Expanding My Horizons

Our students this year asked us to reflect on what we get out of working with the LAKES REU and what we have learned from our students. On several levels, it’s actually surprising that I’m involved in the LAKES project at all. Anthropologists tend to do our research independently and are most comfortable working as individuals embedding ourselves in communities over long periods of time. Although we all realize that multidisciplinary teams are extremely important and that many types of research are necessary, we tend to carve out our niches solo and are drawn to conducting long-term ethnographic research. Research projects conducted over 8 weeks with an amazingly diverse set of disciplinary experts and students is very different from the work I was used to. I’ve learned an enormous amount from all my co-mentors and have a richer understanding of the world (and not just of the Red Cedar Watershed) for working with them. I feel very lucky to have been given the opportunity.

One Recipe for an Amazing Summer Research Experience

Our creative and amazing students gave us a blog post assignment this time around, and I have to say that I’ve found it daunting. Sorry, y’all, but I’m tweaking it a bit. The acrostic poems became haikus about my advisees, and I’m sorry to report that I just couldn’t find any embarrassing pictures. I know everyone is disappointed.

When I think about first impressions of my two students, Eniola and Melanie, I have to go back to their applications. Both of them immediately stood out to me as students I wanted to work with. They had thoughtful explanations of their interests in environmental anthropology, clear enthusiasm for working on the REU and with their fellow students, an amazing background in anthropology including fieldwork experience, and impressive letters of recommendation. I was definitely excited about prospect of working with them, anxiously awaited their acceptance, and looked forward to meeting them.

Mentoring Ethnography

This summer has been a learning experience for me.  I have mentored amazing students in my few years at Stout, but this marks my first time working with students on a multi-disciplinary team on overlapping aspects of a complex problem.  Cultural anthropologists, more often than not, work on research alone.  We tend to hold on to the idea of a lone fieldworker individually building rapport and embedding themselves in a community for a long period of time.  This kind of work is extremely valuable, and even indispensable for answering some questions. That model of research also often means that anthropologists get particular kinds of mentoring.  In my case, I had a couple of amazing mentors who helped me understand the issues I was researching and helped me navigate the literature on those topics.  They were also extremely supportive when the inevitable set-backs in ethnographic research arose.  At the same time, like a lot of anthropologists I suspect, fieldwork was somewhat an unknown before I started.  I got more research methods training than some of my colleagues in the discipline, but there was still a tendency to see ethnographic fieldwork as a rite of passage and a research method that must be experienced to really “get.” To borrow Matt’s metaphor and mix it with another, it is was somewhat like getting kicked out of the nest all at once with only a very sketchy map.

The model of research I’m used to and my experience as a mentee mean that mentoring students in this summer was challenging for me.  We only had 8 weeks, and although Zakia and Rachel came in with particular experiences that gave them an “in” for their projects, they were new to the community (as am I, only having lived here 3 years).  I planned activities in the early weeks that, I hoped, would let them learn about the community and practice research skills before they were directly collecting data for the project.  I wanted them to get a sense of the rest of the project, so we all spent time listening to the process of survey creation and analysis. I also tried to strike a balance between letting them control their projects, getting experience without me hovering, and providing guidance and support. 

I’m not sure in the end that I was completely successful.  What I do know is that I have been continually impressed by Zakia and Rachel.  Our projects progressed MUCH faster than I had hoped, and they collected a large amount of data in a short period of time.  It was also fun to see them get excited about the process, become recognized around the community, and be invited to observe various aspects of the policy making/implementation process.  I hope I contributed something to their experience that will be valuable as they continue college and move into their future careers.  I know I learned a lot from working with them.