About the HASTAC Scholars Program

Changing Higher Ed to Change the World!

The HASTAC Scholars program is a collective of graduate and undergraduate students who are engaged with innovative projects and research at the intersection of digital media & learning, 21st century education, the digital humanities, and technology in the arts, humanities and sciences. We blog, host forums, organize events and discuss new ideas, projects, experiments, and technologies that reconceive teaching, learning, research, writing and structuring knowledge.

Application information can be found here.

What is the HASTAC Scholars Program?

The HASTAC Scholars program is an innovative student community. The program is comprised of graduate & undergraduate students who come from dozens of disciplines at 75+ universities. The Scholars are all working at the intersection of technology and the humanities, arts and sciences. As HASTAC Scholars, we blog, host online forums, develop new projects and organize events. Broadly speaking, Scholars are interested in the intersection of technology and learning, but this is applied and interpreted in incredibly varied ways. Some of our work here centers around rethinking pedagogy, learning, research & academia for the digital age. We are building a community of the next generation of scholars, makers, thinkers and teachers.

We welcome a new cohort into the program each year. As HASTAC Scholars, we write about our own work and research questions, discuss pedagogy, report on the work happening on our campuses and in our own regions, host local workshops, and build digital resources for others.

The Scholars are especially renowned for our rigorous digital forums; each forum is engaged with a particular theme and developed by students from an assortment of disciplines and universities. These forums are open to the entire academic community and the public at large, and foster incredibly rich dialogue on timely issues related to digital media and learning and the digital humanities more broadly.

One of the defining characteristics of these forums is that they not only span disciplines and universities, but range of scholars: tenured professors, junior faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students and members of the general public. This kind of cross-pollination is incredibly rare and many students remark that it is the only time they interact with faculty as peers. These forums have taken on a life of their own beyond the website: they are now used in classrooms, discussed at conferences, and have formed the foundation for a number of workshops, conference panels and other types of collaborative projects

The HASTAC Scholars Program began in 2008 with a small pilot program, and has proven to be an amazingly energetic and successful program. Scholars are nominated by faculty (or other university staff) from their home institution. Each scholar receives a small fellowship for their contribution, funded by their home institution. More information about how to apply here.

Who are the HASTAC Scholars?

New students enter the program each September. The 2011-2012 cohort is a group of 186 students. Most Scholars are completing a M.A. or Ph.D., and we are also thrilled to welcome the ~10% of Scholars who are undergraduate students. The Scholars are still mostly based in the US and Canada, but we have had several scholars based in Spain, England, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, India, and of course the Scholars themselves come from all over the world.

Scholars come from a range of departments including Media Studies, Architecture, Computer Science, Engineering, Library Science, Urban Planning, Museum Studies, Education, Literature, Religious Studies, Gender Studies, Sociology, Art History, History, Civic Engagement and Public Policy.

The 2012 HASTAC Scholars are supported by the following institutions:

HASTAC Scholars engage in questions such as:

• How do we use technologies in our teaching & learning, not only to replace traditional media and assignments, but to fundamentally address different student approaches, needs, and possibilities afforded by new ways of thinking?
• How is publishing changing in the digital world, and what does this mean for peer reviewing, open access and support for projects beyond book manuscripts?
• What kinds of projects and ideas are considered to be part of the Digital Humanities, New Media Arts, or Science & Technology Studies? How are those delineations useful or out-dated? How do they reimagine specific notions about culture, knowledge, aesthetics, science, the body or communication?
• What might our research, technology design, and thinking look like if we took seriously the momentous opportunities and challenges for learning posed by our digital era?
• How do we work across and transform our own disciplines and fields?

Recent HASTAC Scholar Forums (see the full list of forums here)

• The Future of Museums
• Race After the Internet
• Pixels and Print: Redefining Academic Publishing & Scholarly Communication
• Press Start to Continue: Toward a New Video Game Studies
• Grading 2.0: Evaluation in the Digital Age
• Democratizing Knowledge in the Digital Humanities: Making Scholarship Public, Producing Public Scholarship
• Critical Code Studies
• Pedagogical Ethics for a Digital Age
• Feel the Noise: Sound, Music and Technology
• Openness in Academia
• Queer & Feminist New Media Spaces
• Blogs & Beyond: Teaching with Technology and Curiosity
• Living Mediations: Biology, Technology and Art

Results of the Scholars program:

• Invitations to join conference panels, classes and workshops
• Building your own network of like-minded scholars and academics beyond traditional departments
• Being part of an academic movement committed to openness and collaboration
• Stand out in the academic job search - involvement with Scholars was frequently identified as the tipping point in the search
• Success on the #alt-ac job market (i.e. jobs at university organizations, non-profits, museums, and other jobs outside of the tenure-track market)
• Help to develop new fields and directions in academic inquiry: forums and conversations have been used to justify preliminary exam fields and dissertation topics
• Collaborate on projects beyond your university: digital humanities projects, civic advocacy groups, public policy advisories, university technology consulting
• Beneficial experience learning to explain and justify your own research and interests to an interdisciplinary audience
• Keep up with new technologies for teaching, research, writing and creative endeavors
• Opportunity to meet and interview high profile academics, authors, developers, policy makers

As a Scholar you can participate in various ways:

• Blog about your own work and research projects, questions, ideas
• Host and comment in the energetic discussion forums
• Report on activities at your local institution and department
• Share insights from conferences and performances
• Blog, tweet, podcast, or participate on the wiki
• Network with other students, professors, artists, scholars and researchers, both online and in local meet-ups
• Conduct interviews, book reviews, project reviews, etc.
• Lots of new opportunities to connect using our new website - to be launched this summer!
• Your idea here -- we are collaborative and rely on your ideas and feedback!

Testimonials from HASTAC Scholars

“The sad news is, I can’t be a Scholar anymore. But the happy news is, I was just offered my dream job! Everyone wanted to hear about my teaching, and the work I've done with HASTAC, and using technology and civic engagement and team-based learning in the classroom. What really got me the job, was a presentation I gave on using open-source technology to teach basic writing and speaking skills at college and in the community. Every single one of the tools that I talked about was one that I somehow learned from HASTAC: from forums I read, from interviews or conferences I wrote blog posts about, from people or projects that I became involved with as a result of HASTAC. You have been so generous and supportive with me and all the HASTAC scholars, and I can honestly say that I wouldn't be here without you and without HASTAC! Thank you for everything you do to give people like me opportunities like this. My dream really is coming true!”

-- Assistant Professor at a Liberal Arts College

"The Scholars program has been invaluable for me in terms of the networking opportunities it has provided. Through the program, I’ve been able to find other grad students with my research interests, which has led to productive conference collaborations and other professional affiliations. I have also had the opportunity, through conference sponsorships and online discussion, to meet high-profile senior scholars in the field. This is proof that the academy is changing for the better.”

-- Ph.D. student, University of California

Being a HASTAC Scholar "most certainly helped me on the job market. During interviews and the like, a number of people mentioned my involvement with HASTAC. Also, many people already knew of my work based on what we --- & that's key (we!) --- were discussing at hastac.org. Plus, in preparation for things like job interviews and talks, the Scholars forums became spaces for me to articulate my perspectives on emerging issues and to actively learn from and listen to others. If you said something in a forum, then you knew people were listening! And often, they would respond directly to you. Such was not always the case for me and graduate seminar essays. That is, HASTAC translated one-to-one exchanges of information into many-to-many relationships for me. Without that change, I would've remained in an abject state throughout grad school."

-- Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities, Dept. of English

Join us! If you are internested in applying, please see the information here.