Scholars Day Celebration

Each spring, Monmouth College celebrates the academic achievements of the students. The campus community comes together to celebrate, along aside the Founder’s Day activities, these student scholars. This celebration is known as the "Scholars Day Celebration".

"A great majority of Monmouth College students engage in academic scholarship above and beyond standard academic expectations put before them in the classroom. It is too often the case that this scholarship stays confined to the boundaries of the classroom or academic building. It is time to free these activities and to come together as a campus to share the excitement that happens each day at Monmouth College." (March 31, 2011 announcement of the 1st Annual Scholars Day Celebration)

Scholarship is broadly defined as an inquiry or investigation conducted by a student that makes an original intellectual or creative contribution to the discipline (as defined by the Council on Undergraduate Research). This scholarship can be a result of student-faculty collaboration, an independent study, or project that highlights exemplary works done as a part of coursework. Presentations can take the form of a poster, an exhibit, a reading, a theatrical or musical performance, or a summary of a larger performance. All presentations will have a faculty or staff sponsor who is ultimately responsible for insuring the intellectual merit. All students are welcome to present; all students, faculty and staff are encouraged to attend.

Processes Document

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History

In October of 2008, Ken Cramer, Marsha Dopheide, Logan Mayfield, and Brad Sturgeon where asked by Dean Jakoubek to represent Monmouth College at the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) Workshop entitled, Institutionalizing Undergraduate Research. This 3-day meeting was held on the campus of Truman State University; the application submitted by these faculty can be found here. Once accepted to attend the meeting, a [Media:Self-study FINAL Monmouth.doc|"self-study"]] was completed by the attending faculty.

As an outcome of the meeting, these faculty members developed a plan, based off of a draft plan. Included in this plan was a "mission statement" and a working definition of "scholarship":

Mission: – To create a culture of active and engaged students through student-faculty collaborative scholarship. To encourage original, creative and scholarly student work that models disciplinary ways of knowing.

Working definition of “scholarship” – This is something we’ll want to define together, but for purposes of a starting point, we found CUR’s definition to be very helpful in bringing together disparate disciplines (sciences, arts, and humanities): “Inquiry or investigation conducted by an undergraduate in collaboration with a faculty mentor that makes an original intellectual or creative contribution to the discipline.” Thus, it could include student directed plays, original music scores, literature criticism, scientific research, entrepreneurial business ventures, etc.

The "short-term" (1-2 yrs) goals for the meeting were as follows:

1. Increase the visibility and professionalism of the annual science poster conference, and expand participation beyond the sciences. Note: At this time there was an annual science event with ~20-30 posters from biology, chemistry, and physics (and maybe psychology?)

2. Increase student exposure to discipline-specific scholarship in first-year courses. Possibilities include incorporating more open-inquiry laboratories, journal clubs, etc.

3. Increase awareness and recognition of scholarship currently conducted on campus. Media possibilities include the dean’s newsletter, Pipeline, web stories, and development of a central web page with list of scholarship and links to department sites.

4. As a bridge to a broader summer research program, extend the semester by two weeks (early) for students working on research (fall and spring semesters).

5. Ask each discipline to define “scholarship and creative activity” in their own terms and how MC students could engage in this in their majors and departments.

6. Ask the Dean for support to send faculty who have proposal ideas to the grant-writing institutes held by CUR.

7. Apply for funds from the Trustees’ quasi-endowment $$ for academic initiatives to support 6-8 students and 2-3 faculty for a pilot summer research/scholarship program.

The Medium- to long-term (2-10 years) goals were as follows:

1. Increase monies for student travel to conferences, regional and national. Perhaps depts. should have a budget for student travel – Admissions could advertise this type of engagement.

2. Develop an annual full day undergraduate scholarship (classes canceled) with presentations on campus to celebrate student scholarship (a prototype may be forthcoming for DarwinPalooza).

3. Develop a journal of undergraduate scholarship.

4. Expand participation in undergraduate scholarship to Honors, Integrated Studies, and Off-campus programs.

5. Value student-faculty engagement in scholarship by increasing reassignment of faculty workload for research courses or experiences.

6. Value student-faculty engagement in scholarship by increasing reassignment of faculty workload for grant-writing.

7. Use seed money to compensate faculty for grant-writing; recoup investment through successful grants.

8. Develop interdisciplinary teams of students/faculty solving interdisciplinary problems (e.g., science and business).

Scholars Day Celebration is an outcome of this CUR meeting.

Documents referenced in paragraph above:

The application sent to CUR, Sept 11, 2008

A draft of the "plan" developed during the meeting

The final "plan" resulting from the meeting

A self-study prior to attending the CUR meeting