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Dear Graduate Students:
Your help is needed! The UTK campus has embarked on
developing a new strategic plan that will take the university through the next
decade and beyond. A small group of faculty and administrators are now in the
planning phase and our intention is to broaden the current scope of the plan
and seek input from a variety of stakeholders on campus (faculty, students,
staff and administrators). In order to achieve this we are scheduling a series
of focus groups which will be led by trained facilitators. What we seek from
you are note-takers that can attend some of the focus group meetings and work
with the facilitators in capturing the data that will result. This is a
terrific opportunity for SIS masters students and CCI doctoral students to
learn about and develop insights and skills in organizing and conducting focus
groups. This quantitative method of gathering data is very common in libraries
and information centers for capturing data in order to evaluate systems and
services. If you plan to work in a library you will have gained a very
critical management skill by participating in this project. If you are a
doctoral student you most definitely would benefit from the experience,
especially if your intended research methodology is qualitative. Even if your
research method is quantitative you can use this experience to balance your
research perspective. I am looking for about 10-15 volunteers that would
coordinate with the facilitators a focus group schedule that suits your time
commitments. I expect that the investment in time will be about 3-4 hours.
Finally, when we are all done you can look forward to nice dinner at one of the
downtown restaurants or perhaps at my home. Please contact me soon if you are
interested.
Yours,
Ed Cortez
Edwin-Michael
Cortez, PhD
Director & Professor
School of Information Sciences
University of Tennessee
451 Communications Bldg.
1345 Circle Park Drive
Knoxville, TN 37996-0341
Phone: (865) 974-2148
Fax: (865) 974-4967