Research Project Proposal

Topic and Motivation:

I will be exploring recruitment of tutors across the curriculum in my project. I think that the diversity of tutors in many writing centers that occurs without recruitment is amazing, but I think that diversity, in background and major focus, could be improved greatly. To this end, I will investigate the best methods of recruitment. I also think that by soliciting suggestions for tutors from academic departments, we can better market the real purposes of the writing center. If we market to teachers and chairs, we can not only get excellent tutors, but we can also get our name and purpose better understood across campus.

Research Questions and Specific Research:

At what level does misunderstanding about WC purposes lie? What are the best methods of tutor recruitment? What are the secondary outcomes of recruitment materials?

I will be doing traditional research into the theory of recruiting and marketing. I may also attempt to investigate how other schools do their recruiting.

What is the format?

I want to make this a conference report that speaks to many schools' ability to implement a plan, but I also want to make some materials for Ball State's program specifically. I think this means that the presentation would present the theory and the method but not the results, which I find a bit problematic. I suppose this set up could lead to a presentation and a possible publication when the results come in.

Questions:

Can my format work? Can I present theory and materials/methods but not results? Is it acceptable?

Problems:

I may not be able to find out what other schools do to market directly at least in this time frame. I think that could limit my findings. I also know that I don't have time to survey what opinions are across campus at this point. I wonder how that would affect my work: if perceptions are already pretty good, then would we need a strong plan to "fix" attitudes through recruitment?