Case Studies
Professional Development Online Archive
Many face-to-face graduate programs have regular programming to provide networking and other professional development opportunities for their graduate students. For example, a department might invite a scholar to the school to give a talk to the department, allowing students to learn and ask questions about cutting edge research. Such talks are often followed by an informal reception and small dinner outing, allowing students to talk at length with the scholar about their own developing work, research interests, and career paths. Such interactions can often lead to long-term professional relationships, with senior scholars alerting junior scholars to fellowships, jobs, and other professional resources the student might benefit from.
Such in-person experiences are impossible in our fully online, asynchronous program. However, I try to remedy this with resources such as the recorded interviews you’re watching this week. For this case study, I want you to imagine creating an online archive of video interviews and other kinds of resources which would be helpful for students in this program. What kinds of experts might it be helpful to have information from? What kinds of stipends might be necessary to pay subject experts for their time? What kind of remuneration might be needed to pay graduate students for their time in working on such a project? You can expect to use D2L as a platform for such a resource, similar to the graduate portal that we have. However, there are myriad other kinds of expenses that you might need to consider. For this project, develop a program idea, identify what you might need funding for, identify a grant to apply for, and use the course activities to complete the grant application.
General Database Sources to support your Research
Funding for Student Field Trip
Many of you are involved in either K-12 or college teaching, and there are always field trips that can offer students experiential- or other kinds of learning that they simply cannot get in a traditional classroom. For example, those of us who teach works by Flannery O’Connor at MGA often try to take students to Milledgeville, where O’Connor lived and wrote for most of her career. For a fee, visitors can tour the house where she lived and worked; there’s also the local cemetery, where she is buried, the campus of Georgia College, where she attended school, and the grounds of the Central State Mental Institution, which loomed large in her imagination.
For this case study, you should develop a plan to take a group of students on a field trip that would connect with their subject matter. The choice of field trip and subject matter is up to you–you’re welcome to build on something that you already teach or to imagine an entirely new program. For this project, you should develop a program idea, identify what you might need funding for, identify a grant to apply for, and use the course activities to complete the grant application.
Funding for Individual Research Trip
Many of you have professional and academic interests that would benefit from (or perhaps even requires) travel to an archive, a site visit, or other distant place. There are myriad grants for individual research provided by a wide variety of sources. For example, to encourage young scholars to study the author Eudora Welty, the Eudora Welty Society offers grants each year to fund travel to and a stay in Jackson, Mississippi, where Welty’s archives are housed. (You can read more about that grant here.)
For this case study, you should develop a plan to fund a research trip for yourself or someone else. The choice of study and subject matter is up to you–you’re welcome to build on something that you already study or to imagine an entirely new project. For this project, you should develop a program idea, identify what you might need funding for, identify a grant to apply for, and use the course activities to complete the grant application.
Your Own Project
Several of you already have programs that you wish to fund and even grants that you wish to apply for. In that case, you should use this project to develop the materials for your chosen program and/or grant.
Use whatever materials you already have for this project, and use the course assignments and collaborations to complete your grant application.
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