One of the best things I get to do as chair is work with our committees to evaluate and award research proposals, then mail those we have decided to fund with the good news. Yesterday, we sent out 12 letters informing those teams that their research proposals were funded, and you could see the ripple on Facebook, Twitter, and on various email lists.
Supporting research into our practices, our histories, our classrooms, and our identities isn’t just a feel-good action that the C’s undertakes, a gift to our members. That research benefits us all by becoming knowledge that is presented at the conference, published in our journals, and cited for years to come.
If you don’t think of yourself as a researcher, you should. Inquiry into why certain things happen is the hallmark of educated people and learned societies. The field needs curious and skeptical people to advance our understanding of language use, mastery of writing and composing, the conditions under which we do our work, to name but a few general areas.
- “Curious” because we need good researchers who dig into darkened corners to follow the thread of discovery wherever it may lie.
- “Skeptical” because we need researchers who ask themselves constantly questions like, “Is this necessarily so?” “Are there other effects at work here?” and “Is there enough evidence that other people can see, or is this just a hunch or a story?”
Helping such researchers achieve replicable, aggregable, and data supported results is an excellent investment in our members and our discipline. As you can see at this CCCC link, our Research Initiative, now 12 years old, and considerably expanded in recent years, “invites proposals for research that employ diverse perspectives and methodologies including historical, rhetorical, qualitative, quantitative, ethnographic, and textual.”
The deadline is September 1 each year, and I encourage you to find some colleagues, perhaps in Houston at this year’s conference, formulate your research proposal, and let us see if we can help fund your research.