Hello everyone!
The original plan was for my project to start on July 1st. That didn't happen; now the plan is to go some time this week.
The first delay was that the funds for the Weinberg Grant ran out because priority was (rightfully) given to people working on senior theses. So I didn't find out I got the grant (which I did, yay!) until after school got out. After that I went ahead with planning things (including sending emails to groups in Asheville, oops). I also sent an email asking if I needed to seek approval from Northwestern's Institutional Review Board (IRB). I do, I found out a week and a half ago.
The biggest hurdle has been the IRB approval. Dr. Kathleen Murphy has been extremely helpful with me in the process, but there's been a lot of revising and rewriting in the process. However, even with that it would have been possible to go earlier to Asheville if it hadn't been for the combined problem that my adviser wasn't IRB-trained and that it was Independence Day-week.
Luckily, this weekend I got an email from Professor Carolyn Chen (who has done research on Evanglicalism among Asian immigrants among lots of other things), and she volunteered to be the Principal Investigator (which is an IRB-required position that basically means she's in charge of making sure the research doesn't cause the people being studied any harm). That means that I just need to finish the IRB application and I should be good. It qualifies for "exempt review" which means that Dr. Murphy is actually the one looking over it.
All of this hopefully means I should be ready to start the project by the end of this week!
Another related hurdle has been finding a place to stay. Luckily, I got a reply on a Craigslist ad for a room in Swannoa, which is relatively close to the city.
It was really looking like things might not work last week, but now everything seems to be going well!
No comments:
Post a Comment