Position Description:

  • Participate as a member of the selection committee.
  • Provide program orientation for faculty mentors and student fellows.
  • Contact student fellows and their supervisors to establish a schedule of weekly meetings.  The final schedule should include eight meetings (of which students should be allowed to miss no more than two).  (See below for a sample schedule of meetings.)
  • Ensure that students have filled out appropriate paperwork so they can be paid and make them aware of the schedule of payments.
  • Ensure that arrangements are made for at least three or four social activities (students can be put in charge of arranging particular activities).
  • Find office space (usually in the Rhetoric Center) for students whose supervisors cannot provide space.
  • Ensure that photos will be taken of each student/faculty research team at some point during their research. 
  • Be available to talk with students about their research, their presentations, any problems that they might have with their supervisor, etc.
  • Plan and run the weekly meetings, including bringing in guest speakers when appropriate.
  • Collect end-of-the summer evaluations from both faculty supervisors and students.
  • Collect student reports at the end of the summer; include students’ photos. 
  • Construct a brief director’s report on the summer’s program.
  • Prompt the annual follow-up survey of former McGregor researchers to be administered by the Office of the Dean for Faculty Development.

Weekly Meetings:

The McGregor students have a noon sack lunch each week. These meetings are quite informal, but a welcome morale booster and a valuable reprieve from the tedium of research tasks. The format varies. Most weeks, a McGregor faculty mentor presents for 20 minutes or so, followed by Q & A around the topic of the day.

Occasionally, a library staff member presents on specialized research strategies about or we discuss methods of reporting research at a typical conference venue. McGregor students also report on the progress of the projects. This requires students to talk with their supervisors about questions including: What is the purpose of their research project? Why is the purpose of their research project considered valuable in their discipline? Are the questions addressed by their theses or hypotheses considered worthwhile to ask, and are they capable of being convincingly answered by the methods they have chosen? In what ways are their methods conventional or unconventional in their discipline? In what ways does their research contribute to established lines of inquiry in their field or propose new lines? In weekly meetings students can then discuss ideas with one another and counsel one another with respect to challenges posed by their research.