The Senior Integrative Exercise, informally known as Comps, is the final capstone project that each student must complete in order to graduate and often includes a significant research component. Liaison librarians work with students throughout their first three years of coursework in order to prepare them for more extensive research during Comps. Librarians then work with students during their final year at Carleton to help them come up with strategies for managing the research process and to find and evaluate resources relevant to their arguments.
Librarians support the comps process in a variety of ways, depending on the department and the students’ needs. This support ranges from individual consultations with students, through course-integrated instruction for junior and/or senior seminars, to curricular discussions with departments as a whole.
In 2011 we presented information about our work to a faculty development workshop, including a statistical overview of our involvement with comps projects.