This award supports a research development workshop for promising doctoral students to be held in conjunction with the 2014 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2014). CSCW 2014 will take place in Baltimore, Maryland, USA on February 15-19, 2014 and will be attended by approximately 500 CSCW professionals from around the world. Research reports published in the CSCW Conference Proceedings are heavily refereed and widely cited.
The Doctoral Colloquium (DC) is a research-focused meeting of 12 selected Ph.D. candidates and a panel of 4-6 research mentors. Prior colloquia have helped launch the careers of many outstanding CSCW researchers. The colloquium seeks to (a) build a cohort group of new researchers who will then have a network of colleagues spread out across the world, (b) guide the work of the new researchers by having the experts in the research field give advice, (c) encourage and support the selection of CSCW research topics, (d) enable new entrants to the field to attend a key research conference, (e) illustrate the interrelationship and diversity of CSCW research, and (f) make the new entrants' experience at CSCW an intellectually stimulating and rewarding experience, encouraging them to return and submit papers, panels, demonstrations, and posters, to the conference. Key efforts of the organizers will encourage participation from diverse fields and underrepresented populations and universities.
The primary intellectual contributions of this project lie in close intellectual mentoring of the selected Ph.D. participants and the development of a cohort of future leaders within the CSCW community. Furthermore, bringing together these students with the faculty panel, both during the workshop and during the conference poster presentations, will support the development of interdisciplinary dialogs, creating an environment for exchange and conversation that will further enable progress on every project represented at the DC. The specific projects of students selected for the DC will generate additional intellectual contributions.
The consortium will have considerable benefits to society and the CSCW community, both short and long-term. In the short term, the panelists will provide significant feedback to the students participating in the DC. In the long-term, the expectation is that students who have participated in the DC will give back to the community by engaging as mentors to undergraduate students, and in the future to doctoral students. Furthermore, these exceptional students are anticipated to be among the future leaders of the CSCW community, and it is durable long-term benefit to that community to support them in their early research. These values of continuity and knowledge community will be explicitly expressed at the consortium.
The goal of this project was to bring together doctoral students at U.S. institutions to attend a research workshop that was held in conjunction with the 2014 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2014), the premier venue for presenting research in the design and use of technologies that affect groups, organizations, communities and networks. The workshop brought together promising doctoral students and distinguished researchers in CSCW topic areas from both academia and industry, with the goal of advancing students’ careers. During the workshop, participants briefly presented their work and then received feedback from six senior researchers and the other fourteen student participants. Senior mentors also hosted panels on developing a research program, dealing with rejected research, preparing for the job market, working in an interdisciplinary field, and approaches to seeking funding and post-doctoral opportunities. In addition, there were several scheduled coffee breaks and a group luncheon that provided opportunities for the students and mentors to interact and establish mentoring bonds. After the workshop, the doctoral students had the opportunity to continue to present their work to all of the conference attendees during poster and lunch sessions. In addition, the abstracts of all student presentations were made available to conference attendees. Each mentor also served as a point of contact for the students throughout the remainder of the conference. These activities further helped students to create a new professional network with researchers in the CSCW community, and make their thesis work more broadly recognized in the broader research and practice communities.
