| As
the Program in Writing and Rhetoric continues to grow and push
itself towards excellence and innovation in the classroom, so
too are students rising to the challenge of writing and research
at Stanford. To celebrate this growing trend of exciting student
work, PWR and Wendy Goldberg of the Stanford Writing Center initiated
the first ever Innovative Research Award (IRA) this past November.
The IRAs are designed to recognize PWR 1 students engaging in
ambitious, original research that takes groundbreaking and creative
risks in entering into new fields of academic inquiry. While the
prestigious Boothe Prizes honor the final written product of the
PWR research-based argument, the IRAs were created to highlight
the innovative research that goes on while the student is still
exploring his or her topic.
The IRAs were
spearheaded mainly by the work of Wendy Goldberg who explains
that the IRAs “grew out of a shared feeling on the part
of the Writing Center staff, PWR Lecturers, and administration
as a desirable vehicle for celebrating an expanded range of the
strong and effective research essays produced in PWR 1 each term.”
Unlike the Boothe Prize essays, which are awarded and published
each year with an accompanying cash prize, the IRAs are so far
mainly a celebration of creativity before the writing process
is finalized. The Stanford Daily recognized this in
an article written in November 2006. In it, Goldberg is again
quoted as saying, “Both the Boothe Prize and the IRA recognize
thoughtful, effective writing,” but the IRA highlights “writing
that gives clear evidence of originality with respect to subject,
research methods, and style.”
The
Daily article also points out another attraction
of the new awards: the formal presentation given to an audience
of freshmen and sophomores taking PWR courses. Goldberg acknowledges
that the presentation of awards given at Branner Hall this autumn
were an effective extention of the PWR Research Forums, which
provide quarterly examples of exciting research and writing for
interested students, instructors, and members of the Stanford
community. Andrea Fuller, author of “First in a New Class:
First-Generation College Students and Their Assimilation into
College Culture,” and student in Nancy Buffington’s
spring 2006 PWR 1 class is one such example of a student offering
model work for future students to follow.
Fuller’s
essay represents the kind of personal innovation that the IRAs
look to celebrate as students begin researching topics that haven’t
yet been fully explored in academic inquiry. Lecturer Nancy Buffington
agrees, as she commented on Fuller’s essay by saying, “while
there is very little research in this specific area, Andrea made
brilliant use of materials collected in the Psych lab she works
in, realizing that the lab’s definition of ‘working
class students,’ the ostensible subjects of the study, intersects
with that of ‘first-generation college student.’”
Indeed, Fuller’s essay is indicative of the type of personal
interest-based research that more and more Stanford students are
pursuing as the student body continues to grow and diversify.
Buffington likewise acknowledged how this preliminary research
may lead to the rest of Fuller’s academic career when she
said, “this is perhaps the best indicator of the value of
her research—it has helped her define a major mission for
her work, and has a clear application to the ‘real world.’”
(continued...)
-
1 - 2 -
|
