One of our Anthropology majors, Victoria Kvitek, has just been selected as one of only 6 inaugural Undergraduate Research Fellow for the AAA. She is being mentored by Ilana Gershon. You can read about her project, and the fellowship program, below.
Congratulations to Victoria and Professor Gershon!
The Great Recession exposed today’s young adults to the prospect of unemployment at a formative age, and because of this economic validity has remained an important portion of the logical explanation with which students justify their major choice. All students have a logical framework surrounding their major choice (i.e. their majors are not chosen at random) that can be elicited through questions both about that student’s choice itself and the reactions they receive to that choice. These frameworks can then be analyzed to determine whether interviewees’ responses support or refute the following hypothesis: that the logical frameworks of a majority of anthropology students in the US (Indiana University) and in New Zealand (University of Canterbury) will highlight anthropology’s ability to prepare them to expertly negotiate cultural diversity, and thus make them a competitive applicant to a wide variety of workplaces.
Funded by the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, this program supports research projects that use ethnographic or mixed methods to address the question, how do anthropology majors prepare for life after college?
You can read about her project here
Victoria is a Wells Scholar: https://wellsscholars.indiana.edu/about-the-program/meet-the-scholars/2016/victoria-kvitek.html
She's been writing a BLOG about her research at the GBL: https://gbl.sitehost.iu.edu/thedirt/wordpress/?p=613
The College of Arts