It is the goal of the EHE faculty and QualLab to build the capacity of “rigorous” qualitative methodologists. Current graduate students, particularly students of color, have requested clear avenues to work on research projects with faculty. To meet these needs, the QualLab’s action strategies are four-fold:
- To create in-person & virtual spaces where EHE graduate students feel welcome to explore and learn about various qualitative methodologies and methods. This is created through mentoring, informal interactions, QualLab lunches on various topics, QualLab webinars by nationally esteemed scholars, and more. We are in 339 Ramseyer (we are currently operating virtually via zoom) please review our Dashboard of Resources. Come see us!
- To offer a place for volunteers to collaborate on QualLab through the establishment of a QualLab Graduate Student Board. Participation as a member of the QualLab Board is meant to be mutually beneficial and not exploit the work of graduate students.
- To provide an opportunity for EHE graduate students to practice their research presentations prior to presenting at an external conference or discuss various dissemination outlets including and beyond journals (i.e., op-eds, community newsletters, practitioner journals, policy reports). This is offered through the QualLab Graduate Student Board, with support from the QualLab GRA.
- To start one QualLab Racial Equity & Justice Research Project each academic year, and follow it through to publication, where all interested EHE graduate students are welcome to participate. This meets a need expressed by graduate students that they are not sure where to “conduct” research as a learning opportunity and graduate students of color who said the opportunity was not always offered to them. It also helps to develop the methodological repertoire of the entire college. Graduate students gain experience on a research project to submit to a qualitative journal (i.e., QRE, QI, IRQR) including, determination of a racial equity & justice based research question, learn how to collect data and various methods of analyzing data congruent to the chosen methodological approach, utilize qualitative software and determine intercoder reliability (if applicable), discuss the ethics of authorship, submit a piece for publication, etc.
- What if someone comes to the group too late to gain authorship? This is an ongoing issue for faculty and research projects everywhere. In this case, students who did not start with the group at the beginning are always welcome to join (or help lead) the next QualLab RE&J research project (meeting Spring ’21 to start Fall ’21).
- QualLab Lunches and/or more ideas as generated by board members.