Allan Wicker's presentation was really interesting. I especially liked reading the narratives from his website and then seeing the people in his slides. It was like putting the pieces of the puzzle together. It gave me insight to see if the image of the people I read in the narratives fit the actual person. I liked Wicker's emphasis on the need for "authentic information." It was great to hear his emphasis on the need and usage of qualitative information. I could tell he has developed strong bonds with the Ghana community over the years. For example, he went to visit his friend whom he had met many years ago. Wicker showed pictures of their reunion, the man's house, and the community. This was a powerful presentation. I think the method Wicker used were powerful and I do hope he continues to chroncicle their lives.

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Reaction to Ms. Jeanne Nakamura: Ms.Jeanne Nakamura’s video clipping was very interesting. It showed all detail work for interviews on Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. She explained how they made over one hundred interviews with creative people (over the age of 60) in every field and thirty years of research on the subject. She showed interviews such as the Nobel Prize winner physicist, astronomer and sculptor. All interviewees were talking about their unique experiences, the problems during processing, and how they developed their own creativity. All their works were coming to a sudden insight into the nature of a problem by following Mihaly’s five creative processes: preparation, incubation, insight, evaluation and elaboration. She showed how to translate different languages on the video, and explained all the problems they had during the interviews. Astronomer Vera Rubin’s astronomical discovery was remarkable. It was impossible to imagine it without access to the large amount of information about celestial motions that had been collected for centuries. All creative people involved 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration as per Mihaly’s elaboration creative process. She showed how Mihaly’s project was created by their great organized teamwork and their creativity plan in the difficult situation and environment. 

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In respond to CGU activities, I noticed that many faculty talked about their frustration towards administrative meetings and tasks. I have the feeling though they are very encouraging on research interaction and collaboration point of view and they mentioned about clinic projects they have involved in with faculty from other undergraduate Claremont colleges. They asked for more "structures" to promote this kind of "Claremont conversation", including various conferences, research projects, committees, and exchanging professors to teach courses at alias colleges or departments. Also i feel a strong confidence in these faculty that both CGU faculty and students (especially phd students like us) have the quality and potential to work together on carrying on quality research studies. Also most of these faculty are more satisfied towards conversations within their own department compared to outside environment.

Another couple CGU students and I were once invited by Professor Chatterjee at CGU School of IS to a Boeing clinic project at Harvey Mudd College. I found the experience very valuable and enjoyable, not only it provided me knowledge and hands-on practice in GPS systems and Opnet modeling tool, but also get to know different research methods, analytic patterns, and working styles from undergrad students and faculty. I certainly suggest that we initiate more projects like this.

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I believe that there is always a political component in almost organizations but it is only one of factors that affect publication. The quality of research is a key determination to get published.

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Despite the rigor there is undoubtedly a political component.  There always is.  So, the glad-handing is a way of not offending anyone who might be helpful or useful at a later time.   At least there's no reason to create enemies where none need to exist.

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Marianne De LaetThe anthropologist at Harvey Mudd CollegeWhy do we believe the things that we believe?   Harvey Mudd is the College of science and engineering.  They have a small humanities department.  The mission of Harvey Mudd is to educate engineers and scientists with the ability to think about their work and the impact it will have on the social, political environment.  Her part is make them think not only about what their work will accomplish, but they are encouraged to think about the culture.One of the big questions of qualitative research is what do we do with these stories?  We want the people who read these stories are to have the reader learn something new and have the reader identify with the person in the story.  Some people who do interviews only interview the very vocal people.  If you are dealing with stories you want to be very careful.  You need to proceed with caution because they are very powerful.How do we create knowledge?  Her current project is a large telescope project at Cal Tech.  The idea came out of a fundraiser.  At first she wondered “Why do you have to have the biggest thing?”  Since then she has changed her idea.  She feels it is important for you to know where your base beliefs are because you will bring those into research.  The telescope is beginning to exist on paper.  It has collaborators and the design.  It is becoming possible to build the telescope.  Culturally you realize that all cultures have stories about how the universe got there.  All cultures believe in some kind of astrology and cosmologies.  They have been listening to different cultures about whether it is possible or not to build a telescope in that region.  In Hawaii, people do not want another telescope because the mountains are considered sacred.  The ways the telescopes have been built in the past have not paid tribute to the burial sites.  Hawaiian’s have very deliberate ways in preparing the land which have been ignored.  The resistance has cause there not to be another telescope on Hawaii.    In Costa Rica the stories are very different.  People tell each other that the telescopes deal with the gods.  Her part she interviews people and attends meetings.  She would be in the president’s office 3 days a week to socialize and get in with the people.  She also goes to meetings and gives talks about the social aspects of the telescopes.  She runs a series of workshops.  The question that she asks of everyone is “Why?  Why do you want this so badly?”   To do a really good ethnography you have to be present in your field.  These stories have value and power and because we write them down we make them more powerful.   

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I found Professor De Laet’s lecture interesting and eye-opening. Her emphasis on the power of story-telling was compelling. The power of stories to carry on tradition or define a person or group for the listener is one that I never really considered. Maybe it was referring to the “data” as stories that threw me off. When I think of “stories” I think of accounts of events for a personal reason, such as a warning (urban legends) or for amusement. Professsor De Laet brought up the idea that retelling someone else’s story comes with a measure of responsibility to the person whose story you are telling as well as to the reader of the story. This thought flashed in my mind when I was reading Dr. Wicker’s Ghanaian interviews on the web. The fact that they were told in first person kind of bothered me because it felt like the researchers were putting words into the mouths of their interviewees. I can see how Dr. De Laet would have problems convincing others that do not know her that her stories are collected and accounted in a rigorous manner.

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Ok.  I'm not feeling so bad any more.  Two of the people I respect the most (of course, I have tremendous respect for all of my classmates;-) are looking up words in our readings.  I'm doing the same thing.  There's so much that I have little or no clue about, that I spend hours on the Wikipedia pages just trying to figure some of it out! 

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I think that somehow the study could have been more rigourously designed to inlcuded quantitative analysis as well.  If the authors had as much access as they did, they might have also wanted to do direct observational analysis to supplement the questionairres (I think this might have reduced bias from the surveys only being from all but 1 IT professional).

 

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I don't think you need to apologize. I think most of us have had things come up that lead us to be behind in our postings and readings.  Hope all is better with your family.

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