Center for History and New Media, George Mason University

Tanya Clement

May 11, 2011

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Founded 1994
Tom Scheinfeldt, Managing Director (i.e. Chief Operating Officer)

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 The Center for History and New Media is an almost entirely grant funded organization. Approximately 90% of CHNM’s operating budget is paid with grant funds. This has a profound effect on the way CHNM is staffed. With a very few exceptions, staff positions at CHNM are contingent on continued grant funding. Nevertheless, as the amount of grant funding has grown and become more consistent and as its sources have become more diversified, we have been able approximate the conditions of a “general fund” and staff “budget lines.” Instead of hiring post-docs or temporary staff to work on a particular grant funded project when it is awarded, where possible we try to hire people to fill set of generalized roles that have evolved over the years and proven themselves necessary to the successful completion of nearly any digital humanities project: designer, web developer, project manager, outreach specialist. In general, at any one time, staff are paid not from one grant, but from many grants. At any given moment, a CHNM web designer, for example, may be paid from as many as four or five different grant budgets, her funding distribution changing fairly frequently as her work on a particular project ends and work on another project begins. This makes for very complicated accounting and lots of strategic human resource decisions, but it means that we can keep people around as projects start and end and funders come and go. The result is that more than a few “temporary” staff members at CHNM have been with us for five or, in some cases, nearly ten years.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 The second governing condition of staffing at CHNM is our disciplinary focus. Although in recent years CHNM has moved increasingly into interdisciplinary digital humanities work (especially in the tool building and scholarly communication work of our Research Division), organizationally, CHNM remains part of the History Department at George Mason University. Directors at CHNM are all trained historians, several with teaching responsibilities in the Department. CHNM grew directly out of the social and public history work of our founder, Roy Rosenzweig, and the bulk of our work (and budget) today remains in the areas of history education and content-focused public history. This means we tend to hire historians, often from the Mason Ph.D. and M.A. programs and self-taught in the technology, to fill staff positions.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 “Digital Historian” designates mainly content work, “Technology Specialist” designates mainly technical work, “Associate” indicates full-time, and “Assistant” indicates part-time. Within those designations some people may have an additional working title such as “Gulag Project Manager” or “Omeka Technical Lead.”

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 Director, Chief Executive Officer* (Associate Professor in History Department)*
Direct Reports:

0. ¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0
1. Managing Director, Chief Operating Officer* (Research Assistant Professor in College of Humanities and Social Sciences)
   Direct Reports:
   0. ¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0
   1. Associate Director of Research (Research Associate, i.e. faculty-track, pre-Ph.D. in History Department)
      Direct reports:
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      1. Assistant Technology Specialist (Half-time, wages staff): programmers, designers, multimedia developers
      2. Associate Technology Specialists (Full-time classified staff): programmers, designers, multimedia developers
   2. Contractor (Independent): THATCamp coordinator
   3. Webmaster (Full-time classified staff)
      Direct Reports:
      0. ¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0
      1. Assistant Technology Specialist (Wages staff): assistant webmaster
   4. Office Manager (Full-time classified staff)
      Direct reports:
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      1. Administrative Assistant* (Full-time classified staff)
2. Director of Education Projects* (Assistant Professor in Higher Education Program)
   Direct Reports:
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   1. Assistant Digital Historians (Half-time, wages staff): content focused
   2. Associate Digital Historians (Full-time classified staff): content focused
   3. Associate Technology Specialists (Full-time classified staff): programmers, designers, multimedia developers
3. Director of Public Projects (Research Associate Professor in History Department, pending)
   Direct Reports:
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   1. Associate Director of Public Projects (Research Assistant Professor in History Department)
      Direct Reports:
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      1. Assistant Technology Specialist (Half-time, wages staff): programmer, designer
   2. Editor-in-Chief, Papers of the War Department* (Assistant Professor in History Department)
      Direct Reports:
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      1. Assistant Digital Historians (Half-time, wages staff): content focused
      2. Associate Digital Historian (Full-time classified staff): Associate editor of PWD.
   3. Associate Technology Specialists (Full-time classified staff): programmers, designers, multimedia developers
   4. Assistant Digital Historians (Half-time, wages staff): content focused
   5. Associate Digital Historians (Full-time classified staff): content focused
4. Director of Research Projects* (Assistant Professor in History Department)
   Direct Reports:
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   1. Associate Digital Historian (Full-time classified staff): content focused
   2. Contractor (Independent): Zotero lead developer
   3. Associate Technology Specialist (Full-time classified staff): programmers, designers, multimedia developers
5. Director of Digital Scholarship* (Assistant Professor in History Department)
6. Other:
   Associate Directors* (Associated History Department faculty): advisory board

¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 * Indicates positions that are paid mainly or entirely from university (i.e. non-grant) funds. All other positions are “soft money” positions, paid by one or more grants or indirect payouts from grants.