September 14, 1999

As announced earlier in the Mellon Program's newsletter and web site, I am writing to invite you to nominate a student to help you and your colleagues experiment with information technologies in support of teaching and collaboration. The Mellon Program will fund six students on each campus for the remainder of this academic year. Each student will be trained and funded for six to 10 hours of work per week. Each liaison will be assigned to one academic department, therefore this is a competitive opportunity. The Program does not have the resources to support more than six departments with liaisons. The student liaison approach has been tested successfully at Kenyon during the 1998-99 academic year. The Mellon student liaison program has different goals and is managed separately from other student assistant programs that may exist on our campuses.

Mellon student liaisons are funded to facilitate our faculties exploration and experimentation with new technologies for teaching. They can help you and your colleagues examine the possibilities for discipline-specific software, explore the uses of Internet resources and e-mail discussion groups, plan and execute web-based class projects, and more. They will serve as the Mellon Program's "eyes and ears" and will be in contact with the Program director and those on our campuses who can provide further assistance. The students will work in your department with mutually agreed upon schedules. The students are not being paid to serve as front-line technical support, however they may help in this area from time to time.

More information about the liaison program is provided in the guidelines. I would rather not specify more details of the program than that, for if this effort is to be a success, it will evolve in time based on your department's needs. I'm hopeful that we can adjust the details as we move ahead to achieve the best possible success.

That success will start with your nomination of a student for the position of liaison for your department. Would you please discuss this with your colleagues and send to me your nomination no later than Monday, October 11? A simple nomination may be sent to me in e-mail at siddall@denison.edu Please nominate only one student and provide supporting statements of their qualifications. If you have any specific plans or projects, please list them. I am hoping that you can identify a student who has declared their major in your discipline and who meets the criteria listed in the guidelines attached.

Thank you very much.

Scott E. Siddall