Communities in which scholars discuss, analyze and communicate their work are an important component of scholarly production. As an experiment this summer, we have acquired funding from the Mellon Foundation to support scholarly communities of student researchers. In addition to potentially contributing to the success of student projects, this activity is designed to help each student better understand the process of scholarly work by regularly meeting with a group to learn the common stages of scholarly work, even in disparate fields of interest. It is also thought that providing peer support and peer mentoring, in addition to the close faculty mentoring that is already part of the process at Grinnell, will enhance the experience for the student and the success of the final project.

Although variation is possible, the general model for the Grinnell Student Scholarly Communities involves weekly meetings of each group over 8-10 weeks. There is a budget of $150 per group (usually of six students) for food and beverages. The budget could be used for snacks at every meeting or perhaps lunch for a few key meetings. When planning, it may be wise to occasionally include room for a visitor, for example a guest faculty member with related interests or a librarian, for example.

In some cases, faculty mentors have already planned activities to support scholarly communities for their MAP students. Otherwise, the students will be organizing them independently.

Please consult with your MAP director about formation of your group. In some cases, it might be desirable to include members from projects that vary greatly in scope and discipline. This could lead to better articulation and understanding of the research process in general. In other cases, there may be interest in developing groups based on similarities of content, type of questions/projects, or techniques or processes used to possibly get specific input to enhance a product. The group need not be students who share assigned study space.

To provide some structure to organize the meetings, it may be helpful to consider the stages of your project and how this relates to the stages of your group members' projects. Ideas related to project development that might be useful to address during scholarly community meetings include: