I spend the vast majority of my articles lauding the humanities, mostly because they are my passion and will hopefully be my life’s work. I also often wax poetic about undergraduate research. College is the best time to get your feet wet in research for several reasons — it prepares you for graduate school and careers, it supplements what you learn in class through hands-on examples, and it teaches you to think outside the box and learn to analyze and synthesize a variety of concepts. But I have neglected in my articles to fully address one of the most important ways you can articulate what you have learned from your research — academic papers.
The ability to write a paper, thesis or report on your research is the mark of a true academic. It is one thing to perform the research, to spend those hours in the library or the laboratory analyzing primary sources or performing experiments; it is entirely another thing to express your findings in an accessible but academic manner. Writing a research paper requires a working understanding of the overall concepts and theories in your field, a good deal of knowledge of the area in which you are focusing your research, and familiarity with the standards of formatting and citations used in your field. It demonstrates to others that you are not only capable of understanding what research in your area of study entails, but also that you are able to identify the importance of your findings.
Learning and practicing this skill in college is, in my opinion, absolutely critical, and more and more programs on UT’s campus are requiring a capstone project or thesis project in order to obtain degrees in disciplines across the boards, from the sciences to the humanities. Those of us in the humanities and social sciences sometimes take this final research paper for granted — our majors expect us to produce papers regularly throughout our college careers, so a big paper at the end of our degree programs is, if not expected, at least unsurprising. We are consequently eager to have our research and writing skills recognized, so we tend to be more open about allowing public access to our works, be it through a newspaper column (Yes, I am a guilty party myself.), through departmental sites or through more formal venues.
As editor-in-chief of Pursuit, UT’s undergraduate research journal, I and my co-editors and review board tend to see more submissions from the humanities and social sciences than from any other discipline. It is excellent that so many students in these areas are excited about undergraduate research and want to publish the findings of that research; but the downside to this trend is that the STEM disciplines remain sorely underrepresented in our submission pools.
We have identified a number of reasons for this discrepancy. First, many scientists and engineers who write papers on their experiments and projects are often looking to publish the results of their hard work in professional journals. As opposed to the attitude of many humanities majors, it seems that most scientists see writing as a means to the end of expressing important research, rather than the primary outlet for expressing our thoughts and ideas. Second, it is much easier for humanities majors to make conclusions about their research in a designated amount of time. Assuming the library has our books and the Internet is up and running, we have automatic access to our resources.
Scientists, on the other hand, must perform several experiments under specific conditions before even preliminary conclusions can be drawn. It is far more difficult for scientists to wrap up their experiments, let alone produce a paper on the subject, in a designated amount of time than it is for humanities majors to write conclusive research.
This is not a discussion of what discipline produces better writers — it is simply an observation of the differences between the sciences and the humanities in terms of our attitudes towards writing. But I am taking this opportunity to make a call to you scientists and engineers — write and publish the results of your research. UT’s STEM departments are extraordinary and produce a great deal of excellent research, and your college peers deserve the chance to read about what you do all day in your laboratories. And if you need a venue through which to do so, please think about Pursuit — we are accepting submissions at trace.tennessee.edu/pursuit until Oct. 21, and we would love to consider your research.
— Sarah Russell is a junior in history. She can be reached at srusse22@utk.edu.
