CHDR embodies a philosophy of bridging traditional human creativity with cutting-edge technology, facilitating a space where scholars, students and the community can come together to leverage digital tools for enhanced research and understanding.

This approach aligns with 麻豆原创’s mission as Florida鈥檚 premier engineering and technology university, emphasizing the role of the humanities in a tech-driven world. 麻豆原创 President Alexander N. Cartwright underscored the importance of CHDR鈥檚 work during the opening of its expanded facilities, highlighting the center as a critical hub for innovation.

鈥淭he remarkable potential at the intersection of tradition and technology is where scholars, students and the community come together to push the boundaries of research and understanding,鈥� Cartwright said at the event. 鈥淭his center will inspire collaboration, bridge disciplines and enrich the student experience and the community we serve. Together, we are building a future that is bold and innovative, but also thoughtful and informed by history.鈥�

Through this lens, CHDR showcases impactful initiatives like the Samuel Johnson Dictionary Project, which not only revitalizes historical scholarship but also connects modern readers to centuries-old linguistic traditions.

This project focuses on digitizing and making accessible Samuel Johnson鈥檚 landmark 18th-century dictionary, providing researchers and the public with an invaluable resource for studying the evolution of the English language. It involves the transcription and annotation of Johnson’s work, with volunteers and students contributing by encoding entries, verifying definitions and adding historical context.

Project lead and 麻豆原创 Professor Beth Young highlights the significance of collaborative efforts, including 麻豆原创 students’ contributions, in broadening the project’s reach and effectiveness.

鈥淢any of the volunteers, including 麻豆原创 students, continue to work on the dictionary even after graduating because they find it fun and rewarding,鈥� Young says.

Through their involvement, volunteers not only enrich their academic journeys but also deepen the collective understanding of language and its historical contexts. Their work helps maintain the relevance of Johnson鈥檚 dictionary as a tool for exploring linguistic development, connecting modern readers to centuries-old scholarly traditions while leveraging modern technology to enhance research and accessibility.

CHDR also leads impactful projects like the聽, which engages students in preserving and sharing the stories of veterans, and the聽, which documents the experiences of Floridians who served in World War II. These projects illustrate CHDR鈥檚 commitment to enriching research and fostering connections with the community while strengthening ties and empowering students to become active participants in documenting and sharing history.

The center’s recent expansion, made possible through a National Endowment for the Humanities challenge grant and the generosity of philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, has allowed it to grow both in physical space and in scope. With new equipment and increased staff, CHDR can take on more ambitious projects, further expanding 麻豆原创鈥檚 reach in digital humanities research.

鈥淭he expansion of the center has increased the interdisciplinarity of the college鈥檚 research by centralizing our technology expertise and equipment, and it has positioned us as a hub for public outreach,鈥� says Jeffrey Moore, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities.

In addition to fostering collaboration, CHDR provides opportunities for graduate students, particularly those in 麻豆原创鈥檚 texts and technology doctoral program, to engage in research that bridges disciplines. Currently, six doctoral students are gaining invaluable experience at the center, working on projects that will help prepare them for future careers in digital humanities, technology and beyond.

By fostering an environment where technology and the humanities intersect, the Center for Humanities and Digital Research serves as a vital space for inspiration, collaboration and exploration. It aims to build a future that is not only bold and innovative but also thoughtful and informed by history.

The ongoing projects at CHDR promise to enhance student experiences and strengthen the university’s role in the community, paving the way for new ideas and partnerships to emerge from this exciting confluence of disciplines. In addition to the , CHDR is actively engaged in work with ; 听补苍诲 .

Amy Larner Giroux, associate director of the Center for Humanities and Digital Research (CHDR) in the College of Arts and Humanities, has been researching burial sites in St. Augustine National Cemetery through her work with the National Cemetery Administration. She came across two separate graves, each containing a group burial of six warriors marked with a headstone inscribed 鈥淪ix Unknown Indians.鈥�

鈥淎s a historian who works in cemeteries, it bothers me when a headstone has incomplete or unknown information about the person buried there. They deserve to have their names restored,鈥� Giroux says. 鈥淭hey deserve to be recognized for who they were. And you can鈥檛 get that from a headstone that says 鈥楽ix Unknown Indians鈥�.鈥�

After five years of digging through U.S. Army records and correspondence dating back more than a century, Giroux discovered the names of 10 chiefs and warriors from the Cheyenne, Kiowa and Comanche tribes who were imprisoned and died in Fort Marion between 1875 and 1878.

The names of the recovered individuals are:

• Chief Grey Beard (Cheyenne), who is buried in Piney Grove Cemetery in Baldwin, Florida
• Chief Co-a-bo-te-ta, or Sun (Kiowa)
• Chief Lean Bear (Cheyenne)
• Chief Mah-mante (Kiowa)
• Ih-pa-yah (Kiowa Warrior)
• Big Moccasin (Cheyenne Warrior)
• Starving Wolf (Cheyenne Warrior)
• Spotted Elk (Cheyenne Warrior)
• Nad-a-with-t (Comanche Warrior)
• Chief Mo-e-yau-hay-ist, or Heap of Birds/Magpie Feathers (Cheyenne)

Based on Giroux鈥檚 research, the National Cemetery Administration plans to replace the 鈥淪ix Unknown Indians鈥� grave markers with headstones that list the names of the fallen warriors, their death dates and their native nation affiliations.

During the Plains Wars, Fort Marion was used as a prison for prominent warriors and chiefs in hopes of demoralizing their nations into surrendering to the U.S. Army. Prisoners were forced to suppress their native heritage and become a military company in order to assimilate, drilling and performing guard duty for themselves. Capt. Richard Henry Pratt instituted and enforced the policies of forced assimilation that started in St. Augustine, and continued through boarding schools like the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which Pratt founded in 1879.

鈥淚t’s important to me to make people understand that all these prisoners had families, it wasn鈥檛 just that they died here 鈥� their families lost them here,鈥� says Giroux. 鈥淚’m hoping that the information I鈥檝e found can help give the descendants of the prisoners some understanding and closure about what happened to their kin when they were here in Florida.鈥�

鈥淲atching Norene interact with her ancestor鈥檚 face on a touch screen and study the family resemblance was powerful.聽That was one of the defining moments of all the work I have done.”聽鈥� Amy Larner Giroux, 麻豆原创 faculty

The National Park Service put Giroux into contact with Norene Starr, outreach coordinator for the Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples鈥� executive branch and a direct descendant of Chief Heap of Birds and Big Moccasin.

Part of Giroux鈥檚 research resulted in a 3D digital model of the 1877 bust created from Cheyenne Chief Heap of Birds, the great-great-great-grandfather of Starr. The bust was created from a life mask of Heap of Birds鈥� face, created only three months before his death.

As Giroux connected with the National Park Service and the Cheyenne and Arapaho people, several events were conducted in November (which is Native American Heritage Month and National Veterans and Military Families Month) to memorialize the fallen warriors and educate the public. Alison Simpson, command historian of the Florida National Guard, Denny Medicine Bird, Veterans Affairs coordinator and Giroux acted as liaisons to the National Cemetery Administration on events in the cemetery to honor the prisoners鈥� military service. Through these events, Giroux met more descendants of the prisoners she researched from the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations.

鈥淚’ve been working in cemeteries for most of my career,鈥� Giroux says. 鈥淏ut this is the first time, other than my own family work, that I’ve impacted living people. And that emotional impact has been extremely rewarding.鈥�

The first of the memorial events was held on the evening of Nov. 15, 2022, in Piney Grove Cemetery in Baldwin, Florida, to honor Cheyenne Chief Grey Beard. In 1877, Chief Grey Beard jumped out of the window of the train bringing prisoners to St. Augustine. 鈥淔reedom was more important than living,鈥� Giroux says. The guards were told to recapture him, but he was shot instead.

For Chief Grey Beard鈥檚 memorial ceremony, Giroux met with Marcy Galbreath, retired associate lecturer in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric (DWR), and members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations at the cemetery. The members sang for Chief Grey Beard to assist him on his journey to the next life. Giroux and Galbreath were honored to be included in the ceremony.

The next morning, Gordon Yellowman, Peace Chief of the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations, spoke with National Park Service rangers about how they could better educate the public about the experiences of the prisoners at Fort Marion. The exhibit on the imprisonments of 1875 through 1878 is changing based on input from native nations to include stories told from a native perspective. Previously, exhibits were mainly told from the perspective of the U.S. Army.

鈥淔uture visitors to the fort will be able to see both sides of the story,鈥� Giroux says.

Throughout Nov. 16-17, 2022, Flagler College presented a series of events entitled, 鈥淗i Vi Mitz Mak a be o ta, Honoring the Historic Footprint of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Warriors at Fort Marion, 1875鈥�1878.鈥� During the events, Giroux gave a presentation, 鈥淪o Many Miles Towards the Rising Sun: Cheyenne, Kiowa and Comanche Burials in Florida 1875鈥�1877,鈥� in which she spoke of the 10 men who died in Florida.

Throughout early November 2022, flags flew over the Castillo de San Marcos to represent each of the families of the native nation members who died there. On the afternoon of Nov. 17, 2022, a final ceremony was held in the courtyard of the fort to honor them. A riderless horse was brought in wearing the moccasins of Helen Heap of Birds, granddaughter of Chief Heap of Birds. Then, a National Park Service ranger performed a roll call, naming each of the Cheyenne who died during their imprisonment and whose names were discovered. The ceremony concluded with a three-cannon salute.

“He called the name of Chief Grey Beard 鈥� silence. And then he went through each of the names of the dead to the end of the roll call. It was very emotional,鈥� Giroux says. 鈥淧eople need to know what happened at Fort Marion and understand why it happened. I hope sharing these stories makes people less likely to forget what happened there.”

The events ended with a keynote presentation given by Dorothy Firecloud, the National Park Service Native American Affairs liaison. At the end of the reception, Giroux and others were honored by being wrapped in a Cheyenne blanket.

The findings of the 麻豆原创 and Flagler College research teams have left a lasting impact on families and future visitors to the fort, but their work is far from over. Giroux, Galbreath and 麻豆原创 collaborators Mike Shier, research specialist in CHDR, and Jeremy Carnes, postdoctoral scholar in DWR, are continuing their work with Starr and Yellowman. They continue to search for the names behind the unmarked headstones in St. Augustine National Cemetery, hopefully bringing more indigenous stories to light. Max Bear, director of the Historic Preservation Office of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, has invited Giroux to Oklahoma to speak with the native nation about her research and the experiences of their ancestors.

History is never static or set in stone. The story of America鈥檚 past is continuously unfolding; it carries a heavy impact on contemporary life. New research allows us to challenge the ways we have come to understand the world around us. As once-buried stories are unearthed, the dissemination of new perspectives brings the public closer to the truth, and families closer to peace.

That鈥檚 where 麻豆原创鈥檚 Center for Humanities and Digital Research (CHDR) comes in. The center is made up of a group of faculty members and staff who help train humanities researchers to properly digitize what they are studying and make it readily available anywhere in the world. Sometimes thinking about how information and artifacts can be displayed digitally will mean collecting it a certain way, so getting faculty to think about electronic displays and communication is key to effective digital preservation.

Since 2007, the CHDR has helped strengthen several project proposals that have gone on to win funding and garner attention for innovative approaches to preservation. The effort has been successful. As 聽of July this year, the center has been involved in $2.7 million worth of funded grants. And this year, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded the center a $193,736 Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge grant to expand its work. The independent federal agency is one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the United States, disbursing $30.9 million so far in 2020.

The NEH grant, which requires 麻豆原创 to contribute matching funds, will enable the expansion of a digital humanities collaboratory in 麻豆原创鈥檚 Trevor Colbourn Hall and update CHDR鈥檚 equipment to support collaborative research, digital preservation, digital access and public programming.

鈥淭he grant will help increase the number of faculty and students learning design, programming and digital archiving skills; generate new collaborative projects and scholarship; and accelerate institutional and public humanities programming,鈥� says Bruce Janz, a humanities professor and co director of the center with Professor Mark Kamrath.

Examples of projects that benefited from CHDR expertise include the:

• Veteran鈥檚 Legacy Program
• Charles Brockden Brown Electronic Archive
• RICHES Mosaic Interface
• Zora Neale Hurston Digital Archive
• An online version of Samuel Johnson鈥檚 Dictionary, another NEH-funded project currently underway

CHDR also manages many of the journals within the College of Arts and Humanities. The CHDR team allows researchers to focus on their area of expertise without becoming technical experts.

English Professor Beth Young, who leads the Johnson鈥檚 Dictionary project, says CHDR support has been critical to the project from start to finish.

鈥淢eeting with CHDR inspired me to apply for this grant in the first place,鈥� she says. 鈥淎s I planned the project, the team helped me figure out what kind of technological infrastructure would be needed. And now that we are immersed in building the online dictionary, CHDR has been enlisting students in computer science to build software tools that will not only make our project less labor-intensive, but will help future researchers as well.鈥�

In order to receive the challenge grant money, 麻豆原创 must raise an equal amount in philanthropy. With the help of the Provost鈥檚 Office, the College of Arts and Humanities plans to identify 鈥渄onor champions鈥� with interest in the humanities. Anyone wishing to contribute should contact Kara Robertson, director of advancement for the College of Arts and Humanities.

麻豆原创 faculty and staff also involved in the grant include Scot French, Amy Giroux, Connie Harper, Connie Lester, Mark Kamrath and Mike Shier.

The center also recently received approval as a 鈥淭ype 3鈥� center within 麻豆原创 acknowledges four types of centers and institutes. Previously CHDR was a type four, meaning it was based at the college. Moving up to three means it is recognized as a university-wide center.

鈥淐HDR is well positioned to be a driving force for future-facing research at 麻豆原创 because of the college鈥檚 interdisciplinary research focus, the research and grant success of our faculty, and our students’ desire to participate in digital humanities work through dissertation research and faculty-led projects like the Samuel Johnson Dictionary project,鈥� Kamrath says. 鈥淐HDR has played a leading role in the Florida Digital Humanities Consortium and will expand its public programming in the coming years.鈥�

Now it鈥檚 that same dictionary that needs preserving, and 麻豆原创 researchers are stepping up to the task.

With a recently received $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, 麻豆原创 researchers are working to bring Samuel Johnson鈥檚 A Dictionary of the English Language, into the digital age.

鈥淸Johnson’s dictionary] is also very important to the history of the language, and it鈥檚 still important to scholarship today.鈥� 鈥撀燘eth Rapp Young, 麻豆原创 professor

The project will create the first complete, online and fully searchable version of the famous 18th century writer鈥檚 magnum opus from 1755. The dictionary is considered one of the most influential works of English literature of all time.

The researchers will also do the same for the fourth edition from 1773, the most updated version before Johnson鈥檚 death in 1784.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a major piece of English literature,鈥� says Beth Rapp Young, the project鈥檚 principal investigator and an associate professor in 麻豆原创鈥檚 . 鈥淭he 18th century has been called the age of Johnson.聽People have credited it with helping to establish the literary cannon. It鈥檚 also very important to the history of the language, and it鈥檚 still important to scholarship today. There are a lot of reasons we want to know what words meant back in the 18th century, and this is the book people turn to in order to find out.鈥�

Johnson, born in 1709, was an author known for his humor and extensive literary knowledge, both of which were reflected in the two-volume, more than 2,000-page dictionary that contains over 42,000 words and has a combined weight of more than 20 pounds.

Not only did his dictionary entries contain witty definitions, such as the one for a lexicographer which defines a dictionary writer as 鈥渁 harmless drudge,鈥� but also illustrative quotations from literature of the day to give an entry context.

Being quoted in Johnson鈥檚 dictionary gave an author鈥檚 work literary legitimacy. And because the dictionary offers a snapshot of the vocabulary of the time, it is also a resource for present-day legal, historical and literature scholars.

鈥淸18th century scholars] hoped the dictionary would stop the language from changing so fast, so that future generations could understand them.鈥� 鈥撀燘eth Rapp Young, 麻豆原创 associate professor

For example, a legal scholar may want to look up the precise meaning of a word used by America鈥檚 founders at the time of the writing of the U.S. Constitution, as Johnson鈥檚 dictionary was a contemporary literary work.

Johnson鈥檚 dictionary is one of the earliest dictionaries of the English language and is distinct in its comprehensive entries that included almost all of the words of the time, not just the hard ones. It is also noted for its memorable definitions and illustrative quotations, which made it not just a study aid, but also a readable book. Johnson was hired to write the dictionary, a work that many 18th century scholars hoped would codify the English language that had been changing throughout the centuries.

鈥淭hey hoped the dictionary would stop the language from changing so fast, so that future generations could understand them,鈥� Young says. 鈥淚t was a way to keep their language from becoming obsolete, the way some of Chaucer鈥檚 language had and the way Shakespeare鈥檚 was heading.鈥�

Compared to today鈥檚 dictionaries, Johnson鈥檚 contains less entries and more wit, but it was still used to learn what words mean. The thoroughness of Johnson鈥檚 work set the precedent for comprehensive dictionaries, such as Noah Webster鈥檚 American Dictionary of the English Language and the Oxford English Dictionary, both of which were heavily influenced by Johnson.

To get the dictionary online and ready for scholarly searches, Young and her team will have high-quality scans of the dictionary generated, which will then be transcribed by a private company into editable, digital text with some initial coding to format the entries.

鈥淚鈥檓 really excited, and I鈥檓 really proud. We鈥檙e going to do something that鈥檚 great, that鈥檚 useful, and it鈥檚 going to make 麻豆原创 look good.鈥� 鈥撀燘eth Rapp Young, 麻豆原创 professor

Young鈥檚 team will then proof the text and add additional XML codes to enable thorough searching throughout the work and to allow linking to Library of Congress records. They will build a custom database to provide sophisticated search functions. The entire work will be eventually uploaded to a website for anyone to peruse. It鈥檚 expected to take about three years to complete.

The finished project will be a major upgrade compared to existing digital versions of the dictionary, which were either crowdsourced, incomplete and contained errors or only available on an expensive, hard-to-find, 20-year-old CD-ROM with slow and limited search features.

鈥淚鈥檓 really excited, and I鈥檓 really proud,鈥� Young says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e going to do something that鈥檚 great, that鈥檚 useful, and it鈥檚 going to make 麻豆原创 look good.鈥�

Collaborators on the project include co-principal investigator Jack Lynch, a professor of English at Rutgers University and a Johnson scholar; co-principal investigator Carmen Faye Mathes, an assistant professor in 麻豆原创鈥檚 Department of English; co-principal investigator Amy Larner Giroux ’85 ’09MA ’14PhD, the associate director of 麻豆原创鈥檚 ; and project assistant William Dorner ’07 ’10MA ’15PhD, an instructional technology coordinator with 麻豆原创鈥檚 Faculty .

Young received her doctorate and master鈥檚 degree in English from the University of Southern California and her bachelor鈥檚 degree in English from Rollins College. She joined 麻豆原创 in 1997. Her areas of expertise include composition, grammar and online teaching.

The conference for the annual Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory [organizers pronounce the HASTAC acronym as “haystack”] will be hosted in Orlando for the first time by 麻豆原创 and the Florida Digital Humanities Consortium. The 10-year-old conference previously was held at Duke University, UCLA, University of Illinois, York University in Toronto, the Ministry of Culture in Lima, Peru, and elsewhere around the world.

鈥淭his conference is a venue where digital humanists from across the world and across disciplines come together to share their research, their pedagogical methods, and their experiences. This sharing of knowledge in both the practical and the theoretical allows us to broaden our own world,鈥� said Amy Giroux, managing director for the conference and a 麻豆原创 computer research specialist at the university鈥檚 Center for Humanities and Digital Research.

This year鈥檚 conference theme, 鈥淭he Possible Worlds of Digital Humanities,鈥� highlights new opportunities for digital humanities and allows attendees from the more than 400 member organizations an opportunity to discuss and explore new research and creative work. The program will include scholars from around the globe interested in topics such as the humanities across disciplines, gaming, social media, archives, and other fields. There will be roundtables, demonstrations, maker sessions, workshops, media art projects, and other sessions.

鈥淗aving the HASTAC annual conference at 麻豆原创 allows us to see the superb work being done in the digital humanities around the world, and to show off what we鈥檙e doing here at 麻豆原创 to help interpret our meaningful world using digital tools,鈥� said philosophy Professor Bruce Janz, conference director and co-director of 麻豆原创鈥檚 Center for Humanities and Digital Research. 鈥淗ASTAC has always focused on the ways education and society have changed and must adapt in the Information Age, and this fits into the forward-looking and socially conscious orientation of programs at 麻豆原创 such as Texts and Technology, Digital Media, and Digital History.鈥�

One of the conference sessions asks: What can other disciplines learn from Digital Humanities and what can Digital Humanities learn from other disciplines?

鈥淭his particular panel is made up of a group of scholars who work both in traditional academia and also on the cutting edge of innovative digital spaces,鈥� Giroux said. 鈥淭hey hope to foster a good discussion on how digital humanities practitioners can grow within institutions which may not be as interested in supporting digital humanities work and how the current institutional level research infrastructure may need to be modified to allow digital humanities research to flourish.鈥�

Many digital humanities projects draw from a number of disciplines including history, anthropology, computer science, data science, digital media, traditional media, and other fields.

For example, Giroux said, one project her team will present at HASTAC is ELLE, the EndLess Learner, a second-language learning video game in which her colleagues from the Office of Instructional Resources (Don Merritt), the Games Research Lab (Emily Johnson), and modern languages (Sandra Sousa and Gergana Vitanova) teamed up with a group of computer science undergraduate students to create a database-driven learning game.

鈥淚t is this type of inter/multi-disciplinary project that allows the digital humanities to emerge from many different fields,鈥� she said. 鈥淭he five of us will be doing a roundtable discussion on the project and the undergraduate students will be displaying the 2-D and 3-D versions of the project.鈥�

Other 麻豆原创 students will showcase their research and work in front of the international audience and will serve as moderators at many of the conference sessions. HASTAC also has a scholars fellowship program, whose digital-age members blog, host online forums, develop new projects and organize events. 麻豆原创鈥檚 three HASTAC scholars 鈥� Nicholas DeArmas, Jennifer Roth Miller and David Morton from the Texts & Technology doctoral program 鈥� will host a professionalization workshop for conference attendees.

Some of the conference speakers are: Purdom Lindblad, assistant director of Innovation and Learning at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities; Tressie McMillan Cottom, assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University; T-Kay Sangwand, librarian for UCLA鈥檚 Digital Library Program, and Cathy N. Davidson, distinguished professor of English and director of the Futures Initiative and HASTAC @ CUNY at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Tours for registered attendees also are scheduled for the Orange County Regional History Center, the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College, and the Wells鈥橞uilt Museum of African American History and Culture.

The conference will be presented at several venues around campus and is open to everyone. Advance registration is encouraged, but registration also can be done at the door at Classroom Building I. For the schedule and registration, visit .

The project, led by Amelia Lyons, associate professor of history and director of graduate programs, will engage 麻豆原创 students in research and writing about veterans鈥� graves and monuments. In addition, 麻豆原创 faculty and students will collaborate with Central Florida schools to produce interactive curriculums for K-12 students and organize a field trip to the cemetery in Bushnell, which is the county seat of Sumter County.

Involving students of all ages in the project will engage the community with the service and sacrifice of veterans, and will give undergraduate and graduate students a real-life lesson in professionalization, Lyons says.

鈥淭his experience with primary research 鈥� from identifying the subject and stories, to analyzing the sources to produce a narrative and becoming a published author 鈥� is like no other,鈥� Lyons says.

鈥淟earning about the lives and stories of these soldiers is also teaching our students what a historian does,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t makes history real for them.鈥�

Luke Bohmer, a history graduate student, recently participated in a field research day at the cemetery. 鈥淚t is vital to go to where the history is, whether it’s a cemetery or an archive. This is more humanizing and palpable than any statistic could ever be,鈥� he says.

Janelle Malagon, an undergraduate, says that she has 鈥渁lways had an interest in military history, and the VLP was a great hands-on experience where I had the unique opportunity to learn the stories of individual soldiers throughout American history.鈥�

The corresponding website exhibit created by the research team 鈥� including Scot French, digital historian; Amy Giroux, a computer research specialist in ; and graduate student assistants 鈥� will use software to map the research virtually, and 麻豆原创鈥檚 RICHES Mosaic Interface to create a digital archive.

The public will also be able to participate in the project through an interactive element at the cemetery. Giroux will lead the team in the creation of an augmented-reality app, which will include student-authored biographies of veterans for visitors.

Students are already aware of the impact the program will have. Malagon says the digital components will allow relatives to learn something about their veteran in a way that would not have been possible without the technology available today.

The Florida National Cemetery is one of 135 cemeteries overseen by the VA. Team members recently visited the site to begin their research.

麻豆原创 researchers have already begun integrating assignments for the project into their graduate and undergraduate courses.

Students, including those in Lyons鈥� Modern Europe and the First World War class and Professor Barbara Gannon鈥檚 War and Society classes, are conducting research, searching for any documented history on the veterans whose graves will be selected.

Undergraduate students are excited to participate in the project.

Kristina Himschoot comes from a family with deep military roots.聽 Her parents met in the U.S. Air Force, and both her grandparents served.

鈥淭he VLP is becoming more important to me every time I learn something new about it,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 have the utmost respect for this project.鈥�

Anson Shurr expects he’ll draw a deeper, more personal connection with veterans through his research.

鈥淪eeing their graves in person, epitaph and all, is personal enough. But once you realize that in many cases they lived in the same town or street as you, or you see a surname you know, it really hits home,鈥� he says. He was particularly struck by the fact that people his own age put their lives and dreams on hold to fight in a war.

Kenneth Holliday, who is both a student and U.S. Army veteran, says that because April 6 marks the 100th anniversary of the nation鈥檚 entry into World War I, the research is especially timely.

鈥漌e are in the centennial of World War I. There is no better time to recognize the service of these veterans,鈥� Holliday says.

Graduate students in Professor Caroline Cheong鈥檚 Seminar in Historic Preservation course are helping to identify the graves and monuments to be included and are photographing the sites for both the webpage and the app.

French, associate professor and director of public history, is having students in his Viewing American History in the 20th Century class create interactive digital materials for use on the website. John Sacher, associate professor of history and liaison with public schools, is integrating the results of the project into K-12 curriculum that will be available for use in schools across the U.S.

In May, the 麻豆原创 team and local middle- and high-school students will travel to the cemetery as a kickoff event for the program. 麻豆原创 student researchers will interact with younger students at the cemetery, providing what Holliday sees as 鈥渁 much more personal connection on an individual level. Instead of remembering the major battles and the big names of military and political leaders, the students and local residents can remember that at the heart of the conflict were average people that all of us can probably relate to in some way.鈥�

Gannon, who is also coordinator of 麻豆原创鈥檚 Veterans History Project, says that because the university engages with veterans and rich history in creating extensive interactive exhibits and web-based tools, the funding doesn鈥檛 come as a surprise.

Other schools selected by the VA鈥檚 National Cemetery Administration for the project are San Francisco State University and Black Hills State University.

鈥淭he award of these three contracts signifies the VA National Cemetery Administration鈥檚 dedication and commitment to providing enhanced memorialization and lasting tributes that commemorate the service and sacrifice of veterans,鈥� says Ronald Walters, interim undersecretary for memorial affairs.

The contracts are the first of many planned initiatives to engage educators, students, researchers and the general public through the Veterans Legacy Program. For more information, visit the on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ website.