Events

Section 1

Content

Academic Year 2002-2003

The EOTU Working Group met 18 times during the 2002-03 academic year under sponsorship of the UIUC Center for Advanced Study. Broadly, we explored ways of thinking about the university as an object of study, and more specifically as an object of ethnographic investigation. Further, we devoted sessions to thinking about how to execute EOTU as a working project at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In conjunction with the EOTU Working Group Meetings, in fall 2002 our visitors from off-campus participated in a lecture series, The Future of the University: Knowledge, Networks, Pedagogy. We emerged from our 2002-03 activities with an understanding of our approach to the university as a composite of prose, numerical, visual, and network narratives and with a plan for the 2003-04 pilot phase of EOTU. Our meetings are open to the public and additionally we look forward to welcoming new members to the group.

OVERVIEW OF SESSIONS

• The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: History and Constructs (August 28, 2002)

• University Narratives (September 4, 2002)

• University Numbers (September 11, 2002)

• Assessing the University (September 18, 2002)

• University Networks: IKNOW (Inquiring Knowledge Networks on the Web) (October 2, 2002)

• Organizing the University (October 9, 2002)

• Performance and the University (October 16, 2002)

• The Inquiry Page and Web-Based Learning Communities (October 23, 2003)

• Working Session: EOTU Web-Based Learning/Archiving Template (October 30, 2002)

• Student Writing and Writing Studies (November 6, 2003)

• The Protection of Human Subjects (November 13, 2002)

• Fall Semester Wrap-Up (December 4, 2002)

• The University and the Community (February 7, 2003)

• Archiving Student Life and Culture (Friday, January 24)

• Institutional Memory (March 7, 2003)

• An Ethnographic Tool-kit (March 21, 2003)

• Another Look at University Narratives: The University as Work-Place (April 4, 2003)

• Documenting Student Learning: A National Perspective (April 18, 2003)

SESSION DETAILS

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: History and Constructs
August 28, 2002

Presenter
Winton Solberg, Emeritus Professor of History, UIUC

Reading
Znaniecki, Florian. 1994. The Social Role of the University. Nakom: Wydawnictwo. (Authored in the 1940s, this work is based on ethnographic research on the University of Illinois). Pp. 11-13, 26-73.

Solberg, Winton U. 1968. The University of Illinois, 1867-1894: An Intellectual and Cultural History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Passim.

Solberg, Winton U. 2000. The University of Illinois, 1894-1904: The Shaping of the University. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Passim.

Discussion
In this session we read selections from preeminent sociologist Florian Znaniecki’s ethnographic mid-1940s study of the University of Illinois. Beyond its local color, we were interested in this text because it explores the “university” and the “university student” as research heuristics a wonderful way to begin our forays into de-naturalizing the university so as to think of it in new ways.

Fascinating were the diverse responses to the Znaniecki reading. While some readers thought that Znaniecki was describing prevailing ideologies or images of the university/student, other readers took him to be documenting the actual life of the university/student. Disagreements on the nature of his project aside, something of a consensus emerged that students are indeed agents in the making of their university lives and learning and have been historically as well, although their opportunities for agency have developed over time. This said, there was a diversity of opinion expressed as to whether the individual-focused, elitist, and faculty-centered ideology that Znaniecki describes for the 1940s has salience for thinking about the University of Illinois today.

Professor Solberg, author of many works on the history of UIUC, offered a short lecture, giving us a window on the struggles of the University of Illinois to become a “great” University.

University Narratives
September 4, 2002

Presenter
Faith Gabelnick, President, Pacific University

Reading
Ewell, Peter. 1998. Who Do You Think You Are? The Art of Institutional Reality Check. University Business. Pp. 20-1.

Gabelnick, Faith. 2002. Leading Institutional Transformation: The Architecture of Change.

Gabelnick, Faith, Jean MacGregor, Roberta S. Matthews, and Barbara Leigh Smith. 1990. Learning Community Foundations. In Idem. Learning Communities: Creating Connections Among Students, Faculty, and Disciplines. New Directions for Teaching and Learning 41. pp. 5-18 (and Table 1, pp. 32-7).

Discussion
EOTU Working Group members arrived ready to discuss their own narratives about UIUC’s particular character and indeed there was enormous variety. Our local narratives were particularly interesting in light of those of President Gabelnick who, as her article documents, found herself at a small institution in search of a University narrative. Dr. Gabelnick’s history and memory work at Pacific University facilitated the creation of a narrative that fostered “community.” Students, faculty, and various Pacific affiliates used that narrative to locate themselves in a “tradition.” The institutionalization of these narratives seemed to give them greater self-respect. In a different vein, many EOTU Working Group members spoke about initial or ongoing encounters with prevailing and quite forceful narratives of the University of Illinois. Although time did not allow people to set those narratives in the relief of their ongoing lives and practices at the University of Illinois, we began to get a feeling for the ways in which some of us have bristled with or contested some of these narratives (e.g., of “community,” of “research over teaching,” of value placed in the hard sciences over the humanities and social sciences, etc.).

Faith’s interest in the ways in which university buildings and spaces reveal narratives (e.g., signature buildings) sparked a lively discussion on our diverse spatial lives at this University (from the Hall of Presidents to the quirks of the English Building).

In addition to her path-breaking work as a university president, Dr. Gabelnick is an expert on learning communities. We discussed some of her writings on learning communities so as to think about the future of EOTU as a particular campus-wide learning community.

University Numbers
September 11, 2002

Presenters
Carol Livingstone, Associate Provost and Director, Division of Management Information, UIUC
Marilyn Murphy, Associate Director, University Office for Academic Policy Analysis, UI

Browsing
(From Carol Livingstone)

Division of Management Information
http://www.dmi.uiuc.edu

Campus Organizational Chart
http://www.dmi.uiuc.edu/cp/glossary02/orgchart.pdf

Campus Profile
http://www.dmi.uiuc.edu/cp/

Student Enrollment Reports
http://www.dmi.uiuc.edu/stuenr/

Course Information System
http://www.dmi.uiuc.edu/course

The Association for Institutional Research, Code of Ethics
http://www.airweb3.org/air-new/page.asp?page=140

(From Marilyn Murphy)

University Office of Academic Policy Analysis
http://www.uoapa.uillinois.edu/

University Office of Academic Policy Analysis Databook
http://www.uoapa.uillinois.edu/databook/index.asp

Reading
The Illinois Commitment: Partnerships, Opportunities, and Excellence (IBHE)
http://www.ibhe.state.il.us/Board/Agendas/1999/February/1999-02-07.pdf

Ewell, Peter T. 2002. An Emerging Scholarship: A Brief History of Assessment. In Building a Scholarship of Assessment. T.W. Banta and Associates, eds. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Pp. 3-25.

Shadish et al. 1991. “Good Theory for Social Program Evaluation” in Foundations of Program Evaluation: Theories of Practice.

Homework
University of Illinois Information Scavenger Hunt

1. How many faculty are at the Urbana campus? (Your answer must include a definition of “faculty.”)

2. What percent of Urbana freshmen in the entering class of 1993 graduated within 4 years?

3. What is the student/faculty ratio at Urbana? (Please define “student” and “faculty.”)

Discussion
Marilyn and Carol directed the EOTU Working Group to publicly available data on UIUC as well as the three-campus University of Illinois. We had a great time with the “UI Information Scavenger Hunt” indeed, there was no single or simple answer to any question, and we learned again and again that numbers can be made to tell multiple stories. This proved a wonderful lesson on the challenges and values of data collection and use (e.g., by U.S. News and World Report). We had a lovely discussion of our own campus profile and the values implicated in higher education information generally. We took up the question posed by Shadish, Cook, and Levitan, “What is the social problem that the/our university is designed to solve?” in order to consider what we base our evaluation on. We also discussed the local origins and the use of our campus profile. And we generated considerable criticism of The Illinois Commitment, Illinois Board of Higher Education’s public statement of its vision for public higher education in the state.

Assessing the University
September 18, 2002

Presenter
Peter Ewell, Senior Associate, National Center for Higher Education Management System

Reading
Ewell, Peter T. 1997. Accountability and Assessment in a Second Decade: New Looks or Same Old Story (Keynote Address). In Assessing Impact: Evidence and Action. pp. 7-21. Washington, DC: American Association of Higher Education.

Discussion
We were joined by Peter Ewell, a tour de force on the history, problems, and future of assessment in higher education. Peter posed the following questions to the EOTU Working Group:

1. If you looked at any of the examples of public web presentations in the Urban Universities Portfolio Project (http://www.imir.iupui.edu/portfolio/), what role do numbers play in the stories these institutions are trying to tell? How (and how well) do you think the expanded verbal, visual, graphic, and interactive nature of the web as a medium enhances the ability to build and communicate an institutional narrative?
2. What considerations should influence the weights assigned to different variables in order to find the best institutional “match” for the U of I? What variables would you like to have seen included in this list (even though there may or may not be national measures for any of these)? Browse the NCHEMS Comparison Group Selection Service (www.nchems.org). When you browse here you will see that this service allows universities to select a peer group (for running data comparison) click on “comparison group selection service” at “information services.”
3. If you visited the National Center for Public Policy in Higher Education website (www.highereducation.org) to check out the state-by-state “report card” (Measuring Up 2000), what reactions do you have to the “report card” approach as a way to induce policymakers to think about the right questions in higher education? Can you detect specific value positions (or biases) behind the indicators selected and how they are calculated?
4. In Accountability and Assessment in a Second Decade, I described some shifts in the underlying relationship between higher education and wider social/public policy that (at least I think) still hold true. How do you think such external forces influence the internal culture of a major university (or, more particularly, the U of I)? Do administrators effectively filter them out or do certain aspects of the way you do your daily work as faculty and staff change because of them? What about the embedded values implied by such notions as increasing student “consumerism” (e.g., U.S. News) or increasing “corporatism” (e.g., “pay for performance”)? Are they merely ripples in the English or Chemistry departments or in residence life, for that matter or do they help shape the culture?

University Networks: IKNOW (Inquiring Knowledge Networks on the Web)
October 2, 2002

Presenters
Noshir Contractor, Professor, Speech Communication, UIUC
Chunke Su, Doctoral Student, Speech Communication, UIUC

Discussion
Prior to this session, Noshir Contractor and Chunke Su ran IKNOW, a software application developed at UIUC, on the EOTU Working Group. Designed to capture information networks, IKNOW is interested in “who knows who, who knows what, who knows who knows who,” etc. Taking our group as a network metaphor for the university more broadly, Noshir led us in a fascinating discussion of how attention to networks refigures our understandings of institutions and the ways in which they work.

Organizing the University
October 9, 2002

Presenter
Susanne Lohman, Professor, Political Science, UCLA

Reading
Lohmann, Susanne. 2002. Can’t the University Be More Like Business? Working Paper.

Lohmann, Susanne. 2002. Herding Cats, Moving Cemeteries, and Hauling Academic Trunks: Why Change Comes Hard to the University. Working Paper.

Discussion
Lohmann’s research focuses on how universities change, and how the people within them contribute to that change or don’t. She observed that information typically moves slowly through the university, and that it tends to be “thick” at its point of origin in departments, and “thin” when it reaches its destination at the top of the administrative hierarchy. As an example, she described how “thick” tenure cases become thinner and thinner as they progress through the review process. Many details are lost, and some become emphasized in ways unintended by candidates and their departments.

Lohmann is particularly interested in how participants in university life gather information about one another. For example, how does a chancellor come to know whether a dean truly espouses the institutional values to which the chancellor subscribes? And knowing that information is being gathered about them, how do deans handle information to make themselves “look good”? Lohmann argued that key here is the avoidance of controversy: she illustrated her point by describing a dean’s handling of a student academic integrity case. Rules of academic integrity a core institutional value must be respected, but conflict that would precipitate undue publicity must be avoided. Lohmann believes that this sort of balancing act ultimately leads to ossification in institutions like universities. Change, she says, is difficult to come by.

And yet, Lohmann suggests, institutions must surely change to preserve themselves. On this point, she offered the example of a highly selective liberal arts institution at which it annually costs $60,000 to deliver a student’s education. The “sticker price” for this education is $30,000, of which the typical student pays $10,000. Without change based on wide circulation of this financial analysis, such an institution will not survive, and the values it intends to inculcate in students will be lost.

Performance and the University
October 16, 2002

Presenter
David Stark, Professor, Sociology, Columbia University

Reading
Girard, Monique and David Stark. 2001. Distributing Intelligence and Organizing Diversity in New Media Projects. Presented as the conference, “Beyond the Firm: Spatial and Social Dynamics of Project-Organization.” University of Bonn, April 27-28.

Stark, David. 2001. Ambiguous Assets for Uncertain Environments: Heterarchy in Postsocialist Firms. P. DiMaggio, ed. The Twenty-First-Century Firm: Changing Economic Organization in International Perspective. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 69-104.

Stark, David. 2003. For a Sociology of Worth. Working Paper.

Discussion
David Stark’s work addresses notions of social worth, distributed intelligence, the uses and organization of diversity, value/values, and accounts (in the sense of both bookkeeping and narration). With David we talked about the “university” as a system of value, and we began to envision what it would mean to conduct ethnography of the ways in which the university and its constituents assign value to diverse acts and activities. We spoke about the double-entendre of “performance” as both what we do or enact, and what we are judged on. In our conversation, we considered the following questions about our units/workplaces: How do we account for ourselves and calculate the work of our units and ourselves? How do students do this? Do we know and would it be useful to know? What are the dominant organizational narratives that we take up or contest? With our discussion of ossification with Susanne and her point that universities transform by designing decentralized structures that generate messy incentives, do you see evidence of such design in your units or in the interdisciplinary units with which you are associated etc.?

The Inquiry Page and Web-Based Learning Communities
October 23, 2003

Presenter
Chip Bruce, Professor, Library and Information Sciences, UIUC

Reading
Bruce, Bertram C., and Ann P. Bishop. 2002. Using the Web to Support Inquiry- Based Literacy Development. Reading Online http://www.readingonline.org/electronic/JAAL/5-02_Column/index.html

Lunsford, Karen J., and Bertram C. Bruce. 2001. Collaboratories: Working Together on the Web. Reading Online http://www.readingonline.org/electronic/JAAL/9-01_Column/index.html

Discussion
Chip Bruce led a discussion of his Inquiry Page project, a web-based environment for reporting on a range of research, including qualitative local study, and on his course, “Literacy in the Information Age” (for which students do local research). In that session we began a discussion of the similarities of the Inquiry Page and EOTU, as simultaneously face-to-face learning communities and inquiry-based pedagogical projects. From this session emerged the initial conversations about the possibility of housing EOTU at the Inquiry Page site.

Working Session: EOTU Web-Based Learning/Archiving Template
October 30, 2002

Discussion
Run as a working session, EOTU Working Group members broke into groups to discuss the sort of space/environment (we agreed on the importance of a metaphor for the space) that we might configure to “house” the Ethnography of the University of Illinois. As expected, that session generated as many questions as it did ideas. We were struck that many of the queries and ideas touched nicely upon earlier discussions in the seminar, among them the intellectual challenge of demarcating the bounds of the University. Here follows some of the queries generated:

1. There was considerable discussion of the focus or function of the site/environment. Would it be primarily for pedagogy? for presentation of materials in the present? for archiving for future use? Related here is the question of audience: who is our intended audience?
2. How will we define the subject (i.e., The University of Illinois) of the ethnography (i.e., what counts as ethnography of UIUC or how do we think about borders, virtually, materially etc.)? Related here is another query: who are legitimate contributors to this ethnography (i.e., what constitutes membership)?
3. How directive or structured should the reporting format be (this recalled our discussion of the Inquiry Page)?
4. What sort of a tool kit or cook book might we want to provide for use by participants?
5. How much scaffolding (i.e., information, examples) would we want to provide?
6. What mechanisms for feedback and evaluation will we include?
7. We discussed the sorts of materials that might find their way to this space from research results to primary textual material to video.
8. We discussed the idea of an inquiry trail (referring to the intellectual, geographical, and personal inquiry path of participants the many choices entailed) and how this might be featured. In this vein we discussed how to incorporate information on participants.
9. We discussed several desirable features of the Inquiry Page, among them the ability to add to or “spin off” from existing sites, and the ability to designate sites as “under construction” or “ready for public use,” etc.
10. We discussed challenges for the case of collaborative (multi-authored) work.

Student Writing and Writing Studies
November 6, 2003

Presenters
Gail Hawisher, Professor, English and the Center for Writing Studies, UIUC
Steven Lamos, Doctoral Student, English, and Director of the Writers’ Workshop, UIUC
Peter Mortensen, Associate Professor, English, UIUC
Paul Prior, Associate Professor, English and the Center for Writing Studies, UIUC
Jody Shipka, Doctoral Student, English, UIUC

Browsing
From Gail Hawisher: Online portfolios from ENGL 405 (1997, 1999). “In the overview for the course, I write that: ‘A requirement for class is an online portfolio, one that includes writings which you've completed over the course of the semester. Because I believe that at some point you might find value in online (and offline) portfolios for your own teaching or writing, I want you to experience the pleasures of compiling a collection of your work, however tentative that work might be.’”

Reading
Excerpts from:

Durst, Russel K. 1999. Collision Course: Conflict, Negotiation, and Learning in College Composition. Urbana: NCTE.

Herrington, Anne J., and Marcia Curtis. 2000. Persons in Process: Four Stories of Writing and Personal Development in College. Urbana: NCTE.

Discussion
Gail, Paul, Peter, Steve, and Jody introduced us to the teaching of writing at UIUC (organizationally, intellectually, historically, politically, etc.) as well as to the field of Writing Studies. The links to EOTU are many, among them:

1. Writing Studies is perhaps the strongest arm of politically invigorated ethnography on/at the University (Jody gave us a fascinating tour of an ethnographic project she uses in her teaching, “A History of ‘This’ Space”; Paul introduced us to his research on how writing happens and to the pedagogical implications of this processual understanding of writing.
2. The history of writing pedagogy at the UIUC is a wonderful window on large historical and political currents. Peter introduced us to the economics and politics of pre-college testing to sort students into writing classes and we discussed students’ awareness of the racial and economic contours of this sorting. Gail reviewed the 1990-present history of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) and the Writers’ Workshop; and Steve pushed this history further back to the era when the Writers’ Workshop was an arm of the EOP program. Steve also talked about the EOP program more broadly as it reveals the history of race at UIUC.
3. Writing Studies as presented by this crew offers so much to this project. We can, for example, think about what it might mean for students to become ethnographers of their own learning, and to indeed have them document their learning. We can also think about the nature of the writing that will be inspired by this university ethnography project. Finally, we were struck that writing pedagogy is a set or practices and structures that all students meet at the university; here we can think about how to guide students in the larger project of thinking institutionally (i.e., contextually, historically, etc.) about pedagogical forms and practices that impact upon their lives.

The Protection of Human Subjects
November 13, 2002

Presenter
Lizanne DeStefano, Professor, College of Education, and Associate Dean for the Research Bureau

Reading
The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects. 1979. The Belmont Report, Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research (http://ohrp.osophs.dhhs.gov/humansubjects/guidance/belmont.htm)

Discussion
Lizanne led us in a fascinating discussion of the Belmont Report. We then turned to the following revealing hypothetical cases that she distributed:

1. Professor Ed has been supervising student internships in his department for the past three years. Interns work full-time, off-campus in real work settings directly related to their major while receiving course credit. They are supervised on-site by an employee of that organization in addition to receiving University supervision. As part of the University requirements, Ed asks each intern to complete and submit a journal of their internship experiences. A portion of the journal is unstructured where students may write about anything they choose. At other times, Ed asks the students to reflect upon specific aspects of their internship (e.g., initial adjustment, organizational climate, interpersonal interactions with peers and supervisors, work expectations, etc). Students submit their journals electronically each month for feedback. At the end of the internship, the local supervisor submits a performance evaluation. Ed submits a S/U grade for the student based on his evaluation of the journal and the local performance evaluation.

Ed believes that the journals (he has collected over 100 in the past three years) are an excellent data source for documenting the process of “becoming a professional” in his field. He would like to analyze the journals for prominent themes and trends, selecting quotes to illustrate major issues. This would likely involve disaggregating data by gender, type of internship, and other demographic variables. He would also like to look for relationships between students’ perceptions of their internship and local supervisors’ evaluations. Ed thinks this information would make a contribution to professional education in his field. It could also be used within his department to improve the quality of the program.

What are the human subjects research issues in this case? How would you advise Ed to proceed?

2. Professor Ann is studying the relationship between eating habits and body image. She and her research assistants plan to observe people eating in public places such as restaurants, food courts, sporting events, public swimming pools, etc. and engage them in conversations about what they eat and how they feel about the way they look. They are also interested in taking candid photographs of the people they observe for use in publications and presentations. They do not plan to ask for the names of any subjects in their data collection.

What are the human subjects research issues in this case? How would you advise Ann to proceed?

3. Professor Ken is conducting a large survey study on the spending patterns of people in the 18 to 21 year age group. In order to maximize his return rate, he plans to conduct a lottery in which one of the respondents will receive $10,000.

What are the human subjects research issues in this case? How would you advise Ed to proceed?

In that session, and throughout the 2002-03 activities, it became very clear that EOTU poses considerable human subjects and intellectual property challenges. Aspiring to an on-line archive, EOTU needs thus to pay attention simultaneously to the rights of both the objects (i.e., informants) of student ethnographic research and to those of the student researchers as well.

Fall Semester Wrap-Up
December 4, 2002

Discussion
We devoted this final 2002 session to a wrap-up of the semester activities. We also discussed the spring 2003 semester, agreeing to devote those sessions to more applied matters matters germane to getting EOTU off the ground as a pedagogical project.

The University and the Community
February 7, 2003

Presenters
Mark Aber, Associate Professor, Clinical and Community Psychology
Aaron Ebata, Associate Professor, Human and Community Development
Thom Moore, Director, Psychological Services Center, and Adjunct Associate Professor, Psychology
Julian Rappaport, Professor, Clinical and Community Psychology

Browsing
Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania
http://www.upenn.edu/ccp/courses2002-3.shtml
See link to “Education and Courses”: http://www.upenn.edu/ccp/educate.shtml

Center for the Health Professions, University of California at San Francisco, Community Campus Partnerships for Health
http://www.futurehealth.ucsf.edu/ccph.html
See link to “Community Scholarship”: http://futurehealth.ucsf.edu/ccph/scholarship.html

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of University Partnerships
http://www.oup.org

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Partnership Illinois
http://www.oc.uiuc.edu/oc/pi/

Discussion
Continuing our longstanding interesting in the complexity of the boundaries of the university, we focused this session on the connection between the university and the community. Our visitors each discussed their own work at the university borderlands, and more specifically the ways in which they have worked to encourage a greater community ethnic on the part of the university and its constituents. We reached agreement that EOTU can work very effectively by taking the time to study the many existing practices and practitioners at these borderlands. We also decided that EOTU itself as both a learning community and an archive can serve as its own “information kiosk” to the university, a gateway that might help serve community members and groups interested in creatively accessing the resources of the university.

Archiving Student Life and Culture
Friday, January 24

Presenter
Ellen Swain, Archivist, Student Life and Culture Archives and Assistant Professor, Library Administration

Reading
“Remembering Alma Mater: Connecting Students of the Present, Past and Future” (working paper)

Discussion
On site, Ellen Swain introduced us to the UIUC Student Life and Culture Archives (www.library.uiuc.edu/ahx/slc). The only archive of its kind in the United States, we were very excited by the future prospects of collaboration (see link for our EOTU Nested Project on student archiving). Ellen assembled a gallery or print, pictorial, and material items to introduce the archives. We were very convinced that not only will these archives serve as a remarkable resource for student research, but also that students should be very interested in the consideration of students’ own archiving practices ones that are, we discussed, increasingly digital (e.g., web-logs or “blogs,” instant messaging, e-mail).

Institutional Memory
March 7, 2003

Presenters
Beth Sandore, Associate University Librarian for Information Technology Planning and Policy, and Professor of Library Administration (http://door.library.uiuc.edu/faculty/Sandore.htm)

Lanny Arvan, Assistant CIO, CITES Office of Educational Technology, and Associate Professor, Economics (http://www.cba.uiuc.edu/faculty/arvan.html)

Reading
Young, Jeffrey. “‘Superarchives’ Could Hold All Scholarly Output: Online collections by institutions may challenge the role of journal publishers.” Chronicle of Higher Education, (July 5, 2002) (URL: http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i43/43a02901.htm).

Johnson, Richard K. “Institutional Repositories: Partnering with Faculty to Enhance Scholarly Communication.” D-Lib Magazine (November 2002); Volume 8 Number 11; ISSN 1082-9873. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november02/johnson/11johnson.html

Browsing
SPARC Institutional Repositories Resource Page includes information specific to SPARC’s mission to offer alternatives to the traditional commercial scholarly publishing avenues; but also provides an incomplete list of institutional repository projects, world-wide. (URL: http://www.arl.org/sparc/core/index.asp?page=m1)

Eprints.org Site:(Southampton University, England) self-archiving and open archives describes the open source eprints software, links to implementers and services world-wide; emphasis on open access and digital archiving methods to preserve refereed published research (URL: http://www.eprints.org/)

The eScholarship Repository, sponsored by the California Digital Library of the University of California, offers faculty in the social sciences and humanities a central location for depositing scholarship. The repository provides persistent access to the items deposited and makes them easily discoverable. (URL: http://escholarship.cdlib.org/repositories.html based on the BePress [Berkeley Electronic Press] software)

MIT DSpace archive open source software developed jointly by MIT and Hewlett-Packard for archiving institutional research output. (URL: https://hpds1.mit.edu/index.jsp)

Ohio State University’s Knowledge Bank publications, informal communications about initial research questions and data, classroom presentations, preprints, technical reports, formal publications
(URL: http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/Lib_Info/scholarcom/KBproposal.html)

Discussion
Beth Sandore led us in a fascinating discussion of the challenges that universities face as they think and attempt to preserve their intellectual property, including their digital output. We began with the following passage on institutional repositories:

In contrast to discipline-specific repositories and subject-oriented or thematic digital libraries, institutional repositories capture the original research and other intellectual property generated by an institution’s constituent population active in many fields. Defined in this way, institutional repositories represent an historical and tangible embodiment of the intellectual life and output of an institution. And, to the extent that institutional affiliation itself serves as the primary qualitative filter, this repository becomes a significant indicator of the institution’s academic quality.

Beth then encouraged us to consider these questions:

1. What are institutional repositories?
2. What is the notion of a durable digital archive?
3. Are all institutional repositories durable digital archives by definition?
4. What is the difference between making institutional output accessible (i.e. better organized so that it can be found and used) and archiving it?
5. What is the impact of organizational mission on the definition of an institutional repository, and how does that differ according to institution?
6. Are faculty more closely aligned over the long term with their discipline, with their institution(s) or some of both?
7. How is an institution’s cultural life and history captured in an institutional archive?
8. Where do educational resources (student research, informal communications, course syllabi, group projects) fit in the institutional repository model?

We agreed that the decisions and plans that comprise institutional repositories offer a remarkable window on the identity and values of an institution and its constituents. Quite simply, we agreed that decisions about what to include and about who should be the arbiters of what to include speak volumes about systems of value.

Follow-up Reading
Crow, Raym. The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper. The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition, Washington, DC 20036. (URL: http://www.arl.org/sparc/IR/ir.html) (August 27, 2002).

An Ethnographic Tool-kit
March 21, 2003

Presenters
Nancy Abelmann, Associate Professor, Anthropology and East Asian Languages and Cultures
Josie Beavers, EOTU Undergraduate Intern
William Kelleher, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Nicole Ortegon, EOTU Undergraduate Intern
Sara Phelan, EOTU Undergraduate Intern
Teresa Ramos, EOTU Undergraduate Intern

Readings
Basso, Keith. 1996. Wisdom Sits in Places (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press). 58-65.

Balshem, Martha. 1993. Cancer in the Community: Class and Medical Authority. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian). 54-64.

Bourdieu et al., eds. 1999. The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 610-615.

Foley, Douglas. 1990. Learning Capitalist Culture: Deep in the Heart of Tejas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 63-69.

Manalansan, Martin F. IV. 2003. Migrancy, Modernity, Mobility: Quotidian Struggles and Queer Diasporic Intimacy. Manuscript.

In the interests of creating a web-based ethnographic toolkit for EOTU participants, we discussed several short selections that reveal different ethnographic techniques including interviews, focus groups, and spatial and body analysis. EOTU undergraduate interns, discussed their in-progress web-based discussion of field research, a discussion that was edited for inclusion on this site. [Link]

Another Look at University Narratives: The University as Work-Place
April 4, 2003

Presenters
Allan Borst, Doctoral Student, English, and Co-President, Graduate-Employees’ Organization, IFT/AFT
Cary Nelson, Professor Emeritus, English, and Second Vice-President, American Association of University Professors

Browsing
Graduate-Employees’ Organization, IFT/AFT
http://www.shout.net/~geo/

American Association of University Professors
http://www.aaup.org

Discussion
In this session, Allan and Cary explained how their organizations narrate the university, and the place of students and faculty in it. Narratives discussed in previous sessions featured “learning” prominently. Allan explained that in its narratives, GEO pairs “learning” with “labor” in an effort to make visible the work that teachers must perform to sustain an intellectual community for undergraduate students. For his part, Cary argued that intellectual community is made possible by academic freedom, the protection of which is the central mission of AAUP. Cary explained that while academic freedom may be vested primarily in tenured faculty members, the protection it affords extends to others hence the need for tenured faculty to guard against its erosion.

Documenting Student Learning: A National Perspective
April 18, 2003

Presenter
Barbara Cambridge, Vice President, American Association of Higher
Education

Browsing
American Association of Higher Education

The AAHE’s more than 9,000 members include faculty, administrators, and students from across the spectrum of postsecondary education. Representatives from foundations, government, accrediting bodies, business, and the media also number among AAHE’s membership. The association supports major initiatives on assessment, faculty roles and rewards, service-learning, and teaching.

Barbara helped us better understand how the Ethnography of the University fits within national trends toward making teaching and learning at research universities more visible, developing meaningful assessments of teaching and learning, and strengthening ties between universities and the communities they serve.

We began with a set of simple question:

1. What do we know about learning that supports the kind of ethnography we want to do?
2. How are the voices of students heard in major decision making situations at our university? How might this ethnographic work influence their roles?
3. What strategies and tactics do we or could we employ to make this campus a learning environment where new learners (students) are as valued as experienced learners (faculty members)?

Our discussion broadened to include more complex questions:

1. What questions are universities asking about teaching and learning that they haven't asked before? What questions appear to be specific to public research institutions like UIUC?
2. As these questions are discussed and answered, what initiatives for curricular and pedagogical change are emerging? What initiatives seem to be forming at a grass-roots level, and which are being sponsored (by foundations, by professional societies, by the federal government, etc.) at a national level?
3. To what extent are these questions, answers, and initiatives shaped by calls for assessment and accountability from outside universities?
4. To what extent are these questions, answers, and initiatives shaped by new knowledge emerging in the academic disciplines?
5. Regarding all of the previous questions: What narratives about universities appear to be in play these days publicly and in higher ed policy circles? What stories are stakeholders and observers telling about universities that motivate and justify their contributions to current debates about higher education, and, more to the point, to critiques of the undergraduate curriculum?
6. How can teachers and students work together to understand the narratives that organize the universities especially public research universities like UIUC? Where is work like EOTU already being done across the humanities and humanistic social science curriculum? Given its current aspirations, what new directions should EOTU contemplate?
7. The archival dimension of EOTU promises to create a rich record of students’ experience of/at a research university. How might this record be used in institutional efforts to assess the effectiveness of undergraduate teaching and learning?