Denison-Kenyon Virtual Research Communities
Final report, June, 2001:
With the onset of the summer 2001 research season on both the Denison and Kenyon campuses, the one-year Denison/Kenyon Virtual Research Communities grant has come to a close. Below is our final report, addressing the five criteria specified by the Mellon Foundation Program for Collaborations with Technology.
Were project goals met:
As outlined in our grant application we had three major goals.
1. Joint Research Group Meetings:
During the summer of 2000 joint “research group meetings” were held between the Denison and Kenyon biology faculty. These meetings utilized the remote conference facilities on both our campuses. In these meetings undergraduate researchers presented overviews of their summer research projects. In total ten such meetings were held and sixteen undergraduate researchers gave presentations. Therefore this goal was clearly met, and the budgeted faculty participation stipends were distributed.
2. Program Web Site:
During the summer and continuing through the 200/01 academic year we had envisioned a web site to facilitate interactions between the Denison and Kenyon biology faculty and students. However, this web site never got off the ground, and so this goal was not met. The funds allocated for web site management have remained unspent.
3. Collaborative Cross-lab Projects:
It was envisioned that our summer, joint research meetings would stimulate some collaborative research between members of the Denison and Kenyon biology faculties and their students. Travel funds and supply funds were budgeted for such projects. However, these funds have remained largely untouched. Some travel money was used to support environmental monitoring in Denison’s Biological Reserve by Kenyon students, but otherwise no cross-lab collaborations were initiated.
What was learned about technology:
Certainly the convenience of weekly meeting with our colleagues without ever leaving our respective campuses (via the video conference facility) allowed for an unprecedented level of interaction between campuses. Such interaction would not have been possible without the technology. However, we also learned of the highly specialized nature of such technologies during glitches such as loss of video or audio, which proved unsolvable by the technicians present and cut short some of our meetings.
What was learned about collaborative processes:
Clearly our project never truly advanced to the “collaborative” stage, as little cross-lab collaboration grew out of our summer, joint meetings. While one never can be sure, I strongly suspect that time played a crucial factor in the lack of collaborative projects. Once the academic year began and faculty became involved in teaching and on-campus research, novel collaborations which may have been ancillary to one’s primary research became a low priority. Another 20/20 hindsight observation is that having joint meetings centered on undergraduate summer-research presentations may not have been the best vehicle to stimulate faculty collaboration between the Kenyon and Denison campuses. Overviews of individual faculty research programs by faculty members may have been more effective.
Suggested improvements:
In retrospect, perhaps our proposal was too grand, especially in view of the unspent funds. Clearly the summer meetings were a great success, although occasional technical problems did crop up. However, more tightly defined collaboration, perhaps outlining a concrete collaborative project between the Kenyon and Denison faculty rather than unspecified collaborative projects, would have been more obtainable. Also, having individual faculty present overviews of their research during our meetings (rather than undergraduate presentations) would have likely been a better catalyst for cross campus collaborations.
How has information about this project been disseminated:
The grant was announced in Denison’s Faculty Newsletter.
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