The Week in UR - Friday, November 22, 2024

Hi All,

Happy Friday! And an especially merry Friday it is, greeted as we are by a bracing chill in the air on this the eve of the most wonderful time of the year: the Winter Break Season, a time when academic life is, if but for a fleeting moment, just as we imagined it, with time enough to feed the mind, and perhaps for that wisdom to bear the fruit of new ideas, reading, writing, perhaps combing through 70,000 or so cases in that data set that’s been lying fallow all these months, all by the warm glow of a fire and the soft sunlight of a winter’s day. Ah, heaven. Oh, and time for family togetherness, &c. Ah hem.

Somewhat regrettably, I must report that this has been another busy and eventful Week in UR. I confess that I naively imagined that things might have slowed down by this point in the semester, as the rhythms of academic life customarily dictate. But alas, it wasn’t to be so. That’s bound to be the case when launching an institution-wide strategic initiative, I suppose. But I am feeling wistful for a simpler time right about now. Nonetheless, we’re making steady progress, and there’s much to celebrate at the precipice of this holiday season.

Perhaps the most urgent matter to attend to before we head into the holiday season is identifying a few more students as prospective FURC presenters. Abstracts are due December 2, so this isn’t something that can wait until after the holiday. We’ve got eight spots total, and we’ve now successfully recruited five students, with four in STEM and one in humanities. Best case scenario is that we'd have one more presentation in the humanities and two in social/applied sciences. Please be on the lookout for particularly precocious students who might well enjoy this opportunity, and ask them to send an email to UndergraduateResearch@tsc.fl.edu expressing their interest. Securing funding for all-expense-paid travel to an undergraduate research conference is a big win for the UR Program, and we want to make sure to take full advantage of it. Anecdotally, I mentioned it in yesterday’s English department meeting, and I could see that it got people’s attention. It’s a fantastic professional development experience for students, and it sends a strong message about how much the College values UR. Once again, I want to acknowledge J.T. for his leadership in planning this significant addition to our programming. He has pulled this together very quickly, and we all owe him our thanks.

More good news to share: I got a sneak peak at the forthcoming design scheme for the UR Journal, and I daresay that we may, in just a few short months, have the most polished UR journal in the country! No kidding around here; I actually think it rivals the look and feel of many established academic journals, of any kind. And that professionalism is not just limited to aesthetics. The UR Journal Committee, ably led by Niki Costantino, has, in a very short time, put into place a process for soliciting, processing, and reviewing submissions that communicates to students that we value their scholarly work, and that we take their work seriously. I am eagerly anticipating the journal’s launch, on or around the time of the spring symposium. The journal is another hugely important addition to UR programming at TSC, and another great product of our work to celebrate this holiday season.

On the IRB front (far less exciting, but still consequential, in its own way), I met this week with Dr. Lei Wang, Vice President for Institutional Effectiveness and our chief IRB administrator, and I believe that we've hashed out a simple, elegant, and streamlined solution for administering IRB reviews for student projects, one that complies with all relevant federal regulations, while imposing minimal administrative burdens on students, faculty mentors, or staff. I can now confidently say we’ll have a permanent solution in place by the time we all return in January. So let not concerns over human subjects protection spoil your holiday good cheer, For protected our subjects will be, come the new year.

And given that my ramblings have now devolved into lines of very poor verse, that assuredly means that it’s time to let them, and more importantly all of you, rest. For alas, this will be the last installment of “The Week in UR” of the 2024 calendar year. In full deference to academic tradition, I regard Thanksgiving week as the unofficial end to the fall term, knowing full well that no one will pay any attention whatsoever to what I have to say until a new year has come. But rest assured, “The Week in UR” will return January 3. No relief in sight. None whatsoever. Death, taxes, and “The Week in UR.” These you can rely on in perpetuity. Well, at least for the 2025 calendar year. And in times like these, why plan too far ahead?

In all seriousness, I wish all of you the happiest of holiday seasons, filled with good company, good food, good drink, good cheer and, most of all, plenty of rest. Building a comprehensive UR Program is a ton of work, and we’re all doing it on top of schedules that are already far too burdensome, for no reason other than selfless devotion to enhancing our students’ undergraduate experiences. We should all feel very proud of that as we look back and reflect on the past year. It’s been a pleasure working alongside all of you in service to this worthy cause this past semester, and we have so much to look forward to in the new year. Happy Holidays, everyone.

Dan

 

The Week in UR - Friday, November 15, 2024

Hi All,

Happy Friday! And a particularly happy Friday it is, given that we’ve all very nearly survived another frenzied fall semester, more-or-less intact, though certainly a bit worse for wear. Even more happily, we’ve done some very fine work together to build the College’s UR Program, and as we approach this holiday season, there is much to be proud of as we look back and reflect on all that we’ve done together over just a dozen weeks or so.

Among the many great things that we’ve done together is planning our first interdisciplinary travel to the Florida Undergraduate Research Conference (FURC), which is fast approaching indeed. Approaching even faster is the deadline for abstract submissions, which is December 2. As a reminder, funding for this event was only very recently approved, and we’ve had to scramble to find student participants. It is a great opportunity: All expenses will be paid for eight lucky students selected to attend. And a few spots are still available. It would be particularly nice to get a couple of students from social sciences and couple from the humanities. Unfortunately, we’re having work through existing networks of faculty and students to organize this initial foray into student travel to a regional UR conference. I’m working to secure ongoing funding for future years so that we can plan for broader access to this opportunity. But for now, if you identify a student who is interested, please have them send an email to UndergraduateResearch@tsc.fl.edu. Most importantly, I want to again acknowledge J.T. for his able leadership of this project. It is coming together quickly, and it is almost entirely due to his efforts.

On an entirely unrelated note, I spent some time this week looking into the issue of IRB approval for student projects (You’re welcome!). After combing through the federal regulations that govern IRBs, I’m now satisfied that students whose projects do involve human subjects, in any way, should submit IRB protocols if they intend to present the findings of their research beyond the classroom, including at our campuswide UR Symposium, through publication in our student UR journal, or via publications or events beyond the College, such as at FURC. Further, since TSC’s IRB is registered with the Department of Health and Human Services as the guarantor of Federal Wide Assurance (more information here, for your reading pleasure), students must submit protocols by way of the IRB’s established processes. However, each IRB does have considerable latitude in terms of how those processes operate. Given this, I am now working with the Office of Institutional Effectiveness, which houses the College’s IRB, to create a streamlined process for student projects that does not impose undue burdens on student researchers or their faculty mentors. I’m very hopeful that we’ll be able to stand this up quickly. My goal will be to have that process in place by the start of the spring semester. More to come on this real soon.

Also worth a mention is that we’ve got three (3!) abstract submissions as of today which, it must be said, is three more than we’ve ever had during the fall semester. Thanks to everyone for everything you’ve done this semester to promote symposium submissions. One recent addition to our promotional efforts is a beautiful flier, attached, that Communications and Marketing created for us. Special thanks are due this week to Marissa and Cherie for posting fliers in their respective areas. I’ve got a veritable mountain of handsome full color copies. If you’d like a pile of them to post in your own area, just let me know, and I’ll hand deliver them to you forthwith.

I’ll plan for one last installment of “The Week in UR” for 2024, coming to you next Friday. Then, mercifully, I’ll defer to academic tradition and let it rest until after the winter break. As I hope we all will be doing quite soon indeed. Best wishes for the penultimate week of fall semester. We’re very nearly there.

Dan

The Week in UR - Friday, November 1, 2024

 

Hi All,

Happy Friday! As important, happy Friday of the 11^th week of the semester (11!). It’s hard to believe that we’re already winding down fall semester. But here we are in November, and the weather is fine. So believe it we must. And I know we’re all looking forward to things slowing down in the coming weeks.

It’s been another pretty eventful Week in UR, and I’ve got some big news to share. First up is that the Provost has approved a funding request for student travel to the Florida Undergraduate Research Conference (FURC)! Thanks to J.T. for putting this funding request together very, very quickly. Eight lucky students will get to travel to Tampa in February to present their research at this annual event of the Florida Undergraduate Research Association (FURA). This is a significant development, for sure. Although TSC students have presented at FURC in the past, our participation has been tied to grant-funded projects and offered only as external funding allows. The commitment of College funds suggests that we will (hopefully) be able to extend this opportunity to all TSC students on an ongoing basis, and hopefully to an ever larger cohort. We’ll have to scramble to find students who are interested in participating; abstracts are due December 2. But I’m confident we can get this done. We’ll discuss more at our meeting on Tuesday.

On the publicity front, work continues apace. The PR team is working to reach students by just about every imaginable means, including by means of a new and novel approach: Persistent messages in Canvas. I’m sure many of us saw this pop up just this morning. This is the kind of message that keeps showing up on Canvas until the user manually dismisses it. For those of you who don’t spend a significant share of your waking hours in Canvas, you can view a copy of the message here:

ur symposium 2025 canvas message.png

In other publicity-related news, the PR and Workshops team held the first abstract writing workshop of the academic year on Tuesday. And perhaps as a result, we now have two submissions! In the Fall semester!! It may not be much, but it’s certainly a good early start. Separately, the Office of Communications and Marketing has produced a fresh new design for paper fliers. I’ve submitted an order to get those printed in full living color so we can once again wallpaper the campus with them, if we’d like. Here’s a link to the design:

ur symposium 2025 flier.pdf

That’s about all the news I can think of for now. As mentioned above, please remember that we’ve got our final UR Council meeting of the semester on Tuesday, and I think more members can finally be present for this one now that RSI training is winding down. I look forward to seeing everyone again. As always, I’ve put together a draft agenda. Please review and add any additional items for discussion as you see fit:

agenda ur council meeting 11-5-24.docx

And with that, it’s happened again. You’ve wasted another perfectly good hour reading “The Week in UR.” Hopefully it didn’t take that long, but there’s always much to report. Also, it’s Friday. So who cares? I hope everyone has a great weekend. To all FAMUans celebrating homecoming, enjoy! It’s going to be a glorious weekend for a homecoming game. And the Rattlers are having a very good year. Texas Southern is going to wish they’d stayed home on the range.

Dan