By Megan Novak Wood, Associate Director of Undergraduate Research, Northwestern University
One of the biggest challenges in recruiting student participants in the arts and humanities is helping them explore their interests and making sure they know what research looks like in their fields of study. Additionally, there may be fewer opportunities for students to assist on faculty projects given the individualistic nature of many methodologies. Finally, faculty in creative fields may not see their work as research. Combined, these barriers to entry make it harder for students in the arts and humanities to get started.
ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
One strategy is to introduce research in the context of answering questions, although the output itself may vary. While a student in theatre may ultimately be interested producing a play, the dramaturgy involved in the process requires answering a number of questions. Encourage students to think about what is unknown about particular topics. What do we not know that we need to know? If the student is in the creative arts, why do they need to make a particular piece? How does it add to the conversation in the field?
How students figure out appropriate questions to answer really depends on how the field asks questions. Good first steps to take are reading scholarship, talking to field experts, and gaining a sense of methods used in a particular discipline.
WADING INTO THE CONVERSATION
Reading scholarship varies widely within fields because the format and structure vary. While a history student may read a book chapter, a journalism student may read mainstream articles, and a theatre student may read plays and critiques. It is important to emphasize that students should read content that is relevant to their field of study! The goal should be to understand the current conversations in their field around a particular topic. Ultimately the student can work to position their research question within this broader conversation.
TALKING TO EXPERTS
When talking to field experts, encourage students to take advantage of office hours. It is useful for students to know how the faculty expertise is relevant to the project they have in mind. The student can frame the conversation in terms of their particular interests and learn how the faculty might be able to provide guidance on a topic, methodology, or process. It is always a good idea for students to also ask what else they should be reading and who else they should be talking to.
RESEARCH RESOURCES
The easiest first step may simply be encouraging the students to learn about what research commonly looks like in a particular discipline. This is not intuitive in many arts and humanities fields. As a result, Northwestern University created a series of short video interviews with faculty. The videos discuss what research looks like across a range of fields (with particular focus on arts and humanities fields). They also explore how an undergraduate could get started.
Recently, as I was working with a professional organization to put together a poster session at a national conference, it dawned on me that the staff members tasked with making the practical arrangements with the hotel hosting the conference had no idea what a poster session was or how to “do” it. It simply has not been a big part of how people in my discipline (art history) communicate our research. But it should be, I think, because poster sessions are much more inclusive than panels and help shape the future of the discipline in ways that panels cannot. With their less structured format, their casual, chatty atmosphere, and their emphasis on a wide variety of research and creative work as opposed to a narrow focus, they provide many more opportunities for discussion, idea-generation, and networking than the traditional panel format does.
Essentially, the purpose of a poster session is to give presenters a chance to talk to a diverse audience about the nature, process, and significance of their work, and the audience a chance to learn about the scope of research taking place within a field. Furthermore, through the conversations that take place at such sessions, new professional relationships are seeded, new critical perspectives on the presented work and perhaps also work by the visitors hatched, and work gets a healthy dose of fresh air.
By Ian F. MacInnes, Alexa Sand, and Lisandra Estevez
Curating exhibitions is genuine research work that allows students to work collaboratively, engage the community, and practice public humanities scholarship. Exhibitions can teach students the fundamentals of research in a discipline while focusing on small and achievable outcomes, like bibliographic descriptions and short interpretive explanations. Exhibitions can help students understand and articulate the value of the public humanities. They allow students to practice making a persuasive visual and textual argument for a general audience. And finally, working on an exhibition is inherently collaborative, a model of humanities scholarship that is becoming more prevalent. Planning and mounting exhibitions can be resource and time intensive, but students tend to embrace the challenge. The public venue inspires them to do their best work.
An exhibition itself may be real or virtual, though whenever possible your students should have access to the actual objects they will be curating. Here are some things to be aware of if you are considering adding an exhibition project to your class.
Be open to different sources of material
The material for your exhibition is an opportunity to think creatively about the collaborative work you envision. Libraries and museums are obvious sources (and venues), but so are local historical societies. Smaller museums and libraries often have interesting collections of uncurated material, giving students an even more meaningful experience. Libraries also often have unadvertised collections of objects that can supplement documents. If local archives don’t have what you need, it is sometimes surprisingly easy to collect items yourself. Major auction sites, like eBay, are inexpensive sources of fragmentary material. Roman glass, Greek pottery sherds, pages from early print sources, and modern ephemera are all probably within reach of your budget. Finally, don’t forget that students can create facsimiles and replicas to build out an exhibition, either working on their own or with the help of experts on campus.
Prepare the ground with your collaborators
Whether working with a departmental or college gallery space, a campus museum, your library, or another on- or off-campus venue, start discussions long in advance of the first class meeting. Think about scheduling: when will the exhibition be installed or beta-tested? When will it open and will there be an associated event? When will it close and who will be responsible for taking it down and cleaning up? Are there special considerations to be taken into account in handling materials or working in the space, or the digital environment? Who will be responsible for what aspects of student support? For example, if display “furniture” such as supports or hanging hardware need to be constructed or installed, will the students do this, or will it be delegated to a preparator, and if so, is the service gratis, or fee based?
It’s a good idea to have all of this worked out ahead of time. That way, you can give student curators a comprehensive “map” of what their responsibilities will be, and what support they can expect from staff or curators employed by the exhibition venue.
Scaffold the needed skills into the class material
Exhibitions are daunting assignments from a student’s perspective, so it’s extra important to build student skills slowly from a base. Scaffolding, along with clear benchmarks, gives students a better sense of direction of where to start with this project. It is especially important in working with students who might have little experience with research in our disciplines.
Introductory explanation for the entire exhibition;
An exhibition catalog;
Posters advertising exhibition; and
Oral script of presentations for exhibition opening.
While scaffolding undergraduate research assignments might seem time-consuming, it actually allows for better time management for both students and instructors. By providing clear goals from the start, students get ongoing feedback regarding the progress of their project. Scaffolding also helps to model the research process for students step-by-step. They begin with a question, transform it into a statement or thesis, and carry out research for a bibliography. They then produce a substantial, thoughtful project that can be shared with the academic community.
Remember you are part of the team
As instructor, you are responsible for evaluating and assessing student work associated with the exhibition, but don’t forget that your name will also be publicly associated with the results. This means that you should consider yourself part of the team as well as an outside judge. While you normally avoid editing students’ work for excellent pedagogical reasons, you should not be shy about revising material that will be made public. Doing so not only helps create a better outcome but lets your students know that you are willing to work alongside them on a successful event.
Know your tools
Mounting an exhibition, whether actual or virtual, requires technical skills. As for most pedagogy, don’t evaluate your students on skills you don’t have yourself, including digital skills. And try to stick with exhibitions you feel confident about mounting yourself if you had to. Having a committed collaborator is often helpful, but don’t expect your IT department or your archivist to fill in for skills you lack.
Leave time for installation
It is tempting to think that final installation will go quickly since it’s just a physical event. But installations, whether physical or digital, take time, care, and can run into obstacles that may require time to fix. If you expect students to include replicas, make sure you plan for the time, space, materials, and expertise to help them achieve these goals. When possible, set aside some class time for installation. It’s practically the only time you can actually require all students to be present.
Plan your publicity
The more public your exhibition, the more your students will be inspired to do their best. Make publicity part of the project. Consider setting aside time and money for a “grand opening” event that includes campus stakeholders and influencers. As Chip and Dan Heath reveal in The Power of Moments, celebratory milestones can give students a sense of achievement and closure. And dissemination is a key element of undergraduate research: students should have the opportunity to interact with public visitors to their exhibition.
Further reading
Several models for curatorial work are discussed in this CUR Quarterly essay by Alexa Sand, Becky Thoms, Darcy Pumphrey, Erin Davis, and Joyce Kinkead of Utah State University, where the university’s library and art museum have often been the venues for student curatorial projects, and where the expertise of the library and museum staff are a critical factor.
Furthermore, a couple of great resources for composing museum labels and texts and creating inclusive exhibitions can be found here.
As teachers and administrators, we assess our students. We test them to measure their understanding of material. We ask them to write essays to show their ability to construct a scholarly argument. And we have them do research to establish their place in the study of a particular problem. In each case, we provide students with feedback. Some of this is formative: designed to highlight the strengths and weaknesses with the goal of improving performance on the next such assignment. Other feedback is summative, often in the form of grades. The British use the term “assessment” for these activities.
In the United States, however, the term frequently refers to the use of student work for program or course improvement. This should be just as constructive as grading students in a class. But this idea of assessment often seems to carry a negative connotation. Many faculty roll their eyes whenever the topic arises. This is in part because they know that assessment might be used for purposes it was not designed for. Some faculty fear that administrators might use assessment results to reward or terminate faculty. There is a concern that assessment might direct funding or provide talking points in service of some institutional agenda. Just as often and equally damaging, the eye-rolling results from past experience. At times, institutions have collected assessment data without a clear purpose. As a result, stacks of paper moldered in forgotten offices, and electronic files gathered virtual dust on neglected shared drives.
Step One: What Do You Want To Know?
So, to reclaim assessment as a beneficial component of program building, let us examine what assessment can do for you. We will begin with the question that should be at the forefront of any assessment discussion: “What do you want to know?” The answer to this deceptively simple question should lead to a discussion of how best to answer the question. This is the beginning of constructing a worthwhile assessment. One way that assessment differs from just asking questions is that with assessment there is a means to answer the question beyond simple anecdote.
An example of such a process comes from the assessment of the impact of undergraduate research. In a study of the effects of presenting at the Undergraduate Research Conference on students at the University of New Hampshire, the five investigators set out to answer these two questions:
How do current students perceive the URC impacting their undergraduate experience?
How do current students perceive their mentors’ role in their academic/research experience?
The investigators sent surveys to each presenter. Using a combination of closed-ended and open-ended questions, they collected both quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative data included student responses using a Likert scale to measure the impact of presenting at the URC on their overall skills and confidence in such aspects as public speaking and taking initiative; they analyzed these responses using statistical methodologies. The qualitative data came from answers to open-ended questions about faculty mentoring and students’ most memorable URC experience. These answers were read and categorized by several individuals and shared themes identified. By coding these themes, the investigators were able to analyze these qualitative data using quantitative methodologies.
Step Two: How Will You Know It?
In constructing a research question, it helps significantly if one conceptualizes a potential way to answer the question as one develops it. These potential ways might include surveys, or evaluation of student-generated artifacts such as capstone work or portfolios of research or creative writing, translation, music performance, and/or artwork.
A case in point for the use of student-generated artifacts in program assessment: the first five-year program review of the newly established Art History major at Truman State University, my home institution. We had changed the way we taught a senior thesis in Art History. For example, we moved from one semester with six hours of credit for completion of a thesis, to making the project two semesters, with one three-hour class each semester.
Our major question was whether the theses were showing improvement as a result of the changes, and in what ways. To answer this question, we needed to find measures of quality other than grades. For example, one such improvement could be in the level of ambition in the research. This quality might show up in bibliographies that included both primary and secondary materials, longer and more complete listings of sources, and scholarly articles as well as more general sources. In turn, the improved bibliography might coincide with more sophisticated and more challenging thesis questions. This can lead to more ambitious thesis statements, and hence longer theses.
By gathering data on these two factors, we were able to suggest that the changes we made in the major resulted in improvements. In our study of ten years of data, we found that the length of the average thesis more than doubled immediately after the move from one semester to two. Further, the variety and number of bibliographic sources increased over the ten years under study.
As a history professor, I have mentored many undergraduates in their research. Instinctively, I tend to mentor them as I had been mentored: I interact with each student one-on-one and help them develop a research plan, ask probing questions, and guide their learning. But in 2016 I began exploring a different approach. Instead of following the traditional mentor-protégé relationship, I sought to create a team-based multi-mentor model as part of a new long-term undergraduate research opportunity.
A multi-mentor model is a team-based approach in which multiple members perform various and distinct roles. Each person, then, contributes to and guides the learning and professional growth of the others (Bradley et al., 2017). Team-based research is more pervasive in STEM and social science fields than in history. I found, however, this method also has distinct benefits for my students. Here some of the key lessons I have learned over the last three years about the challenges and benefits to multi-mentor research in the humanities.
The Project
The Dutch Church Book Provenance Project, as it is known, is an international effort led by the Dutch Church and Lambeth Palace Library. Essentially, the project aims to research and catalog the historic Dutch Church Library, a collection dating back to the church’s creation in 1550 as a refuge in England for foreign Protestants during the Reformation. Dutch clergy, influential merchants, and political figures donated books to the library over the years. As a result, it provides a lens through which to view the history of the Dutch in London. Following the Second World War, church leaders gave most of the library to Lambeth Palace, where it resides today. Although no list exists of the donated volumes, the books can be visually identified by markings on the spine.
Each summer, I travel to London with students from the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO) to perform a number of tasks. These include identifying and cataloguing books in Lambeth Palace Library that once belonged to the Dutch Church, researching the books’ provenance to understand better how the collection came about, and contributing to an online, searchable database of the historical collection. Data collected by the students also will be added to the Lambeth Palace Library catalog and, eventually, to the Dutch Short Title Catalog and Universal Short Title Catalog.
Overcoming the Challenges
It was the group research aspect of this project that practically required me to move away from the mentor-protégé model towards a multi-mentor construction. One key challenge I encountered, however, was creating a team to guide the students’ learning. This step can often require reaching out to scholars and professionals beyond one’s own disciplinary expertise or networks. For instance, in this project, a team of mentors joins me in working with the students including the director of UCO’s museum studies program, book conservationists, and archivists and librarians. Moreover, the team hails from Lambeth Palace, the Dutch Church, London Metropolitan Archives, and the British Library. Each mentor brings skills to the project that they can share with the students.
Another challenge is creating avenues for the students to develop expertise to share with the group. Expertise can come in the form of knowledge about Greek or Latin grammar and literature, for example, or subject knowledge like the history of print. For each student, then, this expertise can be different, and mentors work with them to identify areas of expertise and contributions they can make to the goals of the project. Additionally, frequent opportunities are provided for participants to share their knowledge with the group.
Seeing the Benefits of a Multi-Mentor model
We know undergraduate research leads to a deeper socialization in the field and builds stronger relationships between students and mentors. Through my work on this project, I have found three additional benefits to multi-mentor research that are noteworthy. First, students involved in the project report a broader understanding of the term “mentor.” They move away from looking at me as the sole expert while, at the same time, move towards recognizing the diverse expertise and perspective that each member brings to the team.
In addition, students can easily network with other professionals engaged in the project, and they develop confidence in their knowledge and contribution to the research. Furthermore, scholars in other disciplines have found similar results in group research experiences (Dobrow & Higgins, 2005; Nicholson et al., 2017; Raggins & Kram, 2007). Clearly, this confidence enables the students to work together towards a common goal. They are able to see what needs to be done, to identify the skills each person contributes, to organize and delegate the duties among the team, and to take responsibility for their part in accomplishing the tasks.
Conclusion
Clearly, humanities students gain from undergraduate research opportunities. Developing multi-mentor experiences can add to these benefits by creating opportunities for students to work in a context of interdependence. Consequently, these experiences expand the definition of mentors. Additionally, they expose participants to diverse viewpoints and methods, and emphasize teamwork and communication. As a result, skills developed through multi-mentor research can prepare further our students for whatever career they should choose.
References
Bradley, Evan D., Michelle Bata, et al. “The Structure of
Mentoring in Undergraduate Research: Multi-Mentor Models.” CUR Quarterly 1,
no. 2 (2017): 35-42.
Dobrow, Shoshana R. and Monica C. Higgins. “Developmental
networks and professional identity: A longitudinal study.” Career
Development International 10 (2005): 567-83.
Nicholson, Brittany A., Meagen Pollock, et al. “Beyond the
Mentor-Mentee Model: A Case for Multi Mentoring in Undergraduate Research.” Perspectives
on Undergraduate Research and Mentoring 6, no. 1 (2017): 1–14.
Ragins, Belle Rose and Kathy E. Kram. The Handbook of
Mentoring at Work: Theory, Research, and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage
Publications, 2007.
(Note: the above post is based upon a poster Michael
Springer presented at the Undergraduate Research Programs Directors Conference
in 2019.)
Helping students use their developing arts and humanities skills to convince prospective employers
Those of us in the arts and humanities are well aware of disparaging messages in popular and academic media about the “uselessness” of our disciplines. As the number of traditional-age undergraduates is on the decline, as the cost of higher education and student-loan debts rise, and as suspicions swirl about whether a college education is actually worthwhile, faculty and academic administrators are expected to attend more closely than before to the recruitment, retention, timely degree-completion, and post-baccalaureate success of our students. Those of us in the arts and humanities have an additional burden of proof of our value, especially given statements from political leaders about the unviability of majoring in fields like anthropology (FL Gov. Rick Scott), gender studies (NC Gov. Pat McCrory), philosophy (Senator Marco Rubio), art history (President Barack Obama), and other areas of study perceived as impractical and even self-indulgent.
Calling certain degrees unmarketable might seem strange given our historically low unemployment at the moment. But the National Center for Education Statistics (2018) recently reported that nearly half of all recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed (i.e., piecing together part-time work and/or working in low-skilled jobs). One explanation is that employers are competing for skilled workers, but another more pervasive and troubling explanation is that so many employers believe millennials are ill-equipped for 21st-century jobs.
The problem: employers don’t believe students have the right skills.
Studies commissioned by the AAC&U (Hart Research Associates, 2015; 2018) and the Chronicle of Higher Education and Public Radio International’s Marketplace (Fisher, 2013) have reported that hiring managers and supervisors in a wide range of businesses and nonprofit organizations believe recent college graduates lack basic proficiencies critical to success in the workplace, such as communication skills, complex problem-solving, and working across difference. Employers gave very low grades to recent graduates on all 17 of the AAC&U’s essential learning outcomes of college, including those deemed most important for careers:
Oral communication
Working effectively on teams
Written communication
Ethical decision-making
Critical thinking & analysis
Applying knowledge to real-world problems
Nearly all of those surveyed said those six skills are more important than a job candidate’s alma mater or major. In order to consider applicants for further review, interviews, and hiring, employers are looking for evidence of those experiences and skills in job-seekers’ resumes and cover letters.
The solution: undergraduate research in the arts and humanities provides evidence of key skills.
Here’s where undergraduate research can help. Undergraduate researchers in the arts and humanities are in a particularly strong position for demonstrating with evidence that they have developed the skills and dispositions most highly valued by a broad range of potential employers. Their faculty mentors can help them see how to make the case. Here are some ways I have coached arts and humanities majors at Bridgewater State University to use their undergraduate-research experiences as indicators of the most highly valued workplace skills.
Arts and humanities scholars demonstrate communication.
Proficiency in oral and written communication (combined here for the sake of brevity) is shown by giving talks at campus symposia and even regional or national conferences, engaging interpersonally with peers and experts in those settings, and committing to revising written work (including in response to critical feedback) in order to convey ideas effectively.
Arts and humanities research can include collaboration.
Skills associated with working collaboratively on teams can be demonstrated by arts and humanities majors (even if they are less likely than students in the sciences to conduct collaborative research) when they draw upon situations in which they saw themselves as part of a group (e.g., a community of practice) with common goals. In an AAC&U survey, 96% of employers agreed that “all college students should have experiences that teach them how to solve problems with people whose views are different from their own” (Hart Research Associates, 2015). Those mentored in working across difference, a value in many of our fields, can highlight that understanding in their job searches. The practice of accepting and learning from constructive criticism, explicit in the arts and valued in the humanities as well, are effectively discussed in cover letters and interviews.
Arts and humanities research fosters ethical thinking.
Ethical decision-making can be evidenced by students whose work aims for the common good and who are able to explain how they have grappled with complex issues in their research. Considering the consequences of their research decisions—and modifying their course of action when needed—demonstrate students’ thoughtful, and often principled, choices.
Arts and humanities scholars demonstrate critical thinking.
The development of skills of critical thinking and analysis is integral to undergraduate research; students tackling “actively contested” questions (Kuh, 2008) must take resourceful, creative approaches to those questions, problems, or goals. The scholarly practices in the arts and humanities of “unpacking” theories, texts, cultural norms, etc.; examining assumptions; and determining what needs to be known or done to accomplish the goals of the project, are of vital importance in a range of careers.
Arts and humanities research focuses on real-world problems.
One of the reasons students express satisfaction in undergraduate research is that they finally had the opportunity to apply knowledge to real-world problems—something that arts and humanities majors do not always experience in their coursework. Undergraduate research engages students in the authentic questions of the discipline or another community. It deepens student understanding through active learning, especially when they immerse themselves in long-term projects. The ability to describe such directly applicable work helps arts and humanities majors stand out in their job searches, especially because we humanists and artists commonly guide students in metacognitive practices that allow them to reflect on their learning and its applications beyond the classroom and academic program.
Conclusion
Despite the denigration of the arts and humanities in political messages and popular culture, there is little evidence that such majors are less viable when it comes to post-baccalaureate employment prospects. In fact, data from multiple sources speak to the immense value of certain skills and dispositions, developed particularly well through undergraduate research, including in the arts and humanities. The Chronicle of Higher Education headline may have said it best in touting the positive job outlook for students in our fields, “If They Have Some Specific Skills Too” (Blumenstyk, 2016). One of the important aspects of mentoring arts and humanities undergraduate-researchers can be to show them how to highlight the sought-after skills that they are developing in their projects.
Kuh, George D. 2008. High-impact educational practices: What they are, who has access to them, and why they matter. Washington D.C.: Association of American Colleges and Universities.
(Note: the above post is a summary of a presentation Jenny Olin Shanahan gave at the CUR Biennial in 2018).
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Many national conferences in humanities fields deliberately limit participation to advanced graduate students and faculty. As a result, finding venues for undergraduate presentation is challenging. One solution to this problem is starting a local undergraduate research conference on your own. That’s how I came to create the Michigan Medieval & Renaissance Undergraduate Consortium.
Dana Aspinall, Professor of English at Alma College
Near the beginning of my career, I took a position as Assistant Professor at a small liberal arts college in central Massachusetts. That fall, noted Clark University professor Virginia Mason Vaughan notified me of a Medieval and Renaissance consortium she had organized among several of the colleges and universities in our area, and invited me to participate. I did so, and brought with me 2 or 3 students.
While I do not remember how my students performed or the topics they discussed, I do remember thinking to myself what a wonderful opportunity Professor Vaughan had provided through this consortium: students read and then discussed their papers in a professional fashion, and answered questions from both fellow students and faculty sponsors. Perhaps more importantly, these students heard what their peers from other schools were studying and discussing, and I could see that their interactions reignited the fires that originally had led them to writing their papers in the first place. For the next ten years, I encouraged my students to participate in this consortium. And I urged strong presenters to consider advanced study in medieval and/or early modern literature.
When I moved to Alma College in the fall of 2007, I brought with me the joy of participating in this consortium. I immediately asked my colleagues at Michigan’s other liberal arts colleges if they wanted to establish a consortium among us. To my delight, the response was immediate and positive. Our first consortium, held in 2009, included six colleges and nearly 20 student participants.
My goals with the consortium have remained largely the same throughout the ten years we have held it:
to provide students interested in medieval or early modern fields of study (including literature, history, art, language, and religion) a forum wherein they can speak on what they have discovered and upon what they want to conjecture
to provide these students an interested and responsive audience
to provide those seeking graduate study an environment much like that of a professional conference
to provide faculty a place to gather and discuss what students have done and seem most interested in pursuing
One other goal, less easy to articulate as succinctly as those above, also deserves mention: I always have believed that the simple act of discussion, in a challenging but nurturing and safe environment, brings out the best in both students and faculty. Our students are seeing things and making connections between them for the first time, while faculty can guide them even further and simultaneously share the excitement students feel in their discoveries and conjectures. I am happy to have been a part of this environment, and hope it continues long into the future.
The consortium has experienced occasional years of fluctuating participation, but overall these goals seem to have been met. None of this success would have been achieved, of course, without the efforts and energies of my colleagues at Michigan’s liberal arts colleges. I thank them all.
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Recently, a professor in the history department came to me with a question: “How do I mentor a freshman history student in research, when this student has none of the skills required to do original research in history?” The question arose because one of our Undergraduate Research Fellows – first-year students selected to participate in a four-year program of vigorous involvement in research on the basis of a competitive application process – had approached him asking if she could work with him. Because the majority of our URFs are interested in social science, education, business, and STEM research, he had not encountered such a request before. While experienced in mentoring upper-level history students in research, he had no game plan for working with a first-year student with, as he put it, “no skills.”
This is a challenge for a lot of us working in the humanities. In other fields, such as laboratory sciences or education, the apprenticeship model, in which early-stage students interested in research join a group, and then learn by watching other, more experienced student perform protocols and discuss outcomes, gradually building their own responsibilities and skills within the group, makes it relatively straightforward to include inexperienced, novice students in the research culture. In the humanities, where we are more likely to work alone, and even the most basic data collection requires expertise in such skills as paleography, archival searching, and language translation, mentoring a first-year aspiring researcher can seem like a burdensome and impossible task.
My own experience has taught me that like so many other things, successful mentoring of entry-level student research in the humanities is all about clear communication and close listening. Here, I am condensing a few of the main points from my conversation with my colleague from history, which he later reported to me were quite helpful in getting started with his eager, but unformed protegee.
Motivations matter
Begin by asking the student to talk about what drove them to come talk to you about research opportunities. Are they part of a program (such as our fellows, or an honors seminar) that requires them to meet with professors and discuss research? If so, what are they hoping to get out of the experience? Do they want to build skills? Are they looking for a line on their resume? Are they driven by curiosity about the field more generally? This is the listening phase – you will get a good sense of whether this is a student who would be engaged and interesting to work with. I think it’s always okay to say no, though best if you can point them towards some other avenues (other faculty, a course that the department offers, a student-run organization) for exploration.
Ask about their existing skills
We tend to assume that first-year students have no skills, but especially with the kind of ambitious students who actually overcome the immense anxiety barrier to come talk to you in person this may not be the case. For example, when I was first mentoring a first-year art history student, in my initial conversation with her I learned that she had taken four years of high-school Spanish and done a service project in Guatemala. Her language skills made her a great research assistant. In the case of my colleague’s history student, she really did have very few skills, but her enthusiasm and her openness to learning meant that she ended up doing some very good bibliographic research for him. All he had to do was show her how to use the various search tools, give her some instruction in Zotero, and she was off to the races.
Define expectations
This is probably the most important part of the conversation you’ll have with the novice researcher. What are the student’s expectations in terms of time commitments and learning outcomes? Do they want to have a presentable product at the end of the year? Be a co-author on a paper? Get paid? Get credit? On your end, you also need to be clear: what kinds of tasks can you imagine the student performing? What are realistic outcomes for the work they’ll be doing? If you’re thinking, “Great, this student can scan and process documents” and the student is thinking “I’m going to see my name in print” this could lead to some trouble down the road, so it is important to get this out in the open. I think it’s always perfectly fine to do as my history colleague did – start the student on what a more experienced researcher might consider the boring ground-work – putting together bibliographies, searching databases, and compiling easily-accessible information. The important thing is that the student understands how their work fits into the larger research project. My first-year Spanish-fluent student ended up getting a thank-you in the acknowledgement note in a published essay, and for her that was exactly what she expected, and therefore quite gratifying.
Use peer-mentoring
Do you have a more advanced student, perhaps a senior working on a senior thesis, who might serve as a role model and near-peer mentor for your novice student? In many disciplines (and also in the humanities where they are practiced collaboratively, especially in Europe), groups of researchers at all levels working on related projects regularly meet and discuss their progress. Consider getting your research students together on a regular basis to talk. This way your own research process is made transparent to the students, and you’ll have a better sense of the progress they’re making, but above all, the less experienced students will be able to imagine where they might be in a year or two.
Benefits
While it is no doubt true that first-year students and others new to research in humanities disciplines do not come through the door with the types of skills and understandings that allow us to do our work at a high level, this does not mean that they cannot contribute. Starting them off with very basic tasks, but contextualizing those tasks through regular conversations about the overall progress of the research, we initiate them into the culture of humanities inquiry. All too often, students have been told “this is how you write a research paper” without really learning the WHY of research, that is to say, they have been shown the process but not given any insight into the motivations and concepts that drive the process. Getting a first-year student inside the machine takes a little effort, but once there, they tend to get very excited about doing research (way more excited than you might expect, given that all they’re actually doing is scanning documents or doing data entry, or whatever), and they learn, intrinsically, both the hows and the whys of your discipline.
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In the last five years, major research archives have made many more high quality manuscript images available. One result is new opportunities for undergraduate scholarship. A great example is the Early Modern Recipes Online Collective (EMROC), an international collaboration open to mentored undergraduate participation. By sponsoring collaborative manuscript transcription of early recipe books, EMROC lets undergraduates make a significant original contribution to the field and see their work become publicly available.
How does transcription involve scholarship?
Early manuscript transcription isn’t just a mechanical process. First, understanding a difficult text requires attention to detail and an analytic approach to language. These skills are associated with complex problem solving. Second, it requires wide-ranging research. Depending on the nature of the documents, students must draw together knowledge from areas as disparate as lexicography, cultural history, ethno-pharmacology, mathematics, theology, basic Latin, and chemistry. Finally, transcription is a way of helping students open up the canon to new voices. EMROC, for example, focuses on early women writers whose work less often found its way to publication and who often worked in genres not traditionally acknowledged as literary or scientific.
How can my students’ transcriptions contribute to the field?
Albion College Students participate in fall 2018 EMROC transcribathon
EMROC uses a crowdsourcing model, with multiple transcribers working on every document. However, unlike the crowd-sourced transcription on sites like Zooniverse, EMROC uses powerful collaborative software system called “Dromio,” hosted by the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Early Modern Manuscripts Online. Dromio makes collaboration more visible and therefore more teachable and useful in the classroom. Students in a class can work together and in collaboration with students at other institutions on a single multi-page manuscript.
“It was really awesome getting to see people from all over writing about the Transcribathon on Twitter. It was also fun sitting up in the English wing eating pizza with a cute dog, while my classmates and I transcribed away.” Tessa Triest, Albion College ‘19
For those interested in less in-depth projects, EMROC even hosts biannual “transcribathons,” open to scholars at all levels across the globe. Regardless of the level of participation, all transcribers can be sure that their hard work is playing a part in the eventual existence of highly detailed, TEI encoded and publicly disseminated transcriptions.
I also loved that we had the Twitter feed and everyone together doing it at once. This made me feel a part of a scholarly community. I really enjoyed this event, and love the fact that I have a new skill in transcribing. Julia Vitale, Albion College ’19
Isn’t paleography too hard for undergraduates?
Yes, reading early handwriting is itself sometimes a daunting task. But paleography is a teachable skill, and it has immediate payoffs in terms of student engagement, curiosity, and close reading. For more help on how to teach paleography and incorporate transcription in a course, see CURAH’s best practice guide to paleography and undergraduate scholarship.
Reproduced with the permission of Ian F. MacInnes, Albion College
Do you have any stories to tell about using manuscript transcription as undergraduate scholarship in your classes? If so, please use our comment option to let others know.
