The UCCS Center for Research Frontiers in the Digital Humanities has been awarded $348,000 in Congressionally Directed Spending (CDS) for its preservation and education work. This project was selected by Senator Hickenlooper and Senator Bennet in 2024, and, with the continued support of the Senator’s office and the CU Office of Government Relations, it was passed into law in the most recent minibus.
The funds will support the Center in developing a mobile digitization lab to record, preserve, and recover the history of Southern Colorado. The request was submitted with letters of support from Colorado Springs School District 11 and Pikes Peak State College.
“Not only will we be able to further empower our cross-campus, multidisciplinary work but also get out into the community and around Southern Colorado to show how relevant and engaging the Humanities are,” said Center Co-Director and KFL faculty member Larry Eames.
The Center for Research Frontiers in the Digital Humanities at UCCS is a regional leader in Digital Humanities. This project will recover under-appreciated and forgotten aspects of state history and make Colorado one of the few places in the country where this kind of technology is available to both researchers and the public.
Phase One of the project will include purchasing advanced digitization equipment and deepening the Center’s relationships with partners in Colorado Springs. With high-powered imaging and preservation technology, the Center will be able to focus on local histories while working with students from UCCS and D11 to develop digitization and exhibition workflows to be deployed across the state. Phase Two will see the Center Directors taking a mobile version of the lab on the road throughout southern Colorado.
As Center Co-Director and LAS faculty member Jennifer Kling put it, “So much of Colorado’s history lives in personal archives, small museums, and community memory—making it both incredibly rich and deeply vulnerable. A mobile digital humanities lab lets us meet communities where they are, preserving local histories that might otherwise be lost and transforming them into shared, meaning-making opportunities. At its core, this work leverages technology to further a humanistic project: creating belonging by helping people tell their own stories in new, more accessible ways.”
Center Co-Director and LAS faculty member Brandon Strubberg added, “Preservation is only the beginning. Digital humanities methods allow us to approach community history through a user experience lens by designing digital environments where stories are intuitive to explore and engaging to experience.”
The CDS process is an opportunity for state and local government entities and nonprofits to request funding from members of Congress for specific projects in their home states. Funding for projects, if selected by the Senate Committee on Appropriations and ultimately passed into law by Congress, is distributed as part of the federal appropriations process.
Founded in 2022 and currently directed by Larry Eames (KFL), Jennifer Kling (LAS-Philosophy), and Brandon Strubberg (LAS-Technical Communication and Information Design), the Center for Research Frontiers in the Digital Humanities works to unify the humanities and technology through expansive innovation, investigation, and collaboration. By focusing on how technology can creatively inform research, scholarship, education, and community outreach attentive to the human condition, the Center builds projects that connect affiliate faculty, staff, and students across disciplines, campuses, Colorado Springs, and the region.