Five graduate students from the University of Notre Dame were accepted into the second cohort of the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship Pedagogy Fellows for the 2022–23 academic year.

The Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship (NFCDS), located within the Hesburgh Library, provides digital and emerging technologies expertise, technology-enriched spaces, and specialized hardware and software access for Notre Dame faculty and students in every academic discipline, at critical points throughout their research process and coursework. NFCDS fellows will join the faculty and staff in the Center who offer workshops, consultations, embedded instruction, credit-bearing courses, and research collaboration campus-wide.

The fellowship program is an opportunity for Notre Dame Ph.D. students from the College of Arts and Letters, College of Science and College of Engineering to build their teaching expertise, gain instructional experience, and engage in a lifelong community of practice. The program is designed for hands-on learning and the fellows are not required to have previous digital scholarship expertise or teaching experience.

“As our graduate students are increasingly expected to teach digital skills in their classrooms, it's incumbent upon Notre Dame to equip them with the necessary pedagogical techniques to do so,” said Scott B. Weingart, director of the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship. “Following the marvelous success of last year's program, and drawing on two previous fellows as mentors, I'm proud the NFCDS will train a new cohort of graduate fellows in what they need to succeed in teaching digital scholarship.”

In addition to devising and delivering digital scholarship learning opportunities, fellows will gain experience in evidence-based and innovative instructional methods, collaborative teamwork, and communicating their research and scholarly interests outside of their discipline.

The fellowship program goals ensure that each fellow will be able to understand, apply, analyze, and reflect on evidence-based practices and principles related to the teaching and learning of computational, technological, and methodological skills. In addition, they will engage in teaching observation activities and serve as a member of both the Fellowship Community of Practice and the NFCDS team.

“My time as a NFCDS Pedagogy Fellow has been instrumental in reevaluating how I approach teaching in a classroom setting and interacting with students. The invited speakers and readings have helped shape my pedagogical philosophy to create a more inclusive environment. Additionally, the program includes professional development days, which I have been able to integrate into my teaching to make me a more well-rounded candidate for the academic job market. I would highly recommend this fellowship for aspiring teachers!” — Craig Waitt, 2021–22 Cohort

The 2022–23 NFCDS Pedagogy Fellowships are sponsored by the Hesburgh Libraries NFCDS and the College of Science. Ben Chiewphasa, economics and data librarian, conceived the program in 2021. Arnaud Zimmern, postdoctoral fellow, is the program lead for this academic year.

Meet the 2022–23 NFCDS Pedagogy Fellows

Stephen Bothwell

Bothwell is a third-year graduate student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in the College of Engineering. Advised by David Chiang, he applies and extends natural language processing techniques in the context of low-resource languages. Bothwell aims to create workshops that will introduce neural networks to those without a background in computer science. “I want to better bridge the knowledge gap between those who are and are not familiar with the depths of digital technology so as to help them understand it better,” said Bothwell.

Elizabeth Brooks (Senior Fellow)

Brooks is a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science. Advised by Michael Pfrender, her research is focused on using genomics techniques to investigate the impact of environmental change on phenotypically divergent natural populations. Her goal is to deliver a workshop that leverages the experience that many researchers have in R programming to reinforce best practices in data analysis. This will lead to learning command line basics, and how the command line can be used with R and BASH scripting to develop custom data analysis pipelines. “I will also be able to gain experience in developing and implementing curriculum for diverse audiences and communicating my research to those outside my field — skills that can help to improve my competitiveness in the job market,” said Brooks.

Sally Hansen

Hansen is a third-year graduate student in the Department of English in the College of Arts and Letters. Advised by Romana Huk, Hansen’s research examines the rhythmic transmission of memory and desire in 20th-century American poetry. She’s excited to develop a workshop that explores pedagogical applications of digital sound studies. Her workshop will provide theoretical avenues and practical support for instructors who seek to incorporate audio projects into their syllabi and research. “The greatest reward of this series would be, for me, equipping and learning from participants’ creativity as they discover modes that can most richly energize classrooms and/or communicate their own research,” said Hansen.

Shuyue Li

Li is a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science. Advised by David Medvigy, Li studies the dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems under climate change and human influence, with a focus on the factors constraining carbon cycling. As a NFCDS fellow, she aims to develop a workshop that introduces open-source platforms to do spatial-related analysis and visualization. This will include the introduction to various R-based tools, such as Leaflet and Rshiny. The goal of her workshop is to assist participants from various backgrounds in conducting spatial-based quantitative analysis or visualizing their research outcomes over a space. “I hope to take this opportunity to gain instructional methods and experience. Through collaborative teamwork, group communication, and iterative feedback-correction, I expect to improve my teaching skills,” said Li.

Jacob Swisher (Senior Fellow)

Swisher is a third-year graduate student in the Department of History in the College of Arts and Letters. Advised by Jon Coleman, Swisher’s research focuses on the entangled histories of people, animals, and commodities in New Mexico’s Rio Grande Basin. Swisher also has broad interests in environmental history, the history of the North American West, and the digital humanities. He is excited about continuing to develop workshops for graduate and undergraduate students who are interested in learning to use Geographic Information Systems to conduct scholarly research and communicate with a variety of audiences. “This would be an excellent opportunity for me to experiment with a different mode of content delivery and would allow me to add to my skill set as an instructor,” said Swisher. “One of my primary goals is to diversify my instructional style and develop a classroom environment that engages an array of majors.”

For those interested in the 2023–24 fellowship program, details will be posted during the spring semester. To learn more about the fellowship program, please visit cds.library.nd.edu or contact the Fellowship team at nfcds-pedagogy-fellowship-list@nd.edu.

 

About the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship
Endowed with a $10 million gift from the Marilyn & Rudolph M. Navari Charitable Foundation, the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship provides digital and emerging technologies expertise and technology-enriched spaces for Notre Dame faculty and students in every academic discipline, at critical points throughout their research process and course work. With partnerships campus-wide, the NFCDS is home to faculty and staff who offer workshops, consultations, embedded instruction, credit courses, and research collaboration in areas including: research data management, data use and analysis, data visualization, digital humanities, geographic information systems, text mining and analysis, virtual reality, and 3D modeling. This interdisciplinary team rapidly adopts new technologies as they emerge and helps transform how teaching, research, and scholarship are performed at Notre Dame.

About the University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries
The Hesburgh Libraries is a diverse system featuring the flagship Hesburgh Library—which houses the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship, the Medieval Institute Library, the University Archives and Rare Books & Special Collections—and four specialty libraries located on the Notre Dame campus. Home to over 150 library faculty and staff, the Libraries hold more than 3.5 million monographs and subscribe to more than 35,000 serials. The vast array of library expertise, services, resources and spaces support the library’s mission and help to advance teaching, learning, and research at Notre Dame.