One of the most interesting directions for the program is in the area of technology.
Never abandoning the classroom and personal interactions that have always been at the core of the program, some new possibilities now exist. The required thesis preparation course will now be offered in the library's new electronic classroom, team-taught with reference librarian Kathy Kurosman and various members of the Africana Studies faculty. It will make use of the library's archives and special collections, field trips and the internet to help students develop projects around their particular interests. Ms. Kurosman has a special interest in Africana Studies, and recently arranged a trip for its faculty to attend presentations on technology and research at the Schomburg Library in Manhattan.
The program is also the 2001-2002 participant in Vassar's three-year Mellon technology grant.
Margo Crawford, assistant professor of African American literature in the English department, her student Chaney Sims, and librarian Gretchen Lieb will spend several days in June working at Bryn Mawr College with a consortium of liberal arts colleges, each developing "teaching with technology" projects. Crawford, Sims and Lieb have decided on a web project on the Harlem Renaissance, and will spend the summer and fall bringing it on line, holding a college-wide presentation at the end of the fall semester.
In April, 2001, the program hosted a lunch and presentation with Bryan Carter, the developer of the exciting, interactive "Virtual Harlem" web site. The program is now moving forward on a collaboration with this project—perhaps adding a building and its people and history to "Virtual Harlem." To see more of this project, go to: http://www.atc.missouri.edu/virtualharlem (requires Flash plug-in.)
New program offices on the top floor of New England Building are to be completed at the end of the summer, 2001.
These offices will feature a space where students can work on computing projects, and a glass-enclosed seminar and conference room with data connections and projection capability.
