Undergraduate Research and the Writing

1
Undergraduate Research and the Writing
Major/Minor
Undergraduate Research An inquiry or
investigation conducted by an undergraduate
student that makes an original intellectual or
creative contribution to the discipline.
CCCC 12 March 2009 San Francisco
2
Panel

• Joyce Kinkead, Associate Vice President for
  Research, Utah State University
• D. Alexis Hart, Virginia Military Institute
• Deaver Traywick, Director of the Writing Center,
  Black Hills State University
• Dominic DelliCarpini, Director of Writing, York
  College of Pennsylvania
• Laurie Grobman, Professor of English and Editor
  of Young Scholars in Writing, Penn State Berks

3
The Writing Major/Minor

• The CCCC Committee on Majors in Rhetoric and
  Composition
• http//www.ncte.org/cccc/committees/majorrhetcomp
• 65 programs on the current list
• A paucity of courses in research methods
• Little, if any, reference to ethics of conducting
  research
• Very few references to collaborating with faculty
  on research projects
• No mention of dissemination

4
Undergraduate Research
Undergraduate Research An inquiry or
investigation conducted by an undergraduate
student that makes an original intellectual or
creative contribution to the discipline.

• The pedagogy of the 21st CenturyJoint
  Statement by NCUR and CUR
• Humanities departments have been the slowest to
  participate in the UR movementDotterer (2002)
• Difficulty of the humanistic model of scholarship

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A Change in Culture?

• Increasing number of venues for undergraduates to
  present or publish research and scholarship
• Young Scholars in Writing
• The Oswald Review An International Journal of
  Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the
  Discipline of English
• Public Writing A Cultural Studies Journal for
  Undergraduate Writers
• Award-winning articles by undergraduates
• Braddock Prize Fishman, Jenn, Andrea Lunsford,
  Beth McGregor, and Mark Otuteye. Performing
  Writing, Performing Literacy. CCC 57.2 (2005)
  224-52.
• IWCA Award Brown, Renee, Brian Fallon, Jessica
  Lott, Elizabeth Matthews, and Elizabeth Mintie.
  Taking on Turnitin Tutors Advocating Change.
  Writing Center Journal 27.1 (2007) 7-28.

6
Relevant Works on UR

• Grobman, Laurie, and Joyce Kinkead. Forthcoming.
  Undergraduate Research in/and English Studies.
• Grobman, Laurie. 2007. Affirming the Independent
  Researcher Model Undergraduate Research in the
  Humanities. Council of Undergraduate Research
  Quarterly 28 (1) 23-28.
• -----. Forthcoming. The Student Scholar
  (Re)Negotiating Authorship and Authority. College
  Composition and Communication.
• Kinkead, Joyce. 2007. How Writing Programs
  Support Undergraduate Research. In Karukstis,
  Kerry K, and Timothy E. Elgren, ed. 2007.
  Developing and Sustaining a Research-Supportive
  Curriculum A Compendium of Successful Practices.
  Washington, DC Council on Undergraduate
  Research.
• Kinkead, Joyce, ed. 2003. Valuing and Supporting
  Undergraduate Research. New Directions in
  Teaching and Learning. San Francisco
  Jossey-Bass.
• -----. Forthcoming. Undergraduate Researchers as
  Makers of Knowledge in Composition. Revisiting
  The Making of Knowledge in Composition
  Perspectives on an Evolving Field, edited by
  Richard Gebhardt and Lance Massey. Logan, Utah
  State University Press.

7
Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking
and prying with a purpose. Zora Neale Hurston

• UR and Writing across the Curriculum
• Responsible Conduct of Research
• UR and the Writing Center
• Response

8
Dissemination

• The Boyer Commission (1998) Dissemination of
  results is an essential and integral part of the
  research process (24).

9
Selectivity

• Walkington and Jenkins There are cost,
  administrative and quality control reasons for
  restricting publication. Standards are governed
  by the peer review process and scope of each
  publication type and thus vary widely. Indeed, to
  mirror the experience of academics doing
  research, understanding that publication is
  highly selective, and rejection is a possibility,
  is part of the process of becoming a researcher.
  Walkington, Helen, and Alan Jenkins. Brookes
  eJournal of Learning and Teaching 2.3 (2008).

10
Undergraduate Venues

• Institutional/Local
• Regional
• National
•  
• Professional venues are increasingly accepting
  work by undergraduates.

11
Institutional and Local

• The 2002 Boyer Commission study, Reinventing
  Undergraduate Education Three Years after the
  Boyer Commission Report reported that more than
  50 of the research universities in their study
  offered public events or symposia for
  undergraduate researchers to present their work,
  and 33 offer opportunities for undergraduate
  researcher to publish abstracts or full texts of
  their work (9).
• Colleges and universities are also publishing
  internal UR journals. Several campuses have UR
  journals that are general to the university
  (e.g., University of North Texas The Eagle
  Feather) or specific to departments (e.g., Utah
  States Scribendi). Kurt Schick and
  undergraduates R. Casey Boutwell and Laurence A.
  Lewis, are launching a UR journal at James
  Madison University to showcase scholarship across
  campus and beyond.
• The Penn State University English departments
  sponsor an annual intercampus English conference,
  bringing together students from its 20
  undergraduate campuses.
• The Undergraduate Research Conference sponsored
  by the Berks County Higher Education Council,
  brings together students from 5 Berks county, PA
  higher education institutions and invites others
  from eastern PA.

12
Regional

• The Virginia Military Institutes Department of
  English and Fine Arts has hosted an annual
  undergraduate research conference for colleges in
  and near the Shenandoah Valley since 2004 to
  share their research on Shakespeare and the
  Renaissance.
• At the 2005 NCPTW, students comprised one-half of
  the 500 presenters.
• This is also the case at the 15th Annual Rocky
  Mountain Peer Tutoring Conference and the 19th
  Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Association, or
  MAWCA, a regional affiliate of IWCA.

13
National/International

• Journals
• Writing Lab Newsletter, founded by Muriel Harris,
  published its first Tutors Corner (now called
  Tutors Column) in 1984.
• Young Scholars in Writing Undergraduate Research
  in Writing and Rhetoric, first published in 2003,
  is an international, undergraduate research
  journal written for and by undergraduate students
  involved in rhetoric and composition
• George Washington Universitys new journal,
  Public Writing A Cultural Studies Journal for
  Undergraduate Writers, provides an online forum
  for undergraduate writers engaged in critique of
  contemporary, historical, public ideas.
• The Oswald Review Undergraduate Research and
  Criticism in the Discipline of English is a
  refereed undergraduate journal of criticism and
  research in the discipline of English and
  published since 1999, includes articles primarily
  in literary studies.
• The Pittsburgh Undergraduate Review (PUR)
  publishes research articles written by students,
  the majority in the humanities, arts, and social
  sciences.
• In 1984, the University of Texas at El Paso
  Honors program began publishing The Honors
  Journal.

14
National/International

• Conferences
• The National Undergraduate Literature Conference
  (NULC), established in 1985, is held annually on
  the campus of Weber State University in Ogden,
  Utah.
• The National Conference on Peer Tutoring in
  Writing (NCPTW), in its 25th year, has included
  undergraduates as participants since its first
  days.
• Sigma Tau Delta, The International English Honor
  Society, hosts an annual convention where all
  members are invited to submit critical essays,
  creative nonfiction, original poetry, fiction,
  drama/ screenplays, panel proposals and/or works
  focusing on the common reader for the conference.
  
• The Undergraduate Conference in Medieval and
  Early Modern Studies, begun in 2006, is held at
  Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

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Other Outlets

• Wikis (David Morton and Rachel Garcia at the
  University of Delaware helped pioneer the
  Chaucer and the Law wiki (see
  http//chaucer-and-law.wikispaces.com/).
• Institutional Reports (Utah State University
  writing fellows took on a large-scale assessment
  project to review every syllabus at the
  undergraduate level and determine the amount and
  kinds of writing.)
• Community-Based Research (126-page volume of
  short essays and compilations of facts called
  Woven with Words A Collection of African
  American History in Berks County, Pennsylvania
  and a corresponding website (lthttp//www.readingna
  acp.org/book.htmlgt).

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Questions? Discussion
Laurie Grobman leg8_at_psu.edu Joyce Kinkead
Joyce.Kinkead_at_usu.edu
http//research.usu.edu/undergrad