Parkway Research Seminar
Contents
What is It?
HON 3530 Parkway Research is a team-based, interdisciplinary, community-based research (CBR) project, in collaboration with the Blue Ridge Parkway. It is designed for students who are not starting their senior thesis yet, but who have had some exposure to the research tools of their discipline--that's why it's targeted at juniors, although "advanced" sophomores and certainly any seniors are welcome. Supported by a 3-year grant from the Corporation for National & Community Service, this seminar class will introduce students to CBR and engage them in work on a piece of a large, multi-year and multi-disciplinary research problem.What will I Do?
2009-10 will be the third year of the program, so we've got things well established now. Students will discuss readings about what good CBR looks like, how it is different from traditional academic research, the problems facing national parks, and their research needs. Early in the semester, we will meet with the Blue Ridge Parkway (BRP) staff to identify the research question that we will try to answer with them.For most of this year-long course (2 credits in the fall, and 1 in the spring), students will work collaboratively with each other and the BRP staff to study the selected question from a multidisciplinary perspective. This means that students will be responsible for "representing" their discipline: finding/summarizing/sharing previous research related to the problem from their own field, integrating those findings with research that students from other disciplines add, and using those perspectives to solve the problem. Students will also conduct research into the overall problem using the tools and methods of their particular discipline. This research will involve multiple "site visits" to the Parkway, which will be supported by grant funding.
During the first year of this program (2007-08), students worked on the basic question of trail use conflicts. In particular, we looked at problems on Rough Ridge (where people leave the trail and trample on sensitive plants) and Bass Lake (where high usages and pets create several problems). Through trail observations and interviews with rangers all over the nation, we came up with some proposed interventions to address these problems. Students in 2008-09 looked at over-crowding and illegal camping issues at Hebron Falls, and conducted focus group interviews with students and community members to discover how best to improve and preserve this unique, popular spot.
The "end product" for this course will be a report that the class prepares for the Parkway's use. It's likely that one year won't be long enough to solve the problem, or completely study it. In that case, next year's seminar group will pick up where we left off, and add to our understanding of the problem and its possible solution.
What are the Requirements?
Students in the Parkway Research Seminar will:- Participate in a fall retreat on the Parkway
- Meet twice per year with the Parkway staff in Asheville
- Collect discipline-specific research to share with the class and Parkway staff
- Engage in discipline-specific research at sites on the BRP several times during the year
- Contribute to a BRP Research Wiki
- Collaborate on a class-wide research report
- Discuss readings on CBR, national parks, and more
