The Humanities Center and Ethical Inquiry at Carleton are currently piloting a program funding summer research groups in the humanities. The goal of the summer research group program is to increase opportunities for students to engage in humanistic research with faculty and to make these research opportunities more visible to students.
Each group would consist of 4-6 students under the supervision of at least one faculty member who would choose a theme or set of goals for the group. While the particulars of what the group does would be left to the supervising faculty member(s), groups would be expected to meet at least 3 hours per week, with individual members working for a total of 10-20 hours a week independently. A group could run in person or remotely or in a hybrid fashion, with the project lasting anywhere from four to ten weeks. Faculty will be compensated $2000 for projects that are a minimum of 5 weeks and include at least 100 hours of work per student. In the case that there are more worthy proposals than available funding, proposals that provide more hours for students will be favored.
We envision running at least two of these groups each summer. Ideally, once the program is well established, departments might commit to offering such opportunities for a multi-year period, thus making these Humanities Research Groups more visible, predictable, and available to a wider range of students than our current SRP model allows. Faculty are not expected to have identified students to work with before applying. After receiving funding, faculty may then hire a cohort of students. Whenever possible, faculty are encouraged to conduct open application processes to find students for summer research groups.
While faculty might avail themselves of this opportunity to work on a research project (e.g. a team of students to assist reading/editing/bibliographic work on the final stages of a book manuscript), the possible uses of a research group could be broader, as long as the student work qualifies as research. Faculty considering a new A&I might assemble a team of students to do initial research on the subject, and then locate readings appropriate to incoming first year students. A research group might assist in envisioning activities and locating materials geared toward a civic engagement component of an existing or new course.
All students who participate in group SRPs must present a poster based on their summer work at the Undergraduate Summer Research Symposium that takes place each Fall term. The faculty supervisor will be in charge of helping students put together their posters. If the faculty supervisor has a different idea for what the student output of the summer research group should be, that’s fine, but they must explain what that alternative output is at the time applying for the group SRP.
To Apply
FACULTY should examine their summer research plans and imagine how a group of students could collaborate with them.
APPLICATION: The faculty member completes the application below
DEADLINE: Applications are due by midnight, Monday of 6th week of winter term.
REMOTE WORK: Students working remotely must reside in the United States unless it is necessary for them to be outside the US to accomplish their work.