Events

Inaugural Research Day at the College of Liberal Arts Research Academy

Date: October 30th, 3pm-7pm, John Purdue Room and Atrium at Marriott Hall

• Flyer
• Program

The Research Academy is organizing a variety of events to celebrate research achievements and to provide opportunities to build new research capacities. As a signature characteristic, the Research Academy aspires to be an innovator in the incubation of multidisciplinary research.

The research day explored a novel conference format that offers scholars to think about new avenues of their research in creative ways and facilitates non-traditional, cross-disciplinary engagement with successful research programs.

The format worked as follows: Eight CLA departments chose a successful research program that showcases scholarly excellence. Each program was presented a five-minute elevator speech. As a twist, we also invited two scholars as respondents for each research program: an inside expert and an outside scholar. While inside experts knew the respective research program very well, outside scholars came from different colleges and disciplines. Outside scholars were contacted based on their scholarship and potential interest in a topic. All respondents were sent 1-3 key publications related to the respective research program and invited to answer the following two questions: What is unique/exciting about this research program? And, what are directions for future research? Respondents had three minutes for their remarks.

This format added an interactive component to the research presentations. It provided some context for each presentation as the insider could explain to the audience why the respective approach is exciting. From the outside scholars, attendees learned about broader implications and possible connections to other fields. The format invited attendees of the research day to think about new ways in which their research program could be connected to other scholars and fields across Purdue colleges to tackle important problems and to further theoretically meaningful research questions. The Research Academy was very pleased to present a program that features research excellence in CLA and offered insights from outstanding scholars including several distinguished and named Purdue university professors and associate deans.

In the final part of the research day, attendees had an opportunity to engage with poster displays from departments, the C-Span Center, libraries, and innovation groups while enjoying a buffet and the Danny Weiss Trio (see flyer and program for details).