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K-State Today

October 8, 2014

Yale University professor to present research lecture today

Submitted by Anita Cortez

During Research Awareness Week, Karen Burg, vice president for research, emphasized that undergraduate students benefit from engagement in research. An initial "taste" may motivate students to pursue undergraduate research as part of their studies.

Elijah Anderson, professor of sociology and as director of the Urban Ethnography Project at Yale University, will present a lecture about participant-observation methods of research from 9:30-10:20 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 8, in the K-State Student Union's Forum Hall. 

Anderson, one of the world's leading exponents of the method, is the author of several award-winning books based on years of fieldwork in the city of Philadelphia, including "The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life," published in 2011, which many students in Introduction to Sociology have read as part of their studies.

Students are using participant-observation methods of research to learn about sociology by doing sociology via weekly fieldwork experiences guided by graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants.

Perhaps some of the students who hear Anderson in his public lecture will decide that social science research, or another sort, is for them. Indeed, many K-State undergraduates can and do make valuable contributions to research universitywide.

Anderson's visit is sponsored in part by the Office of Undergraduate Research & Creative Inquiry. For more information about the office, contact Anita Cortez at cortez@k-state.edu or visit the website.