They'd all completed substantial independent research projects, representing dozens and in some cases hundreds of hours of work. Though the quality varied, it varied within a range from getting-close-to-publishable to solidly-argued and supported, if not particularly inspired or original, undergraduate work.
They'd presented the questions, methods, and results of their work on posters that were well and carefully designed, and, in 95% of the cases, free of typographical and mechanical errors (one poor young woman was distressed that, in the trip from submitted file to large-format printer, some of the spacing in one area of her poster had gone wonky, but really, that small problem didn't detract from the quality of her work, and it was very clear that is wasn't anything under her control -- at least not so long as she didn't get to see a page proof, which she didn't).
All of them could explain their projects in great detail, and with great enthusiasm (in fact, it was a bit hard to escape from some of them once one showed the slightest interest. And the judging was over by then, so they weren't trying to impress anyone; they just cared about their projects).
. . .And, at the end of the day, there were some actual winners of modestly substantial cash prizes (for first-place finishers, about the amount one would pay to rent a really small room with a shared bath in a group home on the bus line to campus for a month; for the runners-up, half that amount, or enough to fill up the tank of a compact car a half-dozen or so times).
While the exhibition/competition was part of an ongoing initiative at our institution, it is not, sadly, one in which all of our students can be involved at this level; we just don't have the money to pay for the sort of on-one-one mentoring that such work involves. And not all of our students would take to such an experience. But I suspect that a great many, given the time and resources, would, and, if those involved today were any measure, they would represent a cross-section of our student population in terms of gender, age, ethnicity, and economic/class background (in other words, I didn't walk into a room on our extremely diverse campus and suddenly find the diversity significantly diminished, either overall or among the prize winners).
So there's some misery here, mostly in terms of who can and will participate. This program undoubtedly benefits from, and potentially helps perpetuate, a stratification of both students and faculty, in which a few people get to participate in individual in-depth research, while many others teach, and are taught in, large and/or increasingly-standardized classes taught by underpaid contingent faculty. But there's also hope. There's funding for undergraduates -- enough to allow some of them to forgo less-intellectual paid work in favor of research. And, as far as I can tell, all faculty members are eligible to be mentors (though of course it helps if you have substantial ongoing research of your own, or at least upper-level classes in the major that allow students to become aware of your research interests, and vice versa).
And yes, several of the projects presented -- including at least two of the winning ones -- could be considered as coming under the broad heading of "identity studies." They were good, examining complex causes and effects of complex phenomena. Some of the proposed solutions (where supplied) were, perhaps a bit idealistic, but hey, these are early 20-somethings. If they aren't optimistic (and perhaps also a bit doctrinaire), who will be?
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ReplyDeleteCC, lovely. We had something similar here; there's the option for seniors to do an independent research project. Because it's optional, we can keep it rigorous enough that only the truly motivated will do it; and therefore the results are usually pretty decent.
ReplyDeleteNot desiring to continue Bubba's transgression, I nevertheless want to point out that the perception people have of "identity studies" is that they have a tendency to beg the question. So much so that if they don't beg the question -- concluding, for example, that the high rate of out-of-wedlock birth among working-class whites stems from a dysfunctional culture rather than from oppression by outside groups -- they are not considered "identity studies."
That's the perception.
And folks, I still fail to see why Bubba's link was so offensive. But then, my daughter's a vet student (also a hippophile, but dead animals -- much messier ones than in the picture in question -- are par for the course for her).
bubba's post didn't give me rage,
ReplyDeleteit just belonged
on another page.
@Introvert: thank you. Actually, I worried a bit that this might be off-topic in the sense of not being misery-related enough. But we end up talking a lot about standards, and what students (and we) are capable of (and in what conditions), and in that way it seemed relevant.
ReplyDeleteAs far as identity studies goes, I don't want to get too detailed, but the winners who might be seen as having at least a foot in those areas were working (over the course of several projects) not with ethnic identity, but with concepts such as mental health, self/body image, stigma, and self esteem (!). Some started from scratch to collect data; some relied on existing data sets (and hence existing ways of measuring these nebulous concepts). None questioned the basic premises/terms on which the research was based, but I wouldn't really expect that at this level. They did use rigorous methods of analysis which *could* be used to mount such a challenge, and, as far as I could tell (I'm not qualified to judge statistical analysis), used them well.
I do think there's a certain amount of begging the question/circular reasoning out there, but, as I said on another thread, I'm not sure it's any more prevalent in identity studies than in, say, a more "conservative" field such as economics. In any field, regardless of political slant, only a handful of really brilliant thinkers are going to explode or otherwise radically alter the accepted wisdom/paradigms; a productive middle group are going to modestly extend, question, and/or otherwise modify them (which may, over time, cumulatively, do as much or more good as exploding them); and a probably equally-or-larger group of responsible but not particularly imaginative plodders are going to just keep saying the same thing over and over again by applying existing methods to new evidence. All are, in their own way, scholars, though I'd prefer that only the first two groups be teaching grad (or at least Ph.D.) students. And some people may work their way from one category to the next over the course of a career; though some paradigm-smashing is, indeed, done by brilliant new stars in their dissertations or first books, I suspect that at least as much is done by mid-late-career scholars whose questions about the accepted paradigms/wisdom have been building up over time.
Honestly, on a quick scan of the title of this post, I thought it said "As far as I'm concerned, you're all WHINERS."
ReplyDeleteAnd I thought, rock on.
I misread it myself that way at least once, too, BurntChrome. But frankly, this particular Dean doesn't pay enough attention to undergraduates the other 364 days, 23 hours of the year to have noticed that tendency (or, to put it another way, he thinks spreadsheets full of student eval #s actually reflect something real about the quality of teaching).
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