New course meets student demand

Peter Fix at right explains methods of conducting surveys.

A SNRAS special topics course is filling a need that graduate students have been discussing for years. Research Methods for Interdisciplinary Research, NRM 692, is being offered this spring, giving students a smorgasbord of the resources that UAF has to offer so they learn new ways to improve research techniques. Many of the students, but not all, are in the Resilience and Adaptation Program.

Led by Professor Elena Sparrow and Doctoral Candidate Kimberley Maher, the class hosts different professors each week to talk about their particular research methods. UAF Curator of Oral History Bill Schneider talked about how to conduct successful interviews and SNRAS Associate Professor Peter Fix worked with the class on conducting surveys. Assistant Professor Maya Salganek will show how to incorporate film into interdisciplinary research. Other topics on the schedule include: how to utilize existing databases, environmental history/addressing temporal scalar issues, Q method, documenting and mapping traditional ecological knowledge, climate modeling, ecological surveys sampling methods, GIS, and remote sensing.

“We haven’t felt like there has been a good venue to learn about different types of research methods from a variety of disciplines or hear about the range of resources that UAF already has to offer,” Maher said. Graduate students got together last May to envision the course that would best serve their needs as well as help incoming interdisciplinary graduate students avoid some of the problems the students had already faced.

Maher said many departments on campus have wonderful semester-long research methods courses, but graduate students don’t usually have time to take them while discerning if those methods would benefit their work. “This gives students a better idea of how to pursue resources that will benefit their research,” Maher said. After participants are introduced to a particular method they can do activities that give them experience along that line.

Both Maher and Dr. Sparrow believed in the course so much that they donated their time to organize and run it. The lectures are being recorded for future use, with funding provided by EPSCoR.