Tulane University

 

Since 2007, we have been fortunate to have the support of our home institution, Tulane University.  From the start, we received a Research Enchancement Grant from the university for both the development of the research tool and also the luxury of bringing down key copyright scholars, both to participate in speaker series', as well as spend time with them one-on-one discussing the Durationator and research questions that arose from our work.  We also recieved an IDEA Grant from the Technology Transfer Office.  The law school also contributed to our development, in both additional funding to conferences, also funding a speaker series, and most significantly, providing additional student research hours to help with our project.  In the course of seven years, we have had over seventy students work on the project as research assistants.  Without this support, the project would have been much harder to accomplish.  We conservatively estimate that we have had around 8000 hours of student research hours over the past years.

 

We have also be very grateful for the funding from main campus in the form of a professorship awarded to Dr. Townsend Gard.  The Jill H. and Avram A. Glazer Professor in Social Entrepreneurship is accompanied with a research fund that allowed for the continued development of the platform, and travel to visit research partners, the US Copyright Office, and potential distributors of the project.  This additional investment has made a tremendous difference at a key moment in our development.  Finally, Dr. Vicki Mayer in Communications included us in a NEH Digital Humanities Grant at a key moment in our development, and for that we are very grateful.

 

In particular we want to thank Executive Director, John Christie, in the technology transfer office, for shepherding our project but also so many key individuals--Provost Michael Bernstein;  Executive Vice President for University Relations and Development,, Yvette Jones;  Vice President for Research, Laura Levy; Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs, Ana Lopez; former law dean, Larry Ponoroff; former interim dean, Steve Griffin; current dean Dave Meyer; the dean of the school of Architecture and Director of the Social Innovation Social Entprepreneurship program, Kenneth Schwartz; Assistant Provost for Civic Engagement and Social Entrepreneurship, Rick Aubrey; my fellow Social Entrepreneurship professors, and Associate Dean of Libraries, Andy Corrigan.  Our Tulane law faculty has also be incredibly supportive, where we have probably talked to each faculty members about some aspect of the project or business, along with helpful comments from presentations, brown bags, and other opportunities to share.  A special thanks to Kim Glorioso, our law librarian, and Janice Sayers, who have been with us for so much.  And of course, Team Durationator--the students. one word--awesome.