April 2014 – Rahul Mitra

Communicating that Research is Inherently Practical and Applied

Exhorting academics to talk candidly and plainly about their research with broader publics is not exactly new. What IS new, though, in this recent op-ed piece published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, is linking it explicitly to the research-generation goal of a university, which most policymakers and publics seem to be in the dark about, or conflate with imparting particular “skills” for the job market, or “applied” research that answers a localized question in a particular setting (e.g., how can we get legislators in Wyoming to buy into man-made climate change?).

But the goal of research, and academics in general, is deeper than that, the article points out.

Graduate Student Publishing: Collaborative Research

Given the increasing importance for both the academic job market and bagging research grants for collaborative research, it’s important to talk about team scholarship processes in some depth. Specifically: when, why, how, and with whom should you collaborate with on a research project?

How can we “translate” Sustainability effectively?

At the close of my recent talk on “Organizing/Communicating Sustainably” at Central Michigan University, someone in the audience asked me, predictably enough, what hope there was for meaningful systemic change, given the preponderance of cultural, structural, and moral obstacles both in the U.S. and worldwide.

My response hinged around the very communicative concept of translation.

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