This course covers approaches to research and evaluation in the planning field, for those preparing to write 1st-year doctoral and other research papers. Topics include narrowing down research interests, using quantitative and qualitative techniques complementarily, and interviewing and other fieldwork challenges. The course uses a seminar-type format in which readings, class discussions, and assignments are built around (1) generic themes that run across the research interests and paper topics of students in the class, and (2) lessons about methodology to be learned from the case comparison studies assigned.

This course enhances cross-cultural understanding through the discussion of practical, ethical, and epistemological issues in conducting social science and applied research in foreign countries or unfamiliar communities. It includes a research practicum to help students develop interviewing, participant-observation, and other qualitative research skills, as well as critical discussion of case studies. The course is open to all interested students, but intended particularly for those planning to undertake exploratory research or applied work abroad. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments.

This is a short collection, which features the work of students in Dr. Mark Kinney's course, ICST 471, ANTH 470, SOCI 493: Enculturation and Spiritual  Development Across Cultures, taught at Evangel University, 2022-2023. The course has used the open textbook Discovering Cultural Anthropology by Antonia M. Santangelo. 

This course is a practicum-style seminar in anthropological methods of ethnographic fieldwork and writing. Depending on student experience in ethnographic reading and practice, the course is a mix of reading anthropological and science studies ethnographies; and formulating and pursuing ethnographic work in local labs, companies, or other sites.

Scientists can spend years planning, conducting, analyzing, and publishing the results of their investigations. It’s not surprising that trying to design and conduct scientific investigations in a vastly shorter time span, can often be frustrating for instructors and students, and may lead to misunderstandings about how investigations are done. Students’ attempts at quick investigations are often messy, and data can be inconsistent and fairly inconclusive. But scientists often do “messy” exploratory investigations before doing a full investigation. The goal of an exploratory investigation is to observe and record basic patterns in nature, as well as to explore various methods and improve the ultimate design of an investigation. Exploratory studies can be “quick and dirty” but are important to understanding a phenomenon well enough to develop a testable question and appropriate methods for investigating. Similarly, the goal for students in this activity is not coming up with great data, but to observe and record patterns in nature, and to think about how the investigation could be improved in the future. After being assigned a general topic, such as “exploring where fungi live,” students brainstorm questions, sort questions as testable or not testable, plan a brief exploratory investigation, do it, analyze the results, discuss ideas, and brainstorm ways the investigation could be improved in the future. In a relatively short amount of time, we can give students an experience that’s authentic to field science, while emphasizing how this can lead to a more thorough investigation that answers important questions about the natural world.

The Malaysia Sustainable Cities Practicum is an intensive field-based course that brings 15 graduate students to Malaysia to learn about and analyze sustainable city development in five cities in Malaysia. The students in the Practicum will help determine the extent to which these efforts have been successful. They will identify specific projects or policy-making efforts that the following year’s cohort of International Visiting Scholars can examine more closely. 
Lead Faculty
Professor Larry Susskind
Teaching Assistants
Jessica Gordon
Yasmin Zaerpoor
Administrative Staff
Takeo Kuwabara
Selmah Goldberg

This advanced course in anthropology engages closely with discussions and debates about ethnographic research, ethics, and representation.

The purpose of this resource is to investigate the center pixel of a homogeneous land Cover Site in order to understand that individual land areas are part of a larger land system.

The purpose of this resource is to investigate the idea that every dynamic system has energy and matter in different forms.

Science literacy is of great value for any citizen of the world. For students to develop science literacy, it’s important that they not only engage in science practices, but also that they take time to reflect on practices they use, which most students are unlikely to do without scaffolding and support from an instructor. This activity engages students in reflecting on science practices.

This activity has three parts that are meant to be led with students before and after a field experience in which students engage in science practices. The first two parts are meant to be taught at the beginning of a field experience, and the third part at the end of the field experience. In the Science = Adventure introduction, the instructor builds up anticipation and excitement about doing field science. Then the instructor introduces some core field science practices by leading students in using those practices briefly to explore a mysterious object. Later during the Post: Debriefing Science Practices, after other field science experiences (not included in this activity), students reflect back on the science practices they engaged in and experienced.