The Office of Computing and Information Technology at Princeton University and Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities, also at Princeton University, under the leadership of John Wilson, Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion and Dean of the Graduate School, will develop and evaluate a program that introduces a selected group of graduate students to the resources, methods, and tools for research and teaching made possible by computing and networked communication technologies.
Research universities routinely state that the twin roles of the faculty -- teaching and research -- are mutually reinforcing activities, each nurturing and supporting the goals of the other. But the current models of graduate education, focused on traditional research, have not always encouraged students to reflect on the ways in which their research methodologies can be translated into effective teaching. Today this problem of inadequate preparation for teaching is made significantly more complicated by the introduction of new technologies into the research activities of every discipline. Graduate students are aware of, and make use of, these new tools and resources for research in varying degrees, depending on their disciplines and on the research of their mentors. Generally, graduate students in the sciences will be most familiar with new technologies for research, and graduate students in the humanities the least. But across disciplines, there is virtually no help available to graduate students as they prepare to apply their knowledge of these new tools and methods as teachers in the classroom.