The second phase of an effort to support faculty research or teaching projects using information technologies and electronic resources is now underway.
The first five projects funded by the Faculty Support Program were recently completed, according to Scott Bennett, University librarian, and Daniel Updegrove, director of Information Technology Services ITS, whose departments jointly sponsor the initiative.
Now faculty from every corner of the campus are being invited to submit proposals for the second round of the Faculty Support Program. They are also invited to attend an informational forum on the program, which will be held at noon on Friday, March 7, in the Sterling Memorial Library lecture hall, 120 Wall St.
The Faculty Support Program, launched in October of 1995, seeks to identify departments and programs in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and at the graduate and professional schools that plan to use information technologies and electronic resources to enhance their research and teaching activities. The program offers both professional and staff assistance and financial support for graduate student assistance, training, equipment and other resources. In the first round of grants, the University and ITS selected five proposals, out of the 15 submitted, to receive awards totalling $20,000. See related story, below. For this second round of grants, the University Library and ITS have a budget of $50,000, and plan to award 5-10 grants of $5,000-$10,000 each. Funding is for one year.
Examples of the types of projects that will be supported under the Faculty Support Program include:
Proposals should identify a faculty member who will serve as the principal investigator, other faculty members who will participate in the project, and the University Library and ITS staff who will help develop the project. It should also include a statement of purpose, a description of the project and its significance, a project schedule, a list of equipment and other resources needed, and a project budget. Proposals should also indicate how the department or school plans to assess the results of the project and incorporate them into its ongoing programs of teaching and research. They must be submitted to the Office of the University Library by Monday, March 31.
Mr. Bennett and Mr. Updegrove, working with an advisory panel of faculty and staff, will select proposals for funding by April 14. There will be a meeting of the selected participants in late April, and principal investigators must provide interim reports by Oct. 31, participate in an informational forum next March for the third round of projects, and submit final reports in May of 1998.
First fruits of the Faculty Support Program ...
The projects funded under the first phase of the Faculty Support Program are described below:
Joseph Soares, assistant professor in sociology, had 400 photographic slides digitized and mounted as a World Wide Web site for use in his large undergraduate lecture course on culture and society in America, Sociology 115b. The collection, titled "The Social Life of Cities," may be found at http://www.yale.edu/socdept/slc.
The history of art department received support to create a World Wide Web site containing 1,250 digital images of photographic slides, including those that Professor Vincent Scully customarily displays during his popular course "Introduction to the History of Art from Prehistory to the Renaissance" (HYA 112a). As a result of the project, which can be found at http://www.yale.edu/hya112/hya112a.html, students can now study without going to Street Hall to view printed images.
William Jewett, associate professor of English, and the Bass Writing Program received a grant to improve student access to basic resources for the development of writing skills. The result is the Bass Writing Resources Web. It is located at http://www.yale.edu/bass and contains descriptions of writing courses in various disciplines, lists of writing tutors and campus publications, Writing Prose Plus -- an enhanced version of Yale's writing manual -- and links to a wide array of writing tools available on the Internet.
The Economic Growth Center prepared a selection of its discussion papers for distribution through the WWW. Abstracts of 36 papers are now available at the library's Economic Growth Center Web site, http://www.library.yale.edu/socsci/egcdisp.html. The full digital versions of these papers will soon be available on the Web server of the economics department.
Assistant Dean Jane Coppock of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies received support to improve the school's publications. The school's Web site, at http://www.yale.edu/forestry, now includes the latest issue of the Forest School News, an Alumni Association publication; Branches, a student-initiated newsletter; and lists of two of the school's working paper series.