Position Description:
- Contact student fellows and their supervisors to establish a schedule of weekly meetings. The
final schedule should include ten meetings (of which students should be allowed to miss no
more than two). (See below for a sample schedule of meetings.)
- Ensure that students have filled out appropriate paperwork so they can be paid and make
them aware of the schedule of payments.
- Arrange with the Dean for Research and Scholarship for money for snacks at weekly meetings
($100 for the summer).
- Ensure that arrangements are made for at least three or four evening social activities
(students can be put in charge of arranging particular activities).
- Find office space (usually in the Rhetoric Center) for students whose supervisors cannot
provide space.
- Ensure that photos will be taken of each student/faculty research team at some point during
their research.
- Be available to plan (May) and attend (mid-July) luncheon for donors. This luncheon
will include a presentation by one student fellow; some students will also attend.
- Be available to talk with students about their research, their presentations, any problems
that they might have with their supervisor, etc.
- Plan and run the weekly meetings, including bringing in guest speakers when appropriate.
- Collect end-of-the summer evaluations from both faculty supervisors and students.
- Collect student reports at the end of the summer; include students’ photos.
- Construct a brief director’s report on the summer’s program.
- Prompt the annual follow-up survey of former McGregor researchers to be administered by
the Office of Research and Scholarship.
Weekly Meetings:
The purposes of these meetings are to help students find answers to their questions about
gathering research (e.g., a presentation by a library staff member on specialized research
strategies), about reporting research (e.g., discussions and presentations about poster projects,
PowerPoint presentations and the conventions of writing in the various disciplines in the humanities
and social sciences), and about the value of their research. This last category requires
students to talk with their supervisors about questions including: What is the purpose of their
research project? Why is the purpose of their research project considered valuable in
their discipline? Are the questions addressed by their theses or hypotheses considered
worthwhile to ask, and are they capable of being convincingly answered by the methods they
have chosen? In what ways are their methods conventional or unconventional in their discipline? In
what ways does their research contribute to established lines of inquiry in their field or
propose new lines? In weekly meetings students can then discuss ideas with one another,
understanding research in their own field in comparison with that in other fields.
Sample schedule of weekly meetings:
- Week 1: Introduction, Money, offices, social events, other questions
- Week 2: Description of individual projects
- Week 3: Library research
- Week 4: Research purposes, subjects, and methods—The Big Questions
- Week 5: Your projects as they relate to the “Big Questions”
- Week 6: Open topic (continued discussion of the “Big Questions”)
- Week 7: Presentation methods—PowerPoint and poster projects
- Week 8: Presentation drafts
- Week 9: Presentation drafts
- Week 10: Presentation drafts
