Religious Studies News

Providing a student with the requisite skills in order to have a modicum of research success constitutes a foundational step in collaborative undergraduate research (UR). As undergraduate students are provided with specific research skills and exposed to a range of options for research, their interest is often heightened. Teachers who value student contributions may find that the student will continue to work on the project long after the conclusion of the semester and the grade for the project has been determined. This was the case with the Wabash College student involved with this particular recent UR project.

Brandon Cornett considered UR as a learning experience that starts from zero. For him, “The classes that have been most successful and that I most enjoyed in college were those that started from ground zero. Rather than unloading information on students and dissecting the material throughout the semester, classes that start from ground zero emphasize the most fundamental elements of the topic, then use that foundation of knowledge to explore the subjects of the class.”

Collaborative research sometimes means starting from ground zero with a question or questions about something that is an object of interest — like “Why are Mississippian mounds aligned along certain axis lines, and how might these be correlated to movements of the sun, moon, and stars? What might gorget designs tell us about Mississippian cosmology, and is there any correlation between them and mound alignments?”

Working collaboratively on a UR project requires a willingness to be open to questions posed by a student about the aims and purposes of the study, clarification and reclarification of tasks, and careful articulation of who is assigned to what aspects of the project. UR also requires faculty and students to engage in regular conversations about the details of what is being learned through the targeted research and putting together the pieces as co-team members engaged in a collaborative research project.