Documenting Community Culture -- 30 January 2011 Journal

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30 January 2011

Dr. Lindahl writes in reference to my concerns about being perceived as an outside when interviewing Freshmen:
CL: that’s technically not a problem for this course, but I think that the basic thrust is as folkloric as it is educational, in the sense that a good deal of what you are hoping to achieve is to discover the community factors, the unofficial-cultural factors influencing how students learn and to bring those factors to bear upon their learning process.
One possibility is to have freshmen students interview other students. This would be ideal, as it would have the insiders talking to the insiders, using their language, empathizing because of share background and experiences. However, this would take time – I would need to either a) train new students in interviewing technique, or b) retrain my freshmen from last semester to do this. I likely could get a few of my former students to work with me, but their time is in just as much demand as I am, and they would not be rewarded in any way.

I still need to think about this, however. If I could get two or three students interested in interviews, then we might be able to turn this into an undergraduate research project, something they could work with over their own college experience. I could work as a mentor to their work, while using their interviews, with other interviews or artifacts to support my own interests. This could be a strong way to support freshman research by getting them to research their own community (contrasted to the one they used in ENGL 1301). That, in turn, would answer plenty of interests of the University to support undergraduate research, etc., etc.

On the other hand, instead of presenting myself as a TA from the English Department, I could present myself as a graduate student interested in the freshman experience. Perhaps if the students see me as a grad student I would be less foreign. There would still be an appreciation of empathy and similar experiences.

As for Appendix H, I don't feel that I've signed on to one “general topic” of the seminar. We have disparate interests, though many show interest in religious groups. I'm fine with that – plenty to work with. My interests in Freshman retention, for example, may drill down to freshmen religious observances with the Catholic, Baptist, LDS, or Muslim groups on campus (doubtless, many more). Socialization is important for retention, and these groups certainly serve some purpose. As such, I could document the several social and worshipful events and classes in any of these organizations, and then include questions of my own regarding freshmen and their relationship to the campus and university at large.

As I am LDS, I could have another “in” with the LDS students, though I've never participated in any group activities at UH. There is an LDS Student Association at UH and apparently an LDS Institute of Religion on Calhoun (I didn't know this). An Institute is simply a place where LDS students and friends can gather for social activities and take religion classes (these classes of course are not recognized by most universities, but can be used as credit for the LDS church universities to meet the religious education requirements). Depending on how many LDS students are at UH, Rice and the other Downtown/Med Center universities and community colleges, there may be a few or dozen courses in the city. In my experience at A&M, the Institute was a center for socialization including movie nights, breakfast devotionals, and a quiet place to lounge during the day. The members of Institutes also gather at churches for the bi-monthly “Fireside” inspirational broadcasts from BYU to all young adults worldwide. The most recent one, for example (I had to look this up), was a live broadcast on 9 January 2011 and the next will be on 6 March. This would be another event I could document.

I still want to focus, though, on the experience of freshmen at UH. So, I would try to orient my documentation on the first-year participants at the Institute, and non-participants as well. Depending on time, too, I want to start documenting freshmen at large, though that may not be part of this course product.

Logistics
Getting participants
  • direct contact with groups
  • ad in Daily Cougar for students who do not participate in these groups
  • contacts through other freshmen, including those from English TA's
Interview interests
  • Student religious organization routines, events, classes
  • Residential life
  • Commuting life
  • Core classes
  • Sense of community with UH/ “Cougar”
  • Background
  • Academic
  • Relationship of religion to academic values
  • Family (other family gone to college)
  • Peers – who went to college, who did not
  • Life
  • Work
  • Social
  • Hours studying
  • Relationship with faculty


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