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Fostering Undergraduate Research and Writing
Micael J. Galgano Research and writing are fundamental to any undergraduate history curriculum. We each expect our majors to be able to locate sources, distinguish between them, analyze their content, organize evidence, and write their results in a clear and coherent fashion. Some institutions may rely upon a special course to introduce these skills to their majors; others may integrate them throughout the curriculum. Collectively, we are committed to improving our students' research abilities and challenging them to write both more regularly and at a higher level. The essays included address different dimensions of research and writing. Some advocate particular perspectives or strategies. All emphasize the importance of engaging undergraduates in sustained activities as the best way to teach the discipline. The suggestions for classroom, archival, conference and publication opportunities may be applied to almost any academic setting. In the first, Professor Dale Lothrop Clifford discusses the University of North Florida's course in historical methods. Instead of term papers, her institution has opted for several brief, analytical essays each focused on developing an individual skill and each con- cerned principally with student writing. Criticism and evaluation are more frequent. Further, the course is designed to come early in the major and provides a foundation for upper division content courses. Like Clifford, Professor Henry Steffens of the University of Vermont, directs primary attention to the craft of writing. His experience in using peer reviewers to help define research topics and to evaluate written work through various drafts merits close reading. The process approach which he advocates guides the student's work through the semester. It is enlightening that neither of the first authors emphasize traditional, systematic literature searches, either among printed bibliographies or on-line. Professor Steffens builds a fuller case for this perspective in Writer's Guide: History (1987), which he authored with Mary Jane Dickerson. The remaining three contributions detail a specialized archival re- search program, ways in which a regional historical symposium has promoted research, and an effort to establish a regional journal to publish undergraduate scholarship. Professor Barry Machado of Washington and Lee University has served as consultant and director of research for the Marshall Undergraduate Scholarship Program for the past sixteen years. This unique program offers the resources of the George C. Marshall Library to encourage independent scholarship by undergraduates from area colleges. Professor Sheldon Hanft, Appalachian State University, describes efforts by the Carolinas Symposium on British Studies to involve undergraduate researchers in its activities. Of special note is an undergraduate paper competition. The annual prize winner is invited to present a paper in a special student session at the conference. Finally, my colleague, Professor Raymond Hyser, James Madison University, comments on an attempt to establish an undergraduate research journal. Each essay contains valuable insights and suggestions which could easily be replicated. If you or your faculty have ideas or programs you wish to share on the subject, please direct them to me or the OAH for inclusion in a future number. Introducing Students to the Craft of the Historian Dale Lothrop Clifford After more than a decade of decline, the number of history majors is once again increasing. Shall we then breathe a sigh of relief, stop worrying so much about the need to create popular elective courses for non-majors, and otherwise go on as before? I think not. As historians, we know that undergraduate majors are the future of our discipline; yet we often fail to engage them in the process of examining the nature and role of history. We expect them to write substantial research papers, but for the most part let instructors in second-semester English Composition teach them how to do it (and then bemoan the results). The required-for-majors core course can be an important way to address the problem. Students choose a history major despite the awful questions ``but what can you do with history? How will you get a job?'' They know they like history, but are ill-equipped to deal with questions about its value because their college coursework disabuses them of the pat answers left from earlier schooling without providing new answers. There are no uniquely ``right'' answers to historical questions, we tell them, although there are wrong ones. History does not enable us to predict the future, and historical analogies are as dangerous as they are seductive. The study of history does not necessarily produce open-mindedness, for history has often been used to feed xenophobic nationalism and other assorted fanaticisms. Aside from such healthy warnings, the content course deals with specific time- and place-bound questions as it should. But where are students to wrestle with the broader questions which underlie the evidential and interpretive questions of the content course? Unfortunately, required core courses have been virtually untouched by the rush to make history as relevant and exciting to students as their professors find it unless there is no required core course at all, implicitly telling majors that there is nothing fundamental to the discipline as a whole. Certainly there are good reasons for eliminating the traditional historiography course, undergraduate or graduate. With a syllabus that goes from Herodotus to the Annales school, psychohistory, and even deconstruction, historiography often remains one of the few courses in which memorization of names and dates still suffices. Lessons on critical philosophy of history rehearse once-exciting epistemological battles with students as observers rather than participants. As for the study of the philosophical framework that underlies critical questions, historians join in tacit agreement that while we cannot avoid theory, the practicing historian can afford to ignore speculative philosophy. And we do. Barzun and Graff's classic The Modern Researcher, now in its fourth edition, treats speculative philosophy in ten (of a total 426) pages, two of which contain a table of ``Famous Philosophies of History'' that begs to be either ignored or memorized. But if we jettison the traditional core course, why not replace it? The University of North Florida was founded eighteen years ago, at a time when the major core course was rapidly (and probably deservedly) losing popularity. We chose to go against the prevailing trend and require a course we called The Craft of the Historian. The course has undergone many changes since that time, but its fundamental principles remain the same:
The Craft of the Historian is designed to be an introductory course, taken as soon as possible in a student's career as a history major. Its curricular function is to turn out students who know how to research and write, and whose critical skills have improved through rigorous practice. It does that. But the course also has a hidden agenda, considerably less obvious to colleagues and students. First, it socializes students as members of the discipline: because they share the experience of laboring over five papers, they become a cohort of colleagues who understand that knowledge is not a zero-sum game, and who regularly exchange critical advice long after they leave the course. And second, the course induces them to reflect about the philosophies that underlie the way historians do history. The course syllabus is deceptively simple at first view. There are only two required books, Davidson and Lytle's After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection (2nd ed.; Knopf, 1986) and Furay and Salevouris' Methods and Skills of History (Davidson, 1988). Although weekly quizzes and in-class writing count for one-sixth of the final grade, there are no exams. Instead, students practice ``doing history'' by writing five papers over the course of the term. Both class assignments and papers are designed as a learning process that steadily increases in level of sophistication. The interest generated by class readings and discussion becomes critical somewhere just before the midpoint of the semester, because the writing workload of the course never ends. As soon as students turn in one paper, they must begin the next. The burden is intentional. I require five brief papers (limited to four to five pages) rather than a single long research paper for important pedagogical reasons. The first is that if students are to learn to write well, they need to write often and to get thorough and frequent critical response to their work. Grading drafts of a long paper does not work as well because we tend to focus on research and content to the exclusion of the writing process in early drafts. Students do learn to rewrite after criticism in the course, because they are permitted to rewrite one of the five papers and substitute the new for the previous grade at the end of the term. The second reason for requiring five short papers is that if students are to learn how to research and write history, their work must be graded carefully for both elements. I am a modern Europeanist; I cannot grade a significant research paper on American history with as much knowledge as I can a paper in my field. But I can deal with all the material required for these five papers in a way that never separates research from writing, form from content. The third reason is breadth of experience. Students most often enter history because they enjoy narrative history. They are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with other ways of approaching the past. Somewhere in the major, they should experience the variety of ways of telling a true story about the past. The first assignment leads them to do at least some social history; the second usually produces a traditional narrative; the third forces them to make sense of quantitative data; the fourth engages them in critical analysis; and the fifth allows them to develop a logical argument in essay form, either philosophical or practical. The course begins with a four-week segment of questions, evidence, and the basics of writing good history. I use Furay and Salevouris together with ``Clifford's Advice on Doing History,'' a fifteen-page guide to writing the footnote/endnote style in history that I developed. Students practice these skills by working on their first paper, which is an exercise in interpreting oral evidence. They are assigned to interview someone over the age of 65 and analyze his or her experience of a major event: originally, I used the Depression; now the subject is World War II; soon I'll have to find a new focus. Students learn about oral history methods. When they discover that most interviewees did not even serve in the military during World War II, much less participate in well-known battles, they begin to reconsider the place of ``events'' in history, and to question the role of the individual. When they move from a ``small'' person to interpreting some aspect of the life of a historical figure for the second paper, students already have some basis for dealing with the individual in context. I encourage them to choose a subject about whom they already know something, preferably a person who figures in another course they are taking, so they can make the most of the research results. Class sessions begin with a discussion of biography as one of the oldest and most enduringly popular forms of history. We explore theoretical approaches from the ``Great Man'' to psychobiography. At this point the syllabus of class assignments begins to look more like a traditional historiography course. Using Davidson and Lytle we explore the variety of ways in which historians approach and analyze their material, both past and present. After the Fact uses American history as its vehicle, but the syllabus also includes sessions on other times and places. [Anyone who writes a European or World history analogue to that book will find a buyer in me.] I also invite members of the department to discuss their specialties with the class. They provide a very brief historiography, and use their own teaching and research fields as a way to explain the methods and problems of the kind of history they do. Students enjoy ``archive stories'' and often discover an interest in a new field as a result of these sessions. Students need that continuing interest in class sessions, because the third paper is generally the most feared. Students are assigned a state (Florida excepted because it is ``home''), and must use the two most recent census reports as a basis for analyzing and explaining the significance of some aspect of change over time. This is not an exercise in creating quantitative evidence, which would be too complex for the scope of the course. But at the very least, history majors should learn to ``read'' numerical evidence in the same careful way they read other evidence. Even with stiffer general education requirements in mathematics and statistics, relatively few students are comfortable explaining the meaning of numbers and integrating quantitative with `` literary'' evidence. This paper forces them to do exactly that. Because they have to abstract from the welter of data contained in the census, they learn something of how quantitative evidence is created when they create their own tables. Most also discover on their own the importance of the ``longue dur‚e,'' and trace their evidence several census reports further in one case, to 1850. After that experience, students think the fourth paper will be considerably easier. Because almost every other history course they take will require a critical review, this paper assigns students to do a critical review of an article that has appeared in the American Historical Review during the past ten years. The breadth of subject matter in the AHR permits them to choose an article that interests them, frequently something that will help in another course. Limiting their choice to the last ten years of a single journal means I can read each article they critique, and thus can assess their analysis of the thesis and argument presented. Purely as a side effect, the assignment also keeps me in touch with the newest trends, material I can use in subsequent offerings of the course. By the time they finish their critical reviews, students have already encountered much of what would be covered in a standard historiography course, though in a very different form. Their struggles with issues of evidence and interpretation have already led them to begin arguing some of the questions of philosophy of history, without being scared off by terms like epistemology, ontology, or dialectical materialism. I can therefore finish off the semester with a two-week introduction to speculative philosophy with some confidence that the questions are ones they care about. Who or what makes history happen? Are there forces beyond or inaccessible to the individual actor, and how seriously should we take them? Does history prove anything? Is it moving anywhere? What does history mean? The final paper builds on this examination of the nature of history. Students are asked to write an essay about the ``state of history'' and to locate themselves within it. A few choose to write their own speculative philosophies of history. Most use their new critical abilities and insights to discuss in a more practical form what they think history is and why they like the kinds of history they do. Some have even produced well-reasoned and passionate outlines for revamping the entire K-12 history curriculum. As this brief discussion might indicate, The Craft of the Historian is not an easy course to teach. In many ways, I'd rather be doing the French Revolution. But the course has its rewards. I find that dabbling in the newest ideas and methods in all areas of the discipline provides a healthy stimulus for my own research and writing. I am also far more likely to witness dramatic student improvement in this course than in any other. And then there's delayed gratification. At the beginning of this term a graduating senior walked into my office and said rather nervously that she couldn't stay long; she had a class. Then ``You know I hated your class.'' ``Yes,'' I said. ``Well I just wanted to say thanks.'' She left and I went back to grading papers. Undergraduate Seminar Research Papers: A Process that Works Henry J. Steffens Undergraduate seminar research papers are usually the most impor- tant pieces of writing that our history students complete for us. These research papers are important as exercises in research and writing, and also provide opportunities for students to weave some of their research findings into the context of the seminar discussion. Unfortunately, students have difficulty in deciding upon a topic appropriate to the seminar, and are often unable to sustain a steady research and writing pace throughout the course of the semester. All too frequently, students select topics that are remote from the concerns of the seminar, or that show a very limited awareness of the many possibilities offered by the seminar. I have implemented a process in my history seminar that helps to alleviate many problems usually associated with student research papers. This process has worked well for my students and could be easily adapted to other settings. During the first meeting of my cultural history seminar, Europe: 1990, seminar participants were given a copy of the detailed instructions which follow: Seminar Research Paper You should choose a research topic of special interest to yourself. The only restraints are: (1) the topic must relate to European culture during the 1880-1914 time period; and (2) your specific topic must be placed within the broader context of European cultural history. Your research must be based upon articles in professional journals, as well as books. You should try to use as much primary source material as possible. Research based upon "books from the library'' will not be satisfactory. (Please see me if you have any questions about this.) Your paper topic should be broadly presented, to include comparisons, contrasts, evaluations, and conclusions. You will need to include sections on "implications'', "influences'' and "impacts'', in addition to just descriptive narrative. You should think broadly about your topic, and place it within the context of European culture, 1880-1914. The Process of Writing Your Research Paper We will work out a process for developing your paper through pre-writing activities, peer collaboration, and the revision of drafts. You will receive and give constructive criticism through a peer process that we will develop during the first few weeks of the seminar. The steps in the process will be:
The student research paper becomes an important part of the seminar along with the process of topic selection and writing at regular intervals during the semester. The collaborative work in class to find and focus on a topic required about one half of the second and third meetings of the seminar. We discussed topics from rather brief reading assignments during the other half of these sessions. As a result, students had started on their research by the third meeting of the seminar. We also started our seminar discussion at the same time. The fourth, fifth and sixth meetings had substantial reading assignments and our usual seminar class. Students collaborated at the beginning of these regular sessions to decide upon topics for discussion for that day. They quickly became accustomed to working in small groups, reinforcing the collaborative work on their research papers during the course of the semester. I asked the students to write a brief, anonymous response to the early stages of the topic selection process for their research papers. Here are some student comments: "I approve of the subtle coercion used to get us involved in the material and to choose a topic. The idea of focusing initially on the books for the class made a lot of sense and served to limit what might have been perceived as an overwhelming and unguided search. The method allowed me to get my hands on pertinent, relevant and meaningful material early. I felt involved in the process of the course immediately.'' "It is very valuable to choose a research topic early in the seminar studies. This makes the whole study of the entire period more meaningful. As everything is related to everything anyway, the research focus weaves a central common thread for the entire study. I prefer researching a special topic in depth to general reading and study. I have been forced encouraged to choose early.'' "I believe that the methodology of finding a topic in this seminar was really helpful, motivating and focused. I think if I wasn't forced to deal with my paper so early on then I would still be floundering in the finding-a-paper-topic stage. As of right now, I think all of the people in the seminar have a pretty good indication of what they will write on. As to working with peer groups, I found it helpful and informative. I realized that other people are having the same type of obstacles and setbacks that I am having, and they have found ways to skirt these. Plus, positive feedback from peers is helpful it makes you feel good about the work you're doing and excited about what will come.'' "The process of choosing our topics was a little overwhelming at first. That's probably because I haven't had to write a serious research paper in awhile! Using the textbooks as sources of potential topics was helpful. While there are many to choose from, it did help narrow down the field considerably. I didn't feel limited, it was just easier to focus in on one idea. I think it's a good thing we've narrowed it down at this point in the semester. I still don't have an exact thesis statement, but at least I have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to do. Hopefully I won't procrastinate this time around. Actually, I don't think this is possible with research summaries due every month or so. I don't appreciate it when a professor gives the paper assignment `Write about anything' with no guidelines whatsoever. The process of topic selection takes just that much longer. Keep the books as sources for possible topics.'' After topic selection, the second phase of the process in the seminar involved encouraging the students to work steadily on their research projects. On the seventh meeting of the seminar, students were responsible for a five-page research summary. This should be the best summary of their research that they are capable of at that point. Photocopies were provided for each member of the seminar. The author read the summary aloud as we all read along silently. The authors often found the experience of reading aloud very revealing. After each reading we asked questions for clarification and made helpful comments and suggestions. The authors were required to take notes, so that our suggestions for focus and revision could be remembered and used later. The whole session was devoted to this kind of exchange. As a result, we all knew what everyone else was working on. There was a sense of shared enterprise and interest. The twelfth weekly meeting was devoted to the first full draft of the research paper. Students worked in groups of three of four, reading each other's drafts carefully and offering detailed comments and suggestions for revision. This was an intensive session, with students reading carefully while giving and receiving specific advice. Another advantage, of course, was that by the twelfth week every student had written a full first draft. The completed papers were due the thirteenth week. We did not spend class time this week, but each student exchanged a paper with another student, in addition to handing a copy of the completed paper to me. The assignment for the fourteenth and last weekly meeting was to prepare a five-minute presentation on the most interesting and important aspects of their peer's research paper. The last seminar meeting was devoted to five-minute presentations by students of one another's papers. The author was also given time to comment upon or add to the presentation. This was a very positive way to end the seminar. It helped to validate the importance of the research projects. Students were usually pleased with the five-minute summaries by their peers. They all tried very hard to find the best and most interesting parts of their classmate's papers. Knowing that their papers would be read and presented by a peer provided an added incentive to the student writers to do their best work. The seminar became a mixture of discussion for the weekly topics and assigned readings, and of the results of student research. Of the fourteen weekly meetings of the seminar, nine were devoted entirely to ``regular seminar sessions'' and in two more, half the time was devoted to seminar discussion. However, three whole seminar sessions were devoted to the results of student research. I found that a mix of interests enhanced the seminar. Perhaps most importantly, this public devotion to the results of student research encouraged students to do their very best research and writing. After all of the collaborative help in focusing and revising, my final evaluation of the papers was easy. Students wrote not just for me, but for the broader audience of their peers. They selected their own topics and they justified the importance of their selection several times. They also ``went public'' on two occasions, before they completed their final version. As a result of this process, most of my students did very well, and my excellent students truly excelled. Endnotes
The Marshall Undergraduate Scholarship Program: A Retrospective Barry F. Machado The Marshall Undergraduate Scholarship Program is now in its sixteenth year. Since the program's inception I have served as its consultant and director of research. The program began ambitiously when the George C. Marshall Foundation's director and trustees, whose chairman was then Robert A. Lovett, former Under Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, decided to promote the study of General Marshall and his times by qualified undergraduate students. The Lilly Endowment of Indianapolis approved the idea and in 1975 committed itself to fund an undergraduate scholarship program. National in scope, it permitted a Lilly Scholar from each of eighteen liberal arts colleges, located from Oregon to Virginia, to undertake research in the extensive manuscript, document, poster and photograph collections of the Marshall Research Library in Lexington, Virginia. Thanks to generous grants defraying the costs of travel, room, and board, and providing small weekly allowances as well, Lilly Scholars took up residence in Lexington on Clio's active service for at least four weeks, and sometimes longer. The professional staff of the Marshall Library agreed to function as an extension of the home institution, affording the principal guidance for selecting topics, compiling preliminary bibliographies, identifying pertinent collections, locating promising documents, and suggesting ways to organize the resulting essays. It was also decided that the nominating professor at the sponsoring college the on-campus contact for the program would be the final arbiter of the quality of the research paper and the awarder of the appropriate academic credit. During the program's first year of existence eighteen colleges sent students to Lexington. The subjects they selected for study ranged from ``Marshall's China Mission'' to ``West Germany and the Marshall Plan.'' Their final papers were generally superb. Unfortunately, 1976 was also the last year the Lilly Endowment funded the unique experiment. Because the experience proved so valuable and such a striking success, however, the Director of the Marshall Library and thirty-year veteran of the State Department and its foreign service, Fred Hadsel, recommended to his trustees that the scholarship program be kept alive but in a more modest version. The following year what had been a national program became a decidedly regional one, and has remained so ever since. Presently, twelve four-year colleges in western Virginia and one in West Virginia, all within two hours driving time of Lexington, are involved in the reorganized program. Over the years the number of participating schools has fluctuated somewhat and not all schools have nominated students every year, so that the ``Marshall Scholars'' number between ten and thirteen annually. While the Director, the Board of Trustees, and members of the staff have changed since the successor program was launched, the central purpose of the Marshall Undergraduate Scholarship Program has continued unchanged: to provide an opportunity for serious-minded, highly motivated undergraduates, especially those bound for graduate school in history, law school and the foreign service, to undertake archival research. Under the watchful eye of a professional staff supervised by Royster Lyle, former Curator of Collections and Program Coordinator since 1979 when he replaced Barbara Vandegrift, Marshall Scholars may select any topic in twentieth-century diplomatic and military history and political affairs for which the Library's holdings are suitable. Besides 255 manuscript boxes of General Marshall's own papers, its major resources include the personal papers of: some of his close friends and associates (Frank McCarthy and Marshall Carter, for example); career Army officers (Thomas T. Handy, Paul Robinett, Lucian K. Truscott, James Van Fleet); foreign service officers (W. Walton Butterworth, C. Tyler Wood, James W. Riddleberger); foreign missionaries (Frank W. Price); and intelligence officers (William F. Friedman, A. Fairfield Dana, Francis P. Miller). Also available to researchers are over a million copied documents from official files of the Departments of War, State and Defense deposited in the National Archives, hundreds of reels of microfilmed editions of valuable research collections (e.g., the Henry L. Stimson Diaries), rare unpublished diaries of American soldiers who fought in both world wars, 8,000 catalogued photographs, hundreds of posters and maps from World War I and II, as well as transcribed interviews and oral histories. In addition, the library has a specialized collection of 24,000 books and periodicals. Marshall Scholars are selected in November by their home institutions and attend an orientation session at the Library in early December. Depending on their particular academic calendar, they undertake their research and writing between January and June. Student research schedules have assumed a variety of shapes. In the case of colleges with a short semester, their Marshall Scholars may spend anywhere from two to four weeks in residence, researching virtually every day that the facility is open. For them temporary accommodations have been arranged on a daily or weekly basis. More often, though, Scholars commute to the Library either during their vacation periods or else weekly to put in a long and grueling day sifting through letters and documents. But as the Library staff can attest, the work schedules of some defy any recognizable pattern. The work of the Marshall Scholars has ordinarily been part of an independent study, a regular course, or an honors thesis, the grade for which, in keeping with arrangements adopted in the Lilly days, is determined solely by the directing professor. Originals of all completed essays, however, are filed in a special cabinet, indexed, and catalogued among the Library's permanent collections for reference by future researchers. An assumption of the Program has always been that such a slice of immortality can be a strong incentive for craftsmanship. The Scholarship recipient receives a $200 cash award for the completed paper, plus $100 for travel expenses. For those who actually reside in Lexington to conduct research, special arrangements are made to defray basic living expenses. During the last fourteen years the Gwathmey Memorial Trust of Richmond, the Exxon Educational Foundation, Dr. Sheldon H. Short of Richmond, and Mrs. Reginald Fleet of La Jolla have contributed crucial financial support for the continuation of the program. My personal responsibilities in the program have been those of the academic jack-of-all-trades: to meet with each Scholar individually at the outset to define and refine a topic that is both feasible and manageable; to suggest ways (shortcuts, really) to use the holdings with a minimum of wasted time and effort; to acquaint them with the received wisdom of the historical guild on their topic; to be available for consultation, armed with tips and leads, when problems of research or writing arise; to critique an entire draft when requested; and finally, and most importantly, to hammer away at the necessity of making primary materials the focus of the enterprise so it can be said later that they actually advanced, however modestly, historical knowledge of George C. Marshall and his times. In all of this, I have been generously helped by long-time archivist and librarian John Jacob, by Larry Bland, editor of the published papers of George C. Marshall, and by Marti Gansz, the indispensable day-to-day coordinator of the program. Despite the fact that the fullest and richest archival material covers the years that Marshall served as Army Chief of Staff, 1939-1945, the topics selected over the past fourteen years have clustered in certain popular areas: the Cold War, the Marshall Plan, the Marshall Mission to China in 1946, and Allied Occupation of Germany after World War II. While excellent work has been done in those over-tilled fields, there have been notable and rewarding exceptions, such as the papers on ``William F. Friedman and Codebreaking,'' ``The Experiences of American and British Soldiers on the Western Front in World War I,'' and ``Eisenhower and Marshall in the Presidential Campaign of 1952.'' Occasionally the novel experience of doing original research has proven so exhilarating to self-directed students that they go off to the National Archives to explore relevant special collections housed there. Such was the case with Katherine Becker of James Madison University. While researching ``American Propaganda in World War II,'' Katherine discovered that the records of the Office on War Information, Record Group 44, were open to researchers at an Archive record center in Suitland, Maryland. Her outstanding paper one leg up on a Master's Thesis rested heavily on what she found there. For sheer initiative and industry an award must go to Martha Averett of Lynchburg College. Two years ago she almost single-handedly justified the existence of the program. With a seriousness of purpose that was exemplary she tackled the topic of the contribution of the Women's Army Corps to the operation and success of the Allied war effort, as revealed in the experiences of a former WAC, Rebecca Brockenbrough, who had donated her wartime letters to the Marshall Library many years before. In the midst of her research she learned, serendipitously and unbeknownst to the Library staff, that the 84-year old Brockenbrough was still alive and living in Richmond. Miss Averett then arranged an interview lasting two-and-a-half hours, taping and transcribing the conversation and giving a copy to the Library. Next, she managed to locate another former WAC, Susanna Turner, who just happened to be one of Brockenbrough's wartime correspondents. Turner not only consented to be inter- viewed but also agreed to contribute her own private wartime letters to the Marshall Library's holdings on women in World War II. Finally, Miss Averett did a comprehensive register of all the letters in the Brockenbrough Collection, painstakingly describing their contents in what turned out to be a valuable addition to the finding aids available to researchers. Oh yes, her first-rate paper revealed that she was no mere ``trundler of a barrowful of bricks,'' as Theodore Roosevelt once described the common lot of historical researchers. The success stories in the Marshall Undergraduate Scholarship Program have been many. It has been blessed with an abundance of outstanding students (one Rhodes, several Fulbrights, and many Phi Beta Kappas among them), and clearly the Program has inspired the best students. The dedicated and the conscientious have seized the chance to hone the skills and tools of the detective and to ``do history.'' They have prepared themselves well for graduate school and law school. Indeed, not a few Marshall Scholars have later erected master's theses and doctoral dissertations on their completed papers. As originally envisioned by Fred L. Hadsel, Robert A. Lovett and others, the program has advanced historical scholarship on George C. Marshall and his times. There have been, to be sure, Marshall Scholars who squandered their unique opportunity. Laziness and dreary papers have not been unknown in the Program. A few students went into academic hibernation, never to finish their work. Others submitted a paper that gave strong evidence of selective amnesia (no recollection of the centrality of primary sources), and still others produced what the protagonist in Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim judges his own unpublished article to be: a ``funeral parade of yawn-enforcing facts'' throwing ``pseudo-light upon non-problems.'' In its first fifteen years of operation the problems of the Marshall Undergraduate Scholarship Program have rather faithfully reflected the problems attendant upon scholarship in the larger historical profession. Nurturing Student Participation on Scholarly Programs Sheldon Hanft The Carolinas Symposium on British Studies originated in 1974 when a questionnaire mailed to department chairs and teachers in the two Carolinas revealed that existing British Studies organizations in our region were perceived as uninviting to newcomers, disinterested in teaching and interdisciplinary studies, and resistant to change. The responses revealed a need for an organization which could offer a forum for multidisciplinary dialogue among students, scholars and teachers of British Studies and which could promote innovation in teaching, research and writing. From the more than three dozen people who attended the first Carolinas Symposium in October 1974, a plenary committee was created which developed an organizational structure, wrote a constitution and sought broad interdisciplinary participation from all schools in our regions, especially those with small faculties. To promote its goals and minimize expenses, the program format adopted begins mid-Saturday with two sets of four parallel sessions featuring two to four papers or panelists in each. This is followed by a student paper session, a business meeting, a reception, a banquet with an eminent speaker, and one or more optional performance sessions. Sunday's activities usually begin with an Anglican Church service of historical significance followed by two more sets of four parallel sessions, with a coffee break between them. Early symposia concluded with a luncheon speaker, but this practice has been discontinued. Over the past fifteen years, the organization has grown to involve students, teachers and scholars in states adjacent to the Carolinas and beyond, more than 400 of whom are paid members. Held at Appalachian State University for the first four years and in subsequent even-numbered years through 1990, the Symposium met in different sites, from Coastal South Carolina to East Tennessee State and James Madison University, in alternate years to facilitate the attainment of its goals. The Symposium's commitment to multi-disciplinary studies and research is reflected in its officers and membership who are students and teachers as well as artists, biographers, critics, historians, lawyers, librarians, physicians, musicians, performers, political scientists, scholars and writers. Of some gratification to many of us, a fair number or our professional members began their involvement with the Symposium as graduate or undergraduate students. From its inception, the Carolinas Symposium on British Studies sought to encourage faculty to involve their students in our conference. Student membership and involvement was a factor in selecting a low cost format for the meeting including the adoption of a $1 student membership fee which is still maintained. In the early years when the meeting stayed at Appalachian State University, arrangements were made to provide inexpensive housing (usually dorm rooms) for any student groups that wished to attend. We also sought to serve student needs with (what has proved unfortunately to be an overly ambitious project) to publish a ``Locator Bibliography of Research materials for British Studies in the Southeast.'' Although still incomplete, the project has stimulated the compilation of lists of primary materials for British Studies at many schools and our now computerized database has assisted a fair number of students and faculty in locating research materials held by faculty and at repositories in our region. While the compilation now seems too big to be published at an affordable price, the project encouraged schools to compile lists of their holdings in British Studies which have been helpful to many students. It is hard to know how many of the volunteers who helped us compile the original list used these materials in their class work and graduate seminars. Beginning in the mid-1970s we also began the compilation of a Professional Interest Register which lists scholars of British Studies in our area with their academic specialization and up to five current research interests. Compiled by Professor Eugene Rasor, Emory and Henry College, and edited by Professor James Gillespie, Notre Dame College of Ohio, the Register is now in its fourth edition. It has proved enormously useful in assisting both graduate students and faculty members in the construction of panel session proposals for the Carolinas Symposium and for other forums. It also has been very helpful to students wishing to locate others with similar research and teaching interests with whom they can discuss research projects, interpretive concepts and resource materials. Several students have used it to locate helpful scholars when their own faculty lacked a person with the expertise or research materials they required. From its inception the Symposium also endeavored to evaluate session proposals and papers without prejudice to the professional status of authors. We have, long before this practice was widely accepted, presented papers from independent scholars, graduate students and high school teachers as part of our regular program, if their project was enthusiastically accepted by our panel of academic evaluators. Students at several levels and faculty in a variety of ways expressed a desire to have the Symposium provide students with a more direct introduction to the professional activities in which they would invest their careers. In response, the Symposium developed the Student Essay Award which was implemented in the late 1970's. In its present form, the outgoing President of the Symposium chairs a committee which selects a graduate and an undergraduate essay prize winner from among those submitted to it by July 1, preceding the Symposium. Students are encouraged to take term papers, graduate essays and other research projects, polish them in a professionally accepted format and submit them to the committee for consideration. The committee, using members listed in the Professional Interest Register, evaluates these disparate submissions using a comparative rating scale, and makes its selection. The writers of the winning entries receive a prize of $100 and up to $100 to help defray travel expenses to attend the Symposium; are listed in the formal program along with the ``honorable mention'' designees; and are invited to the Symposium to read their papers at a special session. In the initial years this project usually attracted less than a dozen entries at each level and occasionally lacked an entry worthy of more than an ``honorable mention.'' As the project became more widely known, the number of submissions has increased and it is not uncommon for the committee to judge three or four dozen entries in each category. An increase in the quality of submissions resulted from expanded advertising of the project and from the activities of early winners who became avid ``ambassadors'' for the project. While most papers still come from within the region, as does our membership, the number from other areas of the country is increas- ing and nearly one third of the 115 papers received in 1989 came from outside the Southeast. The number of submissions of multi-disciplinary studies has also increased. Along with satisfying some of the original objectives of the organization the student essay competition has had several other positive effects. One obvious result has been a noticeable increase in student involvement with the Symposium. Another consequence was the development of a similar project for faculty which focuses on awarding a prize for the best paper read at the Symposium. This competition uses a similar submission and evaluation process, and also offers a monetary prize. The winning essay, if approved by the editor, is published in Albion. Faculty members who have served on the evaluation committee have told me that because of their experience on this project they have participated in multidisciplinary teaching and research activities in which they previously would not have become involved. This project, like so many others which successfully try to nurture neophytes, has brought great satisfaction to mentors and teachers whose students have benefitted from participating in it. For many of us who have worked with the Symposium from its early years, like the editor of this newsletter who served as the first chair of the Student Prize Committee, the greatest satisfaction of these endeavors is to see many of the students whom we have encouraged appear on the Symposium's program as contributing scholars, teachers and mentors. They give testimony to the vitality of our endeavors and prove, as my students would say, that ``what goes around, comes around.'' The Undergraduate Research Journal Raymond M. Hyser The idea of establishing an undergraduate research journal germinated on the long, bumpy, return bus ride from the Fourth National Conference for Undergraduate Research, held at Union College in Schenectady, New York. The conference brought together several hundred students to present their research endeavors in a scholarly format. The experience was exhilarating, particularly for someone who teaches at an undergraduate institution and who encourages students to engage in scholarly activities, with an eye for publishing their work. An undergraduate scholarly journal seemed to be a logical step to help promote student research and writing. With a similarly minded colleague in the English Department, Jean Cash, who supervises a departmental student journal, we drafted a simplistic proposal that James Madison University sponsor an undergraduate research journal. Several administrators endorsed the concept, both, because it reflected the primary mission of this university and it would help enhance the institution's academic reputation. They encouraged us to prepare a detailed proposal, so that non-university funding could be attracted and the journal could begin. Bolstered with the enthusiastic response, we labored over broad policies, the mechanical operation of the journal and an editorial board. The result reflected our naive idealism as well as our ingrained academic misunderstanding of funding. We ambitiously proposed to publish a journal that would consider submissions from baccalaureate students in all academic disciplines in the region near Virginia as well as involve undergraduates in the editorial process. The journal would publish only research essays, particularly those using primary sources. Position papers, poetry and prose fiction would not be considered. The co-editors (the two of us) would screen all submissions and eliminate those that did not meet minimum standards. Once a paper passed this initial review, a two-member team from the editorial board, representing as closely as possible the paper's academic discipline, would evaluate the paper and determine if it merited publication. These editorial teams would consist of a professor and an undergraduate student, selected by the professor. They would evaluate the paper separately to provide students an opportunity to participate as independent scholarly referees. In the event the editorial team reached contrasting conclusions, they would discuss their differences and submit a second, joint evaluation. The journal plans to publish about ten papers in each annual edition. Students will also take an active role in the mechanics of layout, design and typing. The co-editors will supervise several student interns who would physically prepare the journal for the printer. These students would be chosen from all majors, with credit offered as compensation. Those individuals interested or experienced in magazine editing and layout would be the preferred interns. As we discussed and refined the journal proposal, we realized potential problem areas, especially, that the ``great idea'', as one colleague called the journal, was not enough. And we learned that many of these problems and issues were closely interrelated. Space permits only a cursory mention of several. The journal's discipline coverage remains a dilemma. Since a comprehensive university will help sponsor the journal, we seem compelled to accept submissions from all disciplines, rather than focusing on a smaller group, such as the liberal arts or humanities. The unlimited coverage and the resulting lack of focus could harm the journal's marketability and integrity. We have considered publishing the journal twice a year, with one issue devoted to topics in the liberal arts and the other to science, business and education. Another problem is faculty participation. How can faculty members, particularly those outside James Madison University, be encouraged to take part in editorial evaluations when such activities are beyond their institutional responsibilities? And have we placed too much emphasis on student involvement in the editorial process? The marketability of a regional undergraduate journal at a time of budget reductions has also been a concern. We believe libraries and some individuals will subscribe, but we readily concede the journal may never be financially self-supporting. The final issue, and the most pervasive, is funding. Our university, because of budgetary constraints, has currently refused to provide monies and has encouraged solicitation of outside support, even though the journal will carry the institution's name. We have discussed funding alternatives besides the usual organizations: approaching scholarly organizations or using student fees for ``seed'' money to begin the journal, with subscriptions taking over after several years. At this point, we are writing grant proposals. We began with the idea that an undergraduate scholarly journal is needed to help encourage student research and writing. Such activities are an extension of teaching and bring students and faculty closer together in common intellectual pursuits. Despite a tempering of our idealism, we still hope to establish such a journal. This brief essay is a progress report on our proposed journal. If the reader has any ideas regarding the proposal's merit or suggestions about sources of funding, please feel free to contact us. We are interested in beginning and operating the best possible undergraduate research journal.
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