This proposal requests support for a research colloquium of doctoral students and research faculty to be held in conjunction with the 2011 iConference hosted by the University of Washington. The iConference is the annual meeting of the iSchools Project, a consortium of 27 schools, at this time, with programs that focus on the relationships among information, technology, and people. The iSchools are interdisciplinary, including the fields of information science, library science, computer science, education, history, philosophy, sociology, and management. iSchools are global in their reach. The iConference brings together faculty, students, research staff, and industry researchers who share an interest in supporting and augmenting human engagement with information and technology. This will be the sixth iConference. The goals of the 2011 colloquium include helping to advance and enrich the dialog between students and faculty in the iSchools and exploring career opportunities available in the academic research community and other public and private sector areas.
iConference Doctoral Colloquia The iConferences have been successful in building a sense of community around the information field, bringing together people who might not otherwise engage with one another, and helping people share and exchange their views associated with interdisciplinary research. Doctoral Research Colloquia and well-attended Doctoral Student Poster Sessions have been hosted at every conference. These doctoral colloquia recruited students at the pre-proposal stage of their degrees. Post colloquia surveys reveal that almost all student participants subsequently make rapid progress to the next stage of their program (completed comprehensive exams, defended proposals and dissertations), and that colloquium attendance is credited for helping them by improving their focus, boosting their confidence, forcing them to explain their ideas, and hearing different perspectives on their research from people outside their committee. Goals of the 2011 Doctoral Colloquium (from the proposal) The study of information is inherently interdisciplinary, fed by multiple, diverse fields. Librarianship and computer science have historically been the primary feeders of this field, but information studies is also fed by fields such as education, psychology, anthropology, business, economics, journalism and media studies. Increasingly the humanities are also informing our analyses, especially history, sociology and philosophy. The study of information focuses on the intersection of information, technology, and people, which requires a broad interdisciplinary approach to those phenomena, the relationship between them, and their relationships to other aspects of culture and human activities. The ubiquity of information in human endeavor requires that the field of information aim to have an impact on all fields of science, scholarship and society. We recruited students to the iConference doctoral colloquium who were in the advanced stages of their studies, who had completed a proposal defense and were working towards a dissertation defense and securing employment. The goals of the 2011 Doctoral Colloquium were therefore to: Build a cohort of new researchers who will have a network of colleagues spread out across the world. Illustrate the interrelationship and diversity of the information field. Help new researchers address the challenges and opportunities of interdisciplinarity, and what it implies for undertaking research, collaborating, publishing, explaining one’s work to diverse audiences, and situating oneself within organizations and departments. Guide the work of the new researchers by having the experts in the research field give advice. Make it possible for promising new entrants in the field to attend the Conference. Make the new entrants’ experience at the Conference an enjoyable and rewarding one, encouraging them to return and submit papers, panels, posters, etc. to future conferences. Help inform faculty about the concerns of doctoral students by creating a supportive environment for discussion. Explore the complexities of the job market. It is important that new researchers learn how to market themselves and explain the skills and approaches that they bring. Our graduates also gain positions in academia, in corporate research laboratories and in professional information management positions. Understanding the complexity and diversity of the hiring market and how to navigate it is a critical skill. Help students figure out their places in the profession. The iConference is notable for its collaborative and information-sharing nature. It is a place to present, to share ideas and to start up conversations that can lead to grant proposals and joint teaching and research initiatives. The doctoral colloquium guides students from a junior position to a peer who participates in this collaborative activity. What happened: Reflections on the 2011 Doctoral Colloquium The three most important parts of the doctoral colloquium were the student presentations of their research, the one-on-two time with mentors and mentees, and the job search/career questioning rotating sessions. In order to manage research sharing with so many participants and also allow for individual and job talk time, we divided the group into two sections and gave them each ten minutes of presentation with five minutes of questioning. We arranged to have the research presentations videoed, so students could see all of them (via youtube.com) after the conference, including the ones they weren’t present for. The presentations were an essential practice for students to share their research to a varied group. We purposefully chose a variety of mentors, trying to match mentors and mentees as closely as possible. Student participants had a variety of research interests, and although perfect matches were extremely difficult, they were happy with their assignments. The students indicated that they were unclear about job searches and careers, so this time proved quite useful to many. This year we held the colloquium on the last day of the conference. We also distributed the printed program by handing it out at the colloquium and posting it on the conference website throughout the conference. These changes were to facilitate students becoming acquainted with each other and faculty getting acquainted with students.
