Moreover, through such partnerships, eventually expanded
to include more than one
institution, small colleges can
support the prominence of an
individual research university
as a regional center of intellectual activity, public service, and
economic development. That is
important in an era in which
academic programs must prove
their value in the court of public
opinion.
For that reason, it seems most
effective to build initial DH
partnerships within a defined
geographic context. It is also
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easier and more economical to
build interpersonal ties between
partners that are relatively close
together. Proximity enables the
creation of short-term faculty-de-velopment events and workshops;
it allows professors and students
to take relevant seminars at the
university; and it creates opportunities for summer internships
for students interested in digital
approaches. Working together,
colleges and universities can
also develop projects on shared
platforms—for example, online,
interdisciplinary archives on local cultures—that could become
resources for entire regions of the
nation.
At my own college, the obvious
regional partnership was between Hope College, in Holland,
Mich., and Matrix: The Center
for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences, at Michigan State
University. But our collaboration
is only an initial step in a much
larger project.
According to Ethan Watrall,
an assistant professor of anthropology at Michigan State and
associate director of Matrix, “If
you want to turn a region into a
center of gravitational pull for
digital work, everyone has to be
involved: R1s, SLACs, cultural-heritage institutions (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums),
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and community colleges.”
Research universities that have
invested in collaborative digital
projects can become centers of
networks of regional institu-
tions—a hub-and-spokes rela-
tionship in which the university
is a highly visible partner, facili-
tator, and crossroads for schol-
arly and pedagogical exchanges
at the service of a much larger
community than previously was
possible.
Speaking at Lafayette
College’s 2012 national conference on the liberal arts, Eugene
Tobin, a program officer with the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
and former president of Hamilton College, summarized this
vision of collaboration: “
Liberal-arts colleges and research universities should have a mutual
interest in resisting specialization, in sustaining their commitments to general education, in
demonstrating that teaching and
research are integrally linked,
and of course in controlling
costs. Research universities have
the resources and the infrastructure that would enable liberal-arts colleges to expand their
curricular offerings and provide
their faculties with extraordinarily interesting scholarly
opportunities. And liberal-arts
colleges have much to share with
their university colleagues about
getting undergraduates involved
in research.
“But more fundamentally, if
research universities really do
wish to embrace undergraduate
education as a time for reflec-
tion, discovering intellectual
passions, and balancing private
interests and the public good,
then liberal-arts colleges have
much to share about the experi-
ence of integrating big ideas,
community engagement, and
social value.”
The strong mission of liberal-
arts colleges—to create engaged,
self-sustaining citizens in a free
society, critical thinkers, and the
creative class needed for eco-
nomic growth—is not well served
by an escalating cycle of costly
competition, siloed scholarship,
diminished equality of access,
and unsatisfactory job place-
ments.
Countering those tendencies
through greater collaboration
is something the digital liberal
arts can support. In an era of
diminished resources and growing need for education, institutions of higher learning need
to stop competing against one
another. We need to celebrate
one another’s missions, differentiating when necessary, but
also working together to achieve
larger projects in which we have
a common interest.
William Pannapacker is an
associate professor of English at
Hope College. His Twitter handle
is @Pannapacker. The views
expressed here are his own and
do not necessarily represent those
of his employers.
