Presentation to chairs of departments of anthropology about how to prepare anthropology majors for a competitive job market. How to train them and frame anthro skills.

1. PREPARING STUDENTS
TO PRACTICE
ANTHROPOLOGY
SUSAN MAZUR-STOMMEN, PH.D.
AAA DEPARTMENT LEADERS SUMMER INSTITUTE, JUNE 2018

2. INTRODUCTION
• Who I am:
• Hybrid
academic/practitioner
• My firm
• Founded 2006
• Qualitative Research
• Big clients (DOE, Bosch)

3. CONSUMER
BEHAVIOR
IDIs
Surveys
Focus groups

4. OUR FOCUS
• Behavior and Sustainability
• Reducing carbon
• Saving energy
• Emerging technologies
• Energy management
• Lighting
• Utility programs

5. TEACHING
California State
University System
Goucher College

6. PASSION
• Professionalizing
undergraduates
• Competitive job market
• Anthropological perspective
• Ethnographic methods

7. STUDENTS AS CONTENT CREATORS
• Manage the process from soup to nuts:
• Gather data ethically using mixed
methods
• Organize and process data with a variety
of tools
• Produce outputs in many forms
• Distribute across various platforms
• Promote work across various media

8. EPIC PROJECT AND
STUDENT
ETHNOGRAPHERS
19 CSUs
In collaboration with departments at CSU
San Marcos and San Diego State
University
MOOC on ethics and fieldwork praxis
hosted at SDSU Language Acquisition
Research Center
Two cohorts (AY 2016-2017)
Ca. 20 students total Demographically diverse

9. STRUCTURE
Enrolled in concurrent course credits
Paid stipends
Fieldwork/Paper/Video Presentation
Social Media encouraged

10. Given this background, what do students need to
succeed?

11. STRONG
EMPHASIS ON
ETHNOGRAPHIC
METHODS AND
TECHNIQUES
Different types of interviewing
methods/scenarios: IDIs vs intercepts
Understanding what Participant
Observation is and does
Practice with tools for recording:
audio, visual, but especially fieldnotes
Let students use phones – we don’t
use cameras and the like

12. MULTIPLE TIMES IN THE FIELD
Encourage internships in
for profit and
government
organizations
Conduct outreach with
those orgs to establish
pipelines

13. INTENSE TRAINING
ON ETHICS
ESPECIALLY DATA
PRIVACY, PROTECTION,
AND STORAGE.

14. EXPOSURE TO
RESEARCH
DESIGN AND
ANALYSIS
When to use what
method
Connecting theory to
method
What kinds of claims
can you make
Understand mixed
methods

15. QUANTIFYING…
• Ethnographic
Software
Coding
• Conduct robust
surveys
Basic
statistics

16. QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN TODAY’S WORLD
• Department guidelines are updated
• Reflective of current ways of conducting and producing ethnographic research
• Students need to know a LOT of applications just to function in a collaborative
environment with dispersed/virtual teams:
• Many they know already
• (Google docs, Dropbox)
• Many they do not
• (Slack, Doodle, Trello, Zotero)

17. DREAM
STUDENTS
WOULD HAVE:
• Interned in a business/government
agency
• Taken applied anthropology
• Taken a class in entrepreneurship

18. THE END GOAL IS:
Make students
competitive
Normalize the use
of ethnographic
tools
Spread awareness
of anthropological
perspective
Thank you!

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susanmazur
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