Mentoring with the Digital History Fellows was one of the most meaningful aspects of my time at the Center for History and New Media. Historians often isolate themselves and their research, but with digital history methods, collaboration becomes key to creating something meaningful. Through both my time as a first year and second year, I engaged with other fellows, as well as our colleagues in the program, to help each other learn tools, troubleshoot problems, and also engage in a social, collaborative environment that allowed us to foster a useful learning environment for digital history.

Mentoring had two aspects–the first was the DH Fellows working amongst themselves to solve problems, bounce off ideas, and to work together on projects assigned by the three divisions of CHNM. Second, the DH Fellows created a support space last year that allowed students in Clio 1 and 2 to come into the Center and work, so that if there were problems with their projects, we could collaboratively work to fix and explain in more depth the different tools that they were exposed to.

Lastly, it was helpful to have my mentee, Alyssa, with me to do the Digital Campus Podcast. Together, we came up with stories that we felt were meaningful, interesting, and even were able to produce the live podcast at the 20th Anniversary Conference. This process would be difficult without her, as it helps to have two people bounce ideas around for projects that are already so collaborative in nature.

Mentoring allowed me to create new relationships with fellow historians, learn the collaborative nature of digital history and the best ways to work together, and also how to share and identify problems that could potentially help all of us create better work overall.