Credits

Many people have contributed content and ideas to this site over the years. The list below is incomplete – please use the Contact/Feedback link in the footer if you notice omissions!

Faculty and Graduate Students

Frederick Amrine had the original idea for the site, and provided invaluable ideas, feedback, support and encouragement from the beginning of the project in the summer of 1999. Johannes von Moltke made possible the complete re-design of the site in Winter 2019, with generous departmental support. This funding was in turn made possible by the 2017 Department Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education, awarded to the department by the College of LS&A.
The majority of the content on this site was written by Hartmut Rastalsky, who also took many of the photographs.
Vicki Dischler is responsible for the German 221/231 materials, and for many ideas and edits throughout the site.
Mary Gell has contributed countless ideas and resources to this site over the years.
Vera Irwin wrote most of the exercises for the Basic Scientific Vocabulary. Most of the photos for the banner images were taken by Vera.
Stacy Swennes selected and wrote many of the materials for the Scientific German section of German 232
Kathryn Sederberg conceived of and designed the blogs used for many years in German 101-231, and contributed many ideas and design improvements to the site.
Graduate Student Instructors and Lecturers teaching German 101-232 over the years have fundamentally shaped this site with their ideas and feedback.
Dan Richards wrote code to make the “Diagnostic Exercises” on the site “submittable,” and contributed crucially to the early planning for the site.
Jordan Fowles created the action mazes on the Relative Pronoun page.
Karen Galley, Bruce Spencer, Erik Schleef, and Nina McCune contributed additional exercises and ideas.

Undergraduate Students

Undergraduate students in German 101-326 have shaped the site fundamentally over the years with their feedback.
Paul Chamberlain contributed crucially to the redesign of the website in 2019. He provided ideas and feedback for design decisions, proofread the entire site, added content and clarifications and corrected countless small errors, added alt tags for images, and did all of this extraordinarily efficiently and reliably.
Alex Matchneer conceived of and wrote the original flashcard program in 2007. Philip Bunge wrote the Android app version of the program in 2013, and Sam Scott wrote the iOS version in 2014, with contributions from Omar Metwally and Brandon Parker.
William Zasadny created numerous grammar practice exercises and provided a great deal of feedback on the site in 2002/3. Additional exercises and ideas were contributed by Adam Williams, Justin Messer, Christiana Diehr, Erick Perez, Mary Wallliczek, and Jacquise Purifoy.
Timm Hannon, Eric Patrick, Becky Adams and Katherine Dungan were part of a particularly valuable focus group session in November 2002.

Support Staff

Logic Solutions, notably Jennifer Pan, and Johnathon Beals from the University of Michigan Language Resource Center, chose and designed the new look for the site, implemented in Winter 2019
Johnathon Beals from the University of Michigan Language Resource Center has provided essential technical support in maintaining and updating the site over the years, writing code, suggesting design ideas, maintaining the flashcard site and apps, the blogs, and the video lectures, and working with the students who wrote the mobile app versions of the flashcard program. The transition to the new look and new server in Winter 2019 could not have happened without him.
Rob DeMilner from the University of Michigan Language Resource Center filmed and painstakingly edited the German 101/102 video lectures, and contributed many creative ideas to these videos.
Lynne Crandall and Philomena Meechan from the University of Michigan Language Resource Center provided invaluable help, guidance, ideas and encouragement, especially in the early years of the project. Philomena taught Hartmut to use Hot Potatoes, and has suggested many ideas over the years that have fed into this site.
Phill Cameron from the University of Michigan Language Resource Center has provided important technical support, and helped Hartmut and Vicki with html and Dreamweaver before the transition to WordPress.
Holly Furgason designed and helped implement a new look and structure for the site in summer 2003.
Monika Dressler (Director of the University of Michigan Language Resource Center at the time) provided advice, encouragement, and valuable letters of support for grant applications.
John Stewart and Reid Paxton (from the University of Michigan Language Resource Center at the time) provided technical support and server space in the early years of the site.

Funding

The Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan provided $15,000 in funding for the fundamental redesign of the site implemented in Winter 2019. Ongoing departmental funding supported the work of graduate and undergraduate students on the project, notably the completion of the mobile app versions of the flashcard program, and various materials purchases. The department also helped fund a “Nurturance Leave” for Hartmut during the 2001/2 academic year, when much of the original content was written.
The University of Michigan Language Resource Center’s Graduate Media Assistant Program supported the creation of the blogs for German 101-231 by Kathryn Sederberg in summer 2011, and the work done by Stacy Swennes on the creation of webpages for German 103 in summer 2003.
Gilbert Whitaker Fund for the Improvement of Teaching, University of Michigan: $25,000 “Stage II” grant, November 2001.
University of Michigan Rackham Spring/Summer Research Grant: $4,000, April 2001.
Gilbert Whitaker Fund for the Improvement of Teaching, University of Michigan: $5,000 “Stage I” grant, April 2000, supplemented by an additional $2,500 from the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts.
The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program at the University of Michigan primarily supported the work done by undergraduate students on this site from Fall 2000 – Winter 2003.

Software

Half-Baked Software‘s Hot Potatoes software was used to create most of the exercises on this site. Their Quandary software was used to create the Action Mazes on the Relative Pronoun page.

Copyright Permissions and Acknowledgments

Cengage (and previously Houghton Mifflin) gave permission for the vocabulary from Vorsprung to be put online with accompanying exercises.
Some photos from the AP Photo Archive‘s searchable database of photographs for educational use were used in the diagnostic exercises on Relative Clauses.