEL. The impact of the weeklong summer courses will go beyond CMU; the TEL and digital humanities courses will be available to anyone through online modules.
For more information on the strength of Carnegie Mellon's humanities, visit http://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/humanities.
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Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grants Carnegie Mellon $2 Million To Transform Graduate Education in Humanities
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