August Prompt

- Has your involvement in community-based research impacted your motivation to engage in community issues, research or service?
- What assistance will be most helpful to you in the fall semester in wrapping up your CBR project?
- Write a brief letter of advice to a 2010 CBR-SURF.


My involvement in this CBR project has taught me the value of research to any work with community issues. I came into this already motivated to engage in my community’s issues, but without a full appreciation of the role of research in addressing those issues. This has pushed me to seek out ways to continue the targeted incorporation of research into community projects in which I am involved, and to recruit higher-level researchers to work with CEF to answer the many, many questions that I came out of this summer with.

As I work to wrap up my project this fall, the assistance that will be the most helpful will be that of the CEF borrowers and loan officers who have decided to remain a part of my research.

And here’s my brief letter of advice to a 2010 CBR-SURF:

1. Be realistic. A summer is a summer, and when it comes down to it, is really short. Set realistic goals and design a research question that you can really answer in the time period that you have before you. Doing community-based research, we are really all out there trying to make a felt impact on the community we are working with, and we are all tempted to ask and answer a research question that confronts all the issues facing that community. But looking back I think the best way to do that would be to solidify a deliverable research question that focuses on just one part of the larger, holistic question facing our communities - despite the fact that in the course of your research you will come in contact with people and places dealing with the realities of more and deeper questions. Over-ambitious projects are beautiful and make the world go round, but both my community and my research would have benefited in many ways had I narrowed my focus even more than I did.

2. Be prepared to leave your project with more questions than answers.

3. Other than that, just listen, listen, listen.