Teaching Associate Professor Judith Pintar has been selected to serve as project manager for the third and final year of Training in Digital Methods for Humanists (TDMH), a pilot program run by the Humanities Research Institute (HRI). The goal of the program, which is funded by the Investment for Growth Initiative of the Provost and the Vice Chancellor for Research, is to help humanities faculty acquire the digital tools, computational methods, and technological expertise they need for their teaching and research.
As part of the TDMH program, four faculty at the University of Illinois are selected as fellows and receive a two-course release in order to participate in two undergraduate or graduate courses that will allow them to develop competencies in digital methods. In addition to coursework, the fellows are assigned a faculty mentor and advised by a TDMH working group.
The iSchool has contributed to the program through faculty mentors, working group participants, and coursework. Associate Professor Anita Chan, a former TDMH fellow, will be a speaker for this year’s program. Professor Ted Underwood is serving as a faculty mentor and member of a faculty working group. Associate Professor Bonnie Mak and Associate Professor and MS/LIS Program Director Maria Bonn served as mentors in the program's first year. Fellows have taken a range of iSchool courses over the past three years, including Foundations of Information Processing (IS 430), Data Storytelling (IS 457), and Digital Preservation (IS 543).
"I believe that the iSchool is the natural center for the digital humanities at Illinois," said Pintar. "It is time now to imagine what the future of the digital humanities will be on this campus, and how the iSchool and HRI can work together to shape that future."
Pintar serves as acting BS/IS program director at the iSchool and director of Games @ Illinois: Playful Design for Transformative Education. Her research interests include digital storytelling, game studies, and the development of interactive and narrative AI, which she pursues through the Electronic Literatures & Literacies Lab (EL3), an Informatics initiative.