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Program Description
The Summer Institute on Child Development is an 8 week experience, giving students both research skills under the guidance of a distinguished faculty mentor, and assistance in the preparation of a proposal that could be used as the basis for a project during the subsequent academic year. Each undergraduate fellow is matched with a faculty mentor whose work is most closely aligned with his or her particular interests, skills, and background. Both students and faculty members have opportunities, though the program, to learn about the other research initiatives across the disciplines in child development on campus.
The program begins in late May with an orientation and brief overview of the various projects represented by the summer fellows. Faculty mentors are invited, with the undergraduate fellows, to a reception where faculty mentors would address the group with a brief description of their project.
The Institute itself has two components:
- A hands-on experience working in a faculty member’s lab/with a faculty member’s group and graduate students on an established project (approximately 25 hours/week; the student can be shared by two groups/labs/faculty members if appropriate), doing coding and analysis of archived or previously collected data, recruitment of subjects, and/or review of literature. Training for participation in this project would be the responsibility of the mentor’s research team.
- A seminar (not for credit) that provides training in literature review, research methods, and study design, and exposure to the breadth of concerns addressed under the umbrella of child development research. Undergraduate fellows are provided guidance with respect to writing and presentation of research, applying to graduate school (for Psy.D., Ph.D., M.Ed., and Ed.D.), and information about career options in the field of child development (including school and counseling psychology, educational psychology, teaching, and research). 10-15 hours/week would include a minimum of 5 in-class contact hours and 5-10 out-of-class hours dedicated to the development of the proposal.
At the end of the Institute, undergraduate fellows present their work in poster or paper format to faculty members, peers, and family members. These students will pilot projects during the academic year, and potentially follow the project through to a senior thesis or other independent study.
The Summer Institute on Child Development is a full time commitment; participants will not be permitted take any additional summer classes or hold employment during the program period. Participants will be required to attend all program workshops and events (on and off-campus), meet with mentors regularly, and complete all scheduled assignments within the timeframe provided.
Students selected as fellows in the summer institute will be provided with a $3,000 stipend for the duration of the eight-week program (late May through mid July). Applications will be available in late January and are due in March.
Eligible students will be encouraged to present at AERA, APA, APS, the Boston Child Language Meeting, the biannual conference of the Society for Research on Child Development, or other relevant meeting.
Eligibility
To be eligible for the Summer Institute on Child Development, applicants must satisfy the following criteria:
- have at least two full academic years left to complete their undergraduate degree,
- have completed at least one course in statistics or quantitative methods by the time the summer program begins, including:
- Quantitative Methods in Psychology
- Research Methods in Psychology
- Statistical Methods
- Computer Applications in Health Research
- Introduction to Social Research
- Intermediate Social Research
- Computer Analysis of Social Science Data
- Basic Statistics for Economics
- Statistics
- Introductory Statistics for Business
- Basic Statistics for Research (Science majors)
- Computing and Graphing in Applied Statistics
- Introduction to Experimental Design
- Basic Statistical Methods for Planning, Public Policy and Health
- Application of Quantitative Methods
- Research Methods in Human Ecology
- Preferably have completed a course in child development, child psychology, or equivalent.
Students under-represented in graduate education, such as, but not limited to, those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, first generation college attenders, and those from racial/ethnic minority groups (African-American, Latino, Native American, and Pacific Islanders), would be particularly encouraged to apply.
Syllabus (class meets for 5 hours a week, and 5-10 hours outside of class work will be expected each week)
- Monday and Wednesday (lecture/discussion, 2 hours)
- Fridays (1 hour) colloquium: presentation by graduate student; assignments and journals due; group discussion and critique of assignments
Class format: each week, students will comment on progress in their project, challenges and obstacles, reflections and insights. A minimum 1 paragraph reflective journal will be due on Friday along with the assignment of the week. On Fridays, a member of one of the mentors’ labs will present their ongoing work, so that the students have a sense of the issues and questions addressed under the larger umbrella of child development research.
Week 1 Reading the literature/defining a question
- Introduction to the interdisciplinary field of child development; introduction to the library resources as they are related to the mentor’s project, overview of evaluating resources. How do we come up with a research question? How do we narrow it? Broaden it? Sessions this week will be facilitated by Rutgers librarians. Students will work on surveying the field of interest to them, and identifying resources to be included in their annotated bibliographies.
Week 2 Theory and Methods Ethics in research, IRB, Human Subjects Certification
- Due on Friday: Preliminary annotated bibliography
Week 3 Theory and Methods, continued … (triangulization, conceptualization, operationalization, generalizability)
- Due on Friday: The Research Question (1-2pp)
Week 4 Sampling (non-probability sampling, in-depth interviewing and case studies, participant observation/ethnography, focus groups, comparative/historical research)
- Due on Friday: Methodological Critique (2-3pp)
Week 5 Sampling continued (probability sampling, causation, experiments and quasi experiments, survey research, mean/media/mode) with specific examples of child development research
- Due on Friday: Data Source and Sampling
Week 6 Analysis (qualitative research transcription, coding interpretation, content analysis, crosstab analysis anova and chi square) with specific examples of child development research
Week 7 Poster/Presentation skills, individual conferences about proposals
Week 8 Applying for Funding/Graduate School options, continued conferences about proposals
- Due on Friday: The research proposal (5-10pp)
Application
- Summer Institute Project Descriptions
- Application
(no longer being accepted for 2009)
- PLEASE NOTE: In order to fill out this application, you must have a printer available at this time. You are also responsible for bringing the following documents to our office along with the printed application form:
- 1-2 page essay describing your qualifications for and interest in this particular Aresty project. The essay should also include your post-graduate and career plans if you know them.
- A resume, which must include information about employment history, research experiences, and any organizations and/or activities you have been involved with at Rutgers. Include amount of time you spend/plan to spend on these activities.
- Your most recent transcript, which can be printed from from http://my.rutgers.edu (click on the Academics tab) or requested from https://transcripts.rutgers.edu/transcripts/index.html
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