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

“The 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,” Cartwright said at the event. “This 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.”

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’s 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 UCF Professor Beth Young highlights the significance of collaborative efforts, including UCF students’ contributions, in broadening the project’s reach and effectiveness.

“Many of the volunteers, including UCF students, continue to work on the dictionary even after graduating because they find it fun and rewarding,” 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’s 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 , which engages students in preserving and sharing the stories of veterans, and the , which documents the experiences of Floridians who served in World War II. These projects illustrate CHDR’s 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 UCF’s reach in digital humanities research.

“The expansion of the center has increased the interdisciplinarity of the college’s research by centralizing our technology expertise and equipment, and it has positioned us as a hub for public outreach,” 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 UCF’s 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 ; �����Ի� .

“Veterans Month at UCF honors Americans … and their contribution to the nation during their service and afterward,” says Barbara Gannon, associate professor of history and the driving force of Veterans Month at UCF for over a decade. “I think it is particularly important to honor veterans because they remind us that Americans can do great things when they work together and set aside their differences. Veterans did this, and so can we.”

Throughout the month, UCF Knights will have the opportunity to learn veteran stories, connect with other veteran students and alumni, and celebrate new veterans’ projects at the university. Below is the list of Veterans Month events coordinated by the and the in partnership with units across the university.

Sunday, Nov. 6 – Thursday, Nov. 10: UCF Student Veterans Flag Week

The Military and Veteran Student Success Center, with the assistance of Army and Air Force ROTC, will plant over 1,400 American Flags in Memory Mall throughout the week of Nov. 7. The flags represent the number of student veterans attending UCF for the Fall 2022 semester. Students can to help plant flags in Memory Mall throughout the week.

Wednesday, Nov. 9: Veterans Salute & Purple Heart Proclamation, Honors Veterans Wounded in Battle

At Memory Mall between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., the Veterans History Project (VHP) in collaboration with the Air Force and Army ROTC and the will host a salute to veterans in honor of Veterans Day.

The event will include the raising of the American flag, playing of taps and Purple Heart Proclamation with commentary about UCF’s designation as a Purple Heart University. The designation signifies the university’s recognition and honor of veterans wounded in combat while serving their country who are now pursuing higher education and careers at UCF.

Tuesday, Nov. 15: Veterans History Project Story Day – Emergency Service Veterans

The UCF Community Veterans History Project (VHP) collects, preserves and makes accessible to the public the experiences of Central Florida’s veterans. The histories collected by the VHP are archived and made digitally available through the UCF Libraries. The project also contributes selected veterans’ histories to the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress.

Throughout the month of November, the VHP will host two “Story Days.” During each story day VHP team members will meet with veterans to collect, preserve and honor the stories of Florida’s veterans. The second story day will happen via Zoom and focus on collecting stories from veterans currently working in emergency services. Students can email history@ucf.edu for more information.

Gannon, a veteran herself, is the principal investigator of the VHP. For over a decade, Gannon has worked with students to preserve these oral histories.

“The VHP records veterans’ stories all year. We believe every day is Veterans Day,” Gannon says.

Wednesday, Nov. 16: Florida France Soldiers Stories

The John C. Hitt Library, room 402 will host a panel discussion and workshop from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. with panelists Amelia Lyons, Elizabeth Klements, Marie Oury, Diana Dizon and Evan Murray, along with UCF research librarians Richard Harrison and Rich Gause.

The seeks to tell the stories of the Florida soldiers buried in the American Battle Monuments Commission cemeteries in France. The goal of the project is to honor and commemorate the brave individuals who gave their lives supporting the Allied forces, liberating France and defeating Germany in the Second World War. The project also teaches students participating in this research project about the history of France and Florida during World War II, the history of individual servicemen and how to implement historical research methods in their work.

Wednesday, Nov. 30: Veteran Knights’ Roundtable – Conversation with UCF Alumni Veterans

The history department will be sponsoring a conversation between alumni veterans at 6 p.m. via . They’ll discuss transitioning from military personnel to student veteran, their experiences at UCF, and how a UCF education and their military experience got them to where they are now.

Jim Stoddard ’14 ’20MA is a current doctoral student and moderator of the event. A veteran himself, he’s experienced firsthand the support UCF gives to its veteran students.

“We have a large student veteran population on campus,” Stoddard says. “I think that comes with being among the largest student population campuses in the country, but I don’t think that’s the only reason we have a lot of vets on campus. In my experience, and people with similar backgrounds to myself, the faculty are very helpful and considerate.”

While these events are held in recognition of , UCF supports its nearly 1,400 student veterans year-round.

Recently, the UCF Veterans Legacy Program (VLP), a partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Cemetery Administration (NCA), received a new grant this year to help Florida schools teach students about veteran histories.

Building on work from 2017 through 2019, UCF’s new VLP grant will work with teachers at Florida K-12 schools to create veteran-focused classroom projects at a 10-day workshop held at the headquarters for the Florida National Guard, located in the historic St. Francis Barracks and the adjacent St. Augustine National Cemetery.

“We are so pleased to partner with the Florida National Guard to be able to connect younger students around the state with veterans’ stories through their local NCA cemetery,” says Associate Professor of History Amelia Lyons, principal investigator for the project.

Researchers and community partners who developed the project will celebrate and launch the new grant at an event with guests from the Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Cemetery Administration (NCA).

Earlier this year, UCF earned a Silver Award on the 2022-23 Military Friendly Schools list, an organization that measures commitment, effort, and success in creating sustainable and meaningful benefits for the military population. UCF also offers a range of scholarships and resources available for veteran students, including the Office of Military and Veteran Student Success and UCF RESTORES, a nonprofit clinical research center and treatment clinic.

“Celebrating Veterans Month activities at Ů��AV is another aspect of creating [an environment] of innovation and [belonging],” says Mike Kepner, army veteran and director of the Office of Military and Veteran Student Success.

When wars are discussed in my history courses, the veterans can turn a dry lecture about Iraq or Afghanistan into an exciting discussion. Plus, they can give a real-world view for other students who have not had the same experiences.

When a student recently complained about finding a parking space on campus, a veteran spoke up and said that just months earlier he was driving a tank through enemy fire in Afghanistan. He joked that driving around looking for a parking space was almost a pleasure.

He is just one of the nearly 2,000 veterans at the ��AV who offer those different perspectives for students and the faculty

Since the university began in 1963, UCF has been a magnet to veterans. The school immediately attracted active-duty personnel from both the Orlando Naval Training Center and Patrick Air Force Base south of Cocoa Beach. During the Vietnam War, many colleges displayed animosity toward active-duty soldiers and veterans, and some banned military recruiters from campus.

But UCF welcomed the veterans—and their numbers here swelled. For me as a child of the 1960s, it is refreshing to see the respect they have now from other students.

When I began teaching at ��AV in 1987, there were still some older student veterans from the Vietnam War, and a few years later they were joined by veterans of the Gulf War, fought to reclaim Kuwait from the invading Iraqi army.

Orlando’s population was exploding, and thousands of veterans moved to Florida seeking jobs or to retire. Many decided to start—or in some cases finish—their education at UCF. To accommodate the influx, the school established the Veterans Academic Resource Center to help with everything from coordinating veteran’s benefits to counseling.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan brought more veterans—and an interesting change to my classes.

No longer were classroom discussions about war limited to dry facts about dates and political decisions. The veterans could describe conditions that left other students stunned. One student described watching as his friend was killed in battle, and another veteran described being evacuated after being wounded.

And if I make a mistaken comment about the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, I can count on a veteran pointing out my error. There is nothing like the phrase “I was there” to silence a dispute.

Instructors are used to hearing pleas from students to reschedule tests, and I thought I had heard every possible reason from weddings, to vacations, to job requirements. But I was surprised when a veteran justifiably asked to take a final examination a few days early because he was being deployed to Afghanistan, or when another student said he would have to miss class because he was undergoing rehabilitation at the VA hospital for a war wound.

Unfortunately in our society, veterans sometimes don’t receive the services and respect they deserve, but UCF has encouraged and backed a wide range of projects to help veterans and keep their stories alive. The UCF Department of History is undertaking two ambitious projects to recognize some of their contributions. The Community Veterans History Project so far has recorded more than 500 interviews with veterans of six wars to archive their stories, and in May the department and the National Cemetery Administration launched a project to research the lives of 120 little-known veterans buried at Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell. The project involves more than 200 students and faculty members.

I appreciate having veterans in my classes because they bring a large portion of real-world experience that many other students will never experience. They also tend to be older and more serious students, having made huge sacrifices to earn the veterans benefits to pay for their education, and eager to finish their studies to enter the work force.

Come this fall, the university will honor veterans with a series of programs ranging from a “Thank a Vet” letter-writing campaign to participation in several programs open to the public. And on the school’s sprawling Memory Mall hundreds of American flags will be placed, each representing a veteran attending UCF.

The special ceremonies will come in November, but it is appropriate to thank the UCF veterans for their service throughout the year.

Jim Clark is a lecturer in UCF’s Department of History. He can be reached at James.Clark@ucf.edu.

The project, led by Amelia Lyons, associate professor of history and director of graduate programs, will engage UCF students in research and writing about veterans’ graves and monuments. In addition, UCF 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.

“This experience with primary research — from identifying the subject and stories, to analyzing the sources to produce a narrative and becoming a published author — is like no other,” Lyons says.

“Learning about the lives and stories of these soldiers is also teaching our students what a historian does,” she says. “It makes history real for them.”

Luke Bohmer, a history graduate student, recently participated in a field research day at the cemetery. “It 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,” he says.

Janelle Malagon, an undergraduate, says that she has “always 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.”

The corresponding website exhibit created by the research team — including Scot French, digital historian; Amy Giroux, a computer research specialist in ; and graduate student assistants — will use software to map the research virtually, and UCF’s 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.

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

Students, including those in Lyons’ Modern Europe and the First World War class and Professor Barbara Gannon’s 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.  Her parents met in the U.S. Air Force, and both her grandparents served.

“The VLP is becoming more important to me every time I learn something new about it,” she says. “I have the utmost respect for this project.”

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

“Seeing 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,” 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’s entry into World War I, the research is especially timely.

”We are in the centennial of World War I. There is no better time to recognize the service of these veterans,” Holliday says.

Graduate students in Professor Caroline Cheong’s 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 UCF team and local middle- and high-school students will travel to the cemetery as a kickoff event for the program. UCF student researchers will interact with younger students at the cemetery, providing what Holliday sees as “a 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.”

Gannon, who is also coordinator of UCF’s 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’t come as a surprise.

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

“The award of these three contracts signifies the VA National Cemetery Administration’s dedication and commitment to providing enhanced memorialization and lasting tributes that commemorate the service and sacrifice of veterans,” 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.

Established through the National Cemetery Administration (NCA), between 2017 and 2019, VLP harnessed UCF student research efforts to create biographies of veterans buried in national cemeteries in Florida. In piecing together veterans’ stories, students gained historical insight while honoring forgotten legacies.

“I brought someone back to life who had been forgotten in life and in death,” Lyons recalls a student who worked on the program saying.

Now, thanks to a new grant from the Department of Veterans Affairs, that impact will extend beyond the university. Starting in 2023, UCF students and faculty will partner with teachers at Florida K-12 schools to create VLP classroom projects. These projects will connect younger students with veterans’ stories through their local NCA cemetery.

“We are so pleased to be continuing our partnership with the NCA,” Lyons says. “We are expanding our work significantly, working to bring our successful pedagogical model for doing veterans history to K-12 and university faculty around the state of Florida.”

In June 2023, about two dozen Florida teachers will be invited to the UCF Veterans Legacy Program Institute, a 10-day workshop held at the headquarters for the Florida National Guard, located in the historic St. Francis Barracks and the adjacent St. Augustine National Cemetery. Participants will create veteran biography assignments and design a tour of their local NCA cemetery using the St. Augustine National Cemetery as inspiration.

“We hope that holding this institute in St. Augustine, the state’s first settlement, will aid teachers in creating engaging lesson plans for students learning Florida history,” says Barbara Gannon, associate professor of history.

Alison Simpson, command historian for the Florida National Guard, is partnering with VLP to provide the setting for the institute. She will also share expertise about St. Augustine’s history for participants planning class field trips to the area.

“I am really looking forward to this project, to collaborating with the team from UCF, both faculty and students, and sharing with educators from around the state some history of the Florida National Guard as it relates to their [local areas],” Simpson says.

Each teacher’s local cemetery tour will be unique and versatile, highlighting individual veterans whose histories fit with their grade level’s larger curriculum. The final learning materials created at the Institute will be posted on the maintained by (CHDR).

“As the digital humanities research hub for the College of Arts and Humanities, our center developed and maintains the VLP website,” says Amy Giroux, director of CHDR. “The current K-12 curricular materials will be expanded by our new institute.”

At the institute, UCF alumni who previously worked on VLP will share their expertise through panels and one-on-one discussions. Meanwhile, current students will collaborate with teachers to prepare curriculum and conduct research on veterans buried in St. Augustine.

According to Lyons, this exemplifies how an education in the humanities prepares students for future careers.

“VLP is an excellent teaching tool. Students learn real-world skills doing research and writing about veterans connected to their local area … [and] history,” Lyons says. “Our UCF students who will be part of the 2023 UCF VLP Institute will gain professional skills, network with educators in our state and be part of a federal grant program. We are a great example of how connecting classroom education and real-world skills prepares our students for jobs and careers.”

According to Lyons, this program is especially impactful because it allows veterans who served our nation in life to continue their service by educating new generations. Meanwhile, it helps students understand the cultural context of the time a veteran lived.

“VLP and this institute allow us to tell America’s story through the eyes of the veterans whose sacrifices made that story possible,” Gannon says.