But Can It Work for Us?: A Panel Discussion on Faculty-Student Collaborative Research in the Humanities

Session Organizer: Martin Wood, Univ. of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

Panelists: Drs. Theresa Kemp, Carmen Manning, and Marty Wood, English Department, University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire

Session Abstract: We offer a special session devoted to an enhanced teaching approach that has long paid benefits for our colleagues in the natural and social sciences. While our institution has been a national leader in faculty-undergraduate collaborative research for more than two decades, until recently the only disciplines participating in significant numbers were those in the natural, physical, and social sciences. In the last few years, however, intrigued by the teaching-learning successes of our colleagues, some of us in the humanities have begun exploring ways to make it happen for us. The panelists above have each secured internal grants and have successfully pursued several research collaborations with undergraduate students in a variety of areas of study in English. The moment seems ready. Professor Mitchell Malachowski (U San Diego) may well be right in his recent prediction (Peer Review 8:1) that the “great faculty divide” (which once separated those who performed research from those who did not) will now fall between “those who engage students in their research and those who do not.” If this is true for scientists, and the benefits realized in teaching and learning can be transferred elsewhere, M/MLA members will do well to explore its potential for English studies. The panelists hope to advance this exploration by informally reviewing our own collaborative projects and successes, and engaging in an open discussion with attendees.

Individual Abstracts:

Dr. Marty Wood <mwood@uwec.edu>

Research challenges for the humanities scholar differ from those facing scientists. Where scientists must work collaboratively, partition their project into tasks assigned among themselves, write and publish findings as group authors, and finally submit the process to the test of replicating results, all phases of their work could employ student collaborators. In English, in contrast, we tend to work with textual material that we encounter in private. We are fully able to perform all or nearly all of our research (comparing primary texts, consulting background and contemporaneous material, assessing secondary commentary, tracing sources and influences) in relative isolation from others. When we publish our findings, these research products are generally arguments composed by a single writer, and function as rhetorical attempts to demonstrate the possibility of a better approach, a fresh insight, a contradiction within an established theory, and so on, for which the notion of “replicating results” is absurd. Thus at no point in our overall approach does there appear a natural mechanism for involving student collaborators. Meanwhile, we might well react with dismay to a suggestion that we create a poster to serve as a “presentation” of our “results.” We are much more inclined to view the crux of our discovery, so to speak, as a subtle, intellectually nuanced turn of phrase too impalpable to be portrayed visually at all, much less in graphs or tables on a poster. My discussion will raise these impediments, and others, to collaborating with students in humanities research, and suggest alternate approaches for conceptualizing what we do, and what we might do.

Dr. Carmen Manning <manningck@uwec.edu>

My discussion will focus on conceptualizing Faculty-Student Collaborative Research as an extension of teaching. For me to make collaborative research work effectively, I think of it as part of my teaching more than part of my research. Because I teach at an institution with a relatively heavy teaching load, in order to get any research done, I’ve had to integrate my research into my teaching. Faculty-Student Collaborative Research has become an extension of that process. In the session, I will discuss ways to integrate collaborative research into teaching by having students more deeply investigate issues which have arisen in class, or inviting students to help study issues or ideas that would make my teaching more effective. I will also talk about ways to use collaborative research to engage those students who need greater challenges than we can offer in the classroom to continue to grow. Finally, I will discuss how we can focus on the process of collaborative research instead of the product in order to see the impact of our student collaborations. The product that the student and I end up with becomes much less important than going through a research process and learning how to design and engage in research. In these ways, I have been able to more effectively integrate collaborative research into my teaching and make these collaborations a very satisfying part of my work.

Dr. Theresa Kemp <tkemp@uwec.edu>

I envision my discussion in three parts.  First, I will briefly describe two incarnations of a faculty-student collaborative project called “Shakespeare-in-the-Schools.”  After describing the projects, I will outline some of the positive results of the project, including the high levels of student engagement, their intellectual and creative energy, pre-professional experiences for future teachers, my own exhilaration at working with such groups of engaged and motivated students, and the visibility in the community that derived from the project.  In a fairly mercenary move aimed at benefiting from our session’s discussion, I will end by outlining some discontents and questions I have in relation to my projects in particular and faculty-student collaboration in the humanities in general.  I see three related issues here.  The first relates to the forms that research or scholarly activities in the humanities take or are perceived to take (and the forms that most appeal to me, especially in terms of writing about them).  That is, what is it exactly that faculty and students are collaborating in doing?  What do we mean by “collaboration” and “research”?  The second area concerns the requisite levels of student preparedness for particular kinds of tasks/types of inquiry.  What kinds of activities are undergraduate students prepared for or capable of learning during a collaborative project? And the third involves what I’ll call rewards, including immediate monetary compensation for the project, faculty/student credit-hours, and professional “credit” in terms of tenure, promotion, or other vita line items (which, of course, relates to monetary compensation).